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THE REBEL MAGAZINE
VOL. VIII WINTER 1965 NUMBER 2
CONRAD AIKEN INTERVIEW 3
ANNE W. NELSON The Swings 13
WALTER BLACKSTOCK Lines For My DaughterTs Seventeenth Year 19
LYN PALADINO May 14, 1942 20
DWIGHT W. PEARCE Con Mil Flores 22
PETER F. NEUMEYER Seventh Anniversary 23
GEORGE BIRELINE Paintings 24
JAMES FORSYTH Notes on E. E. Cummings 29
LYN PALADINO A Passing Grade For Brecht 41
Editor, Thomas Blakeslee Speight
Associate Editor, Dwight W. Pearce
Copy Editor, Ann Regan Barbee
Book Review Editor, Bob Malone
Business Manager, Jan Sellers Coward
Typists, Ida Andrews, Marita Rosental
Published three times a year at East Carolina College, Box 2486, Greenville,
North Carolina. Subscriptions, $2.75 or $1.00 single issues.
e
228 and 230 Oglethorpe Avenue
Books by Conrad Aiken
POETRY
The Charnel Rose
The Jig of Forslin
The House of Dust
Preludes for Memnon - 1931
The Coming Forth by Day
of Osiris Jones - 1931
Senlin: A Biography
Landscape West of Eden - 1935
Time in the Rock - 1936
The Soldier - 1944
Collected Poems - 1953
A Letter from Li Po - 1955
Selected Poems - 1961
Limericks - 1964
CRITICISM
Scepticisms - 1919
A ReviewerTs ABC - 1958
NOVELS
Blue Voyage - 1928
Great Circle
Ushant - 1952
SHORT STORIES
Bring! Bring! - 1925
Costumes by Eros - 1928
Collected Short Stories - 1960
CONRAD AIKEN
INTERVIEW
The interview was held in AikenTs Savannah house on a warm, grey day in December
INTERVIEWER: The latest thing I have seen either
on you or by you was the article you wrote for the
Atlantic Monthly, oPoetry and the Mind of Mod-
ern Man.�
AIKEN: That was originally done for the Voice of
America and was part of a series organized by
Howard Nemerov"he was the controller, and
planned it"it was a very peculiar list. ItTs coming
out published by Basic Books this year sometime.
INTERVIEWER: Then this was just your portion of
i
AIKEN: Yes, I was the lead-off man. And we were
supposed to discuss our own work in relation to
the times, and quote from our own stuff if we
wanted to, or not. ITm told that one of the twenty
quoted so much of his own work that it practically
amounts to an anthology, and created quite a
problem for the publisher, because it went so much
over the limits. I wonTt mention his name; itTll
come to light soon.
INTERVIEWER: ThereTs a particular section in the
Atlantic article that ITm intrigued with, the section
in which you were talking about"well, you didnTt
call it the evolution of consciousness"the experi-
ence, the childTs, of seeing a wasp sting a...
AIKEN: Locust.
INTERVIEWER: And then you said that although
he perhaps was not conscious of it at the time, the
experience was part of his becoming aware of
himself in the universe, so to speak.
AIKEN: In other words, the joining together of
all experience. The items in the events of oneTs
life brought into relationship.
INTERVIEWER: Yes. And I wondered if youTd like
to say something about your use of this totality of
experience, particularly in your later poems.
AIKEN: Well, I think itTs in all of them. Senlin,
for example, is an attempt at a sort of whole total-
ity of individual experience. That is, putting it
into a frame, if you like. And so is Osiris Jones,
so is Landscape West of Eden, and I think itTs ev-
erywhere there. And I think maybe one of the
3
causes for my unpopularity is the fact that I have
always aimed at this kind of wholeness, not of the
individual mind or the individual bit in the poem,
but of the thing as an entirety. This I think is less
being paid attention to by the young poets, and I
think theyTre all going up the wrong tree, with
some exceptions.
INTERVIEWER: You mentioned your unpopularity.
ITve been very much interested in that in relation
to you. I donTt know whether it bothers anyone
else, but the fact is, it gets to be almost a fad, in
literature, to call you unpopular.
