He would
say that if the lyrics of subtle and passionate emotion and the
drab stories of sex experience that make up so many pages of
modern anthologies represent a renewal and extension of youth, it
was not _his_ youth. He prefers to be sanely old rather than
erotically young. He will stick to the daily paper and flat prose.
Well, it is easy to answer him by ruling out modern poetry from
the argument. There was more good poetry, neither complex, nor
erotic, nor esoteric, written before our generation than even a
maker of anthologies is likely to read. But I am not willing to
dodge the issue so readily. There _is_ modern poetry for every reader
who is competent to read poetry at all. If there is none too much of
it, that is his own fault. If there is much that makes no appeal to
him, that is as it should be.
It is true that a very large proportion of contemporary poetry is
well-nigh unintelligible to the gentleman whose reading, like his
experience, does not often venture beyond the primitive emotions.
Why should it not be? The modern lyric is untroubled by the social
conscience. It is highly individual, for it is written by men of
intense individuality for readers whose imaginations require an
intimate appeal.
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