A Survey of Modernist Poetry by Laura Riding

IT must be assumed for the moment that poetry not characteristically "modernist" presents no difficulty to the plain reader; for the complaint against modernist poetry turns on its differences from traditional poetry. These differences would seem to justify themselves if their effect was to bring poetry any nearer the plain reader; even traditional poetry, it is sometimes charged, has a tendency to withdraw itself from the plain reader. But the sophistications of advanced modern poetry seem only to make the breach wider. In the poetry of E. E. Cummings, for example, who may be considered conveniently to illustrate the divorce of advanced contemporary poetry from the common-sense standards of ordinary intelligence, is to be found apparently not only a disregard of this intelligence, but an insult to it. Such poetry seems to say: "Keep out. This is a private performance."

What we have to do, then, is to discover whether or not the poet means to keep the public out. If, after a careful examination of poems that seem to be only part of the game of high-brow baiting low-brow, they still resist all reasonable efforts, then we must conclude that such work is, after all, merely a joke at the plain reader's expense and let him return to his newspapers and to his Shakespeare (who we are for the moment assuming is understood without difficulty). But if, on the other hand, we are able to get out of these poems the experiences we are accustomed to expect of poetry, or at least see that the poet originally wrote them as poetry and not as literary tricks, then the plain reader must make certain important alterations in his critical attitude. In the first place, he must admit that what is called our common intelligence is the mind in its least active state: that poetry obviously demands a more vigorous imaginative effort than the plain reader has been willing to apply to it; and that, if anthologies compiled to refresh tired minds have indulged his lazy reading habits, the poet can be excused for using exceptional means to make him do justice to his poems, even for inventing a new kind of poem in this end. Next he must wonder whether such innovations have not a real place in the normal course of poetry-writing. Finally, if these things are so, he must question the depth of his understanding of the poetry which, like Shakespeare's, is taken for granted and ask whether a poet like E. E. Cummings must not be accepted, if not for his own sake, at least for his effect on the future reading of poetry of any age or style.