AIKEN: Did you see the review of Lord Zero by
James Dickey? It was in Poetry Magazine about
a year and a half ago. In which he referred to me
as an unfashionable, historic personage whom no-
body read. This made me so mad that I replied,
and really had fun replying. The editor of Poetry
didnTt want to print this letter and said why not
just send it to Dickey. And I said no no, this is a
little damaging"to call me dead before I am"an
unfashionable, historic personage whom nobody
reads. And it just happened that that day ITd got
the royalty statements from Oxford Press, with
very nearly a thousand dollars for a half yearTs
royalties for the books. So ITm not that unpopular,
and I mentioned this in my letter to Poetry Maga-
zine. And had a dozen-odd letters from people
like"oh whoTs the father of analytical criticism"
oh heavens, I canTt think of his name. He lives in
New Jersey. ITll think of it presently.
INTERVIEWER: I have read again and again from
people who say that if you are unpopular, it is be-
cause you have made your choice, kept to your
work as you saw it, and have not been overly in-
fluenced by fads or fashions.
AIKEN: I think thatTs true. And of course weTve
had half a dozen fashions since Eliot and myself
started out on this in the late teens and twenties
which had to be fought against, and then the social
consciousness of the thirties, and I donTt know
what youTd say about the forties. But now, of
course, these generations are getting faster and
faster and more and more splinterized, it seems
to me. With some exceptions. ThereTs a very good
poet just being published by the Oxford Press
named Fineman, whoTs I think the most exciting
young thing to come along in a long time. HeTs a
real metaphysical poet, and as subtle in his way as
Stevens.
Of course, thereTs a lot in this. If you donTt go
along with the gangs and stay by yourself, you
make it that much harder, and of course ITve
never read or spoken. I canTt do it. I tried three
times, always with disastrous results. Nobody
could hear me"this was before mikes were in-
vented"and both the audience and I suffered much
too much, so I just gave that up. And of course
thatTs a great disadvantage against these other
fellows who do go around. As I said in my letter
to Dickey, the average poet nowadays is a combina-
tion of travelling salesman and poet.
INTERVIEWER: If I might interject here, do you
think there is any advantage for the poet in his
later compositions in being able to do these public
readings and get an immediate reaction to his
work?
AIKEN: Well, he certainly sells his work much
more.
INTERVIEWER: After-the-fact criticism would not
interplay"that possible exchange"could be of
any value to him as a poet?
AIKEN: I donTt think so. I would think the other
way, probably.
INTERVIEWER: After-the-fact criticism would not
be that significant to him then?
AIKEN: No, I donTt think so. I think itTs a sop to
vanity. Of course, there again, too, one should
make exceptions. I mean, when you get a brav-
ura performer like Dylan Thomas. He was a born
showman in addition to being a damn good poet,
and so it was only natural, I think, that that came
easy and right for him. And I donTt doubt he got
genuine pleasure out of it.
INTERVIEWER: While I was reading Scepticisms,
I began wondering if poets have always been as
self-conscious and as conscious of the nature of
poetry as they seem to be now.
AIKEN: Do you mean the joining of the critical
faculty to the creative? I think thatTs always gone
on, you know? Ben Jonson was no mean critic in
his offhand way; and Philip Sidney; and then
when you come down to later times, Coleridge, of
course, was an extraordinary combination; and I
donTt doubt"well, Keats in his letters was obvious-
ly a very fine critic; Leigh Hunt, though he was
not a major figure, but still he combined both
faculties; and Matthew Arnold. So I think this has
always been present; some have exercised both
talents and some not. Goethe, too, to jump the
channel, a very highly conscious and scientific
creature as well as being a great poet. I think
this is something to be encouraged. We found it,
of course, wonderful fun back in the teens and
twenties and early thirties" a sort of battle royal
went on.
INTERVIEWER: I remember in one particular essay
that you wrote, you were describing what an
Imagist poet would feel first when he came upon
MasterTs Spoon River Anthology"the giant, all-
too-human footprint beside his dwarf Japanese
garden. For all the sting in some of the things you
had to say"and some of them very devastating, I
would hate to have them said about me"it seems
to me that there is a relieving sense of enjoyment.
And this is not only in your work, but in some of
the other criticism. It seems now that I pick up
some of the things in PMLA and the poetry jour-
nals and they all sound so...
