The Eleventh Virgin Dorothy Day (digital ebook reader .TXT) đ
- Author: Dorothy Day
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âI love the way we sit around and talk about what we could do,â Regina sniffed. âGet a couple of people like Mrs. Stokes on the staff and something would be done.â
âBah! placed in the same situation we are, sheâd do just what we doâ ânothing! Besides,â Jim suddenly remembered, âI thought we decided last week we were Nietzscheans.â
âThatâs one way of getting away from responsibilities,â Regina protested, still under the influence of Mrs. Stokes.
âIâll stick to Nietzsche,â June decided consistently. âWhy give up several years of good fun and education and incur the wrath of the worthy Mr. Henreddy by fighting for a mob of stupid, dirty people. They havenât gumption enough to lift up their voices and complain. Iâll fight for myself and for what I want and that will keep me busy, I guess. Iâm not in danger of having babies yet a while, so why worry? And I want another sandwich!â
There were three poets who visited the university that year, and caused much discussionâ âJohn Masefield, Edgar Lee Masters and Vachel Lindsay.
Before the first arrived June cut all her classes, spent the day in the library, gloating over The Everlasting Mercy, The Widow in the Bye Street, The Daffodil Fields and Dauber. Regina, Ray and Jim followed her example and there were energetic discussions of Masefield, Masters and Lindsay.
âItâs a good thing we read Masefieldâs stuff before he got here,â Regina said over the inevitable cup of tea. âIn that huge auditorium he was the hardest man to hear! But I think heâs a wonder.â
âI think he was bashful, he sounded so muffled; but Iâd much rather have a poet act that way. Lindsay was too flamboyant. As a matter of fact,â June continued, âMasefield acted as though he were shy and unwilling. He probably needed the money. Books of poetry are never best sellers.â
âI was all prepared not to like him,â Ray confessed. âI have a prejudice against English writers coming over to America to be hailed as geniuses. We pay too little attention to our own product to know whether itâs any good or not. We take English writers for granted. But Masefieldâs all right and I think his poetryâs great stuff.â
It was an opinion that was echoed by the several thousand students who went to hear him. And when it was rumored that Masefield had actually been a sailor, and had acted as assistant bartender in a New York saloon, there was a run on the library for his books. He was a man who had âlived,â it was decided.
Whether free verse was really poetry was a much debated question for a time. Vachel Lindsay had declaimed verse of the open road, immaculately dressed in an evening suit.
âThe incongruity of his dress and the roughness of his poetry sets me against him,â Regina insisted. âLet him wander around the Middle West dressed in corduroys and recite in the wheat fields if he wants to. The farmers and field hands probably looked on him as a lunatic, that is, unless he composed and chanted as he worked, pitching hay, for instance. Heâd be like sailors with their chanteys in that case and in establishing a precedent all sorts of songs of the fields would crop up.â
âI understand thatâs what he did do,â June put in. âHe worked in the fields, living the life of the people, and writing a poetry of the people. His songs are like the negro melodies in the southâ âthey have real beautyâ âor like the cowboy songs which have never been well done.
âWhat I object to about the man is his misplaced enthusiasm in appearing before two or three thousand students who have little appreciation of art or beauty. If heâd blackened his face to recite âGeneral Booth Enters Heavenâ they might have enjoyed his recitation as they would a minstrel show. As it was, his way of reciting was unprecedented and therefore ridiculous and they didnât catch at all the lilting music of it. I didnât myself until I read it the next day and got away from the spirit of the crowd in judging it.â
Then came Edgar Lee Masters, not in person, but in the shape of a small green volume from which Mr. Lord read short âvitriolicâ epitaphs. The adjective was Mr. Lordâs.
Immediately rhetoric instructors were deluged with themes in free verse, and a free verse column appeared in the Mirror.
âItâs a marvelous piece of work,â Jim decreed. âAnybody who has lived in a small Middle Western town would know that. Itâs real poetry because it has a languorous, sad rhythm in it, a desolate undercurrent note that you feel in an ugly little town on a summer afternoon.â
âYouâre inspired,â June laughed. âI distrust it as poetry because everyone is so enthusiastic and is trying so hard to imitate it. They think itâs easy. Iâm something of a snob, I suppose, but I think true poetry is like true music, not to be appreciated by the multitude. Look at Germany. It produces Wagner, and people only accept him under protest and are bored to death if they have to sit through a Wagnerian opera. Most German music is sickly sentimental stuffâ âwaltzes played by fat beery men on huge horns. Thatâs what makes the multitude thrill.
âAnd look at us. We produce an Edgar Allan Poeâ âa great poetâ âand he dies of starvation. The crowd has never raved about him. But look at the furor about Masters. Itâs a vulgar enthusiasm in which I refuse to join.â
Then, just as the
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