AIKEN: Yes. Solemn, solemn. We had real fun
out of all this, although sometimes it got pretty
close to murder. There was a terrible occasion
when I reviewed Amy LowellTs biography of Keats
for the Dial, and I donTt know whether you know
this story, but anyway, I had just been up to
London to see a specialist because I was suspected
of having a fatal disease. Turned out not so, and
I was going happily back to Rye on the train and
got the evening paper and saw that Amy had
died that day. And ITd just sent off my review of
John Keats about ten days before, so I cabled at
once to hold it up. That really was a murderous
essay, and unhappily it had gone too far and
Marianne Moore couldnTt stop it. It came out just
about two days after AmyTs death, or very close to
it. And a lot of people thought that this was my
doing"that ITd caused the stroke.
INTERVIEWER: We have lately gotten a copy of a
book called A Dial Miscellany. Your criticism of
Eliot is there, and there are things by Eliot him-
self, and by Marianne Moore, and by the whole
group of you people who knew each other and as
you said, were fighting. But there is an air of
excitement about that book.
AIKEN: I havenTt seen that. Was this just pub-
lished ?
INTERVIEWER:
about a year.
AIKEN: Published by the Dial Press, or who?
INTERVIEWER: No, this was part of some doctoral
work. But I wonder if you could give some little
comparison with that time when the Dial was
going on and now. For instance, the so-called New
Criticism and what has grown out of it seems to
me almost an attempt to make this very scientific.
AIKEN: Yes. Kenneth Burke, by the way, was the
critic I was trying to think of. He was sort of the
Founding Father of this"in a way. I think
theyTve just dug a hole, these critics; theyTve taken
all the joy out of it. This minute examination of
syntax and words and whatnot just goes the wrong
way. A very bad example of it is Robert Penn
I think itTs been published now
WarrenTs long essay on The Ancient Mariner. Did
you ever try to read that? ItTs pretty hard going,
and at the end you really donTt know anything
more than you started with.
INTERVIEWER: Presently, with these critics in a
position of professionalism"meaning scientific, or
whatever they call themselves, I seem to note that
some of the younger poets are writing their poems
in line with what has been set down as a priori re-
quisite. This obviously was not the case when you
were writing your Scepticisms, and your poems of
that period, too. You had the community of care
and interest between you and Miss Moore and
Eliot and Stevens, of course. It seems to have been
a more exciting and highly varied thing.
AIKEN: Well, it was a sort of friendly rivalry, all
around. But occasionally no holds barred. I had
an endless war with Louis Untermeyer, but we
managed to be good friends through it all. I re-
member when he came to visit me in South Yar-
mouth. He sent a wire to his wife saying, oAll
quiet along the Bass River.TT I should say, well,
he hasnTt killed me yet. But that was important,
too, to fight Louis Untermeyer, you see. I mean it
was a duty, because his taste was so bad and his
influence so enormous; this had to be kicked out.
We didnTt succeed and he managed to outlast us,
though I think the influence has now waned.
INTERVIEWER: Have you seen Mr. UntermeyerTs
latest anthology of American Poetry? ItTs the re-
vised American-British, in two volumes.
AIKEN: Is this the one in which Wilbur and
somebody else assisted? I saw the American part
of that, yes.
INTERVIEWER: I wonder if you would like to com-
ment on the poems of yours that he selected?
AIKEN: I donTt remember what they were.
INTERVIEWER: The best I can tell"also from his
introduction to you"heTs almost wholly concen-
trated on your earliest poems.
AIKEN: ThatTs probably so. ITve been struggling
for years to make people use the Preludes, and es-
pecially Time in the Rock, which nobody will pay
any attention to.
INTERVIEWER: I started thumbing through a few
anthologies of American Poetry to see what poems
of yours generally came into them, and was struck
that the omorning songT from Senlin appears in
practically every one.
AIKEN: ~ThatTs everywhere, yes.
INTERVIEWER: It seems that your later poems
havenTt been done justice in the anthologies.
AIKEN: Very few of them have been used.
INTERVIEWER: Would you care to speculate as to
why?
AIKEN: Well, I think perhaps theyTre considered
too long"I donTt know. But on the other hand,
I had a letter from James Fitzsimmons"do you
know who he is? HeTs starting a magazine to be
published in Italy, and he paid me the compliment
of saying he thought my reading of Blues for Ruby
Matrix and Letter from Li Po"I donTt know
whether youTve heard the record; itTs put out by
the Caedmon gals"he says when he feels depres-
sed or in need of a psychiatrist, he turns these on.
That fixes him.
INTERVIEWER: I think we have heard it, in fact.
A friend of ours has a collection of tapes, and I
think we heard that.
AIKEN: Well, there are some of the earlier poems
that have never been used and I think could have
been. Like Electra, which is a rather complex
little thing, about six or seven pages. But why
it hasnTt been used in an anthology I cannot think,
because I think itTs one of the best of the lot. And
Psychomachia, another one which is also perhaps
a little difficult, which Mr. Eliot published in the
Criterion, thatTs never been even sniffed at. ItTs
very curious. I think a lot of people when they
read poetry donTt want to think, and these poems
are all aiming at a think, of one sort or another.
INTERVIEWER: The anthology habit seems to be
so much a part of the two schools ITve had any-
thing to do with. ITve seen good students, or at
least superficially good students, whose only con-
cern with poetry is the handful of things they
find in an anthology.
AIKEN: They donTt go any further. Yes, I sup-
pose that happens.
INTERVIEWER: What has happened to the little
magazine, anyway? I sort of got the impression
that itTs gone out of style.
AIKEN: Which?
INTERVIEWER: The little magazine. I mean...
AIKEN: The little magazines in general? Well,
there are too many of them, thatTs the trouble. So
if they could only concentrate all of them in one,
we might have something; though I think the
Carleton Miscellany, for example, is awfully good.
ThatTs the one I like best. ThatTs fun; they have
a sense of humor, Reed Whittemore in particular.
INTERVIEWER: I had the impression that there
were many before and fewer now, but...
AIKEN: I think there are more now, because in the
twenties, well, there was only the Dial, and others
which only published two or three numbers. And
not much else that I can think of. Well, the
Criterion in England, of course.
INTERVIEWER: Well, where would you get a long
poem published, aside from in a regular book?
AIKEN: Nowadays? ItTs very difficult; practically
impossible. I suppose the Yale Review might con-
ceivably do it, or the Virginia Quarterly, but other-
wise I canTt think of anything else. The old At-
lantic might give you five pages, and did print
a whole batch of Robert GravesT love poems about
two years ago. But now itTs a tough racket, not
only to get things published in periodicals, but to
get a book published, for a young poet, unless he
has some sort of entrée somewhere.
INTERVIEWER: That which you just spoke of, the
tough racket"do you feel that that is a peculiar
situation at this mid-century period? ItTs been a
tough racket all along.
AIKEN: Yes, itTs always been. It was a little easier
in the twenties to get a book published. There
was a period, you see, when Houghton-Mifflin had
that series of little green paperback books of
poetry which published Fletcher and the Imagists
and others, such as H.D. And the publishers were
a little more adventurous then"prepared to take
a small loss on a book of poems if they could sell
something else, you see. Nowadays theyTre too
chinchy.
INTERVIEWER: Could it be that itTs a little more
than the economics of the thing? From the critical
point of view, poetry is not in its finest hour as
far as prestige and its being read goes.
AIKEN: I donTt know, I wouldnTt say that. I think
the prestige of poetry is very high in public esteem
right now, perhaps higher than ever. After all,
if you can sell a poet like Stevens, youTre doing all
right; and Marianne Moore, too. No, I think itTs
a wonderful time for poetry, and I really feel that
something is going to boil up out of it. And in
answer to your question about whether poetry
could resume something like the Elizabethan
spread, I think itTs perfectly possible that this
could happen in the next fifty years. All it needs
is the right genius to come along and let fly. And
old Masefield, I was pleased to see the other day
celebrating his ninetieth birthday, I think, said
that there are still lots of good tales to retell. I
thought that was very nice, and itTs true.
INTERVIEWER: I remember in the Atlantic article
you said that there were signs that a new age in
poetry might come about. This is a little obvious,
perhaps, but I was going to ask what signs you
had in mind.
AIKEN: Well, merely the proliferation of poetry
all over the country, in all sorts of little groups and
whatnot. As I say, I donTt much care for groups
like that, when they get a little self-conscious like
the Olson group and whatever, and the Lowell, I
think, is a bad thing too. This cult of the auto-
biographical which heTs encouraging is the sort
of thing I donTt think too much of. But apart from
that, just the amount of activity in poetry is heal-
thy, and itTs gone right across the country. In my
youth, it was only the eastern seaboard, you see,
with Chicago as a kind of oasis there"Mr. Lind-
say and Mr. Sandburg quarreling for it.
INTERVIEWER: With this idea of activity, when
you and Mr. Eliot were at Harvard, from differ-
ent parts of the country, were there any energies
or little sparks put under you, so to speak, by San-
tayana and some of the others?
AIKEN: Oh yes, of course. We had a wonderful
array of teachers at Harvard at that time: San-
tayana, Dean Briggs, and Nielson, and of course
the famous Copey, whom I didnTt think very much
of"a vain little man. But all the others liked him.
It was a wonderfully lively time to be there, and
the very end of it too, because all those first-rate
men disappeared in the next five or six years after
we left. Santayana, I think, had the most in-
fluence on me. Eliot now denies that he was in-
fluenced by Santayana. A fellow named Robert
Wilbur is doing a book on precisely that"the in-
fluence of Santayana on Stevens, Eliot, and my-
self.
INTERVIEWER: If I may pursue this a little fur-
ther, I remember that in one of your articles or
books you said that you went to England because
you felt you had some roots there, and so you went,
so to speak, in search of your tradition. Did any
of that start at Harvard?
AIKEN: No, while I was still at school I already
had this sort of fixed notion about England. In
fact, it goes right back to the house next door
where I grew up, 228 Oglethorpe Avenue. ThatTs
where I read Tom BrownTs School Days, with that
famous little epigraph which I quote in Ushant:
I am the Poet of White Horse Vale, sir,
With liberal notions under my cap.
And so I, from the age of ten or eleven, already
had a bead on England, and I was only just wait-
ing until I got there, that was all. I began going
there as an undergraduate, for the holidays, and
fell in love with it, especially with the Lake Dis-
trict, Wordsworth country; and still am, as far
as thatTs concerned, though I finally found I had
to reverse the process and come back here to re-
immerse.
INTERVIEWER: Then would it be right to say that
this period gave you the opportunity of standing
outside your early experiences and getting some
point of view to come back to in your poetry?
AIKEN: Well, there as in the Voice of America
piece, I find it very hard to say at what point"I
suppose this thing was jelling all the time, and
probably shows itself in the work, which gets a
little more American all the time, although I donTt
think itTs specifically American. Poetry shouldnTt
be specifically of any...
INTERVIEWER: ITd just like to interject here:
When I read aloud that first four or five pages of
Ushant, the part with the waves and the rolling, I
thought about Walt Whitman, and I was struck...
I was wondering if you might like to comment on
that passage.
AIKEN: Well, that was the first bit of Ushant
that I wrote, and I wrote it a long time before I
finished the book, and just kept it as a nugget
from which to start when I got around to it. It
was in 1933 that I wrote it, and I didnTt then
write the book itself until 1951. I had the idea and
a lot of notes, but that passage was just, as it were,
to set the key for the book.
INTERVIEWER: The prose in that passage seems
to border on poetry in some places, and the effect
of reading it is just like a poem.
AIKEN: Yes. Well, I think of Ushant as a poem,
and it has a symphonic structure.
INTERVIEWER: In Scepticisms, in the section on
MasterTs poetry, you mentioned that his discur-
siveness gave him a bent toward prose. How do
you feel about that distinction between the prose
sentiment and poetry? Maybe thatTs not clear.
AIKEN: I donTt quite... I donTt think thereTs any
sharp dividing line between the two. One can run
over into the other, and God knows poetry can
slip completely enough into prose.
INTERVIEWER: I was going to say I enjoyed the
humor in both Ushant and Blue Voyage.
AIKEN: Yes, I think they are fun; they were
meant to be, anyway. I had a very curious exper-
ience with Blue Voyage. I was trying to sell it,
way back in the twenties, and one day Max, the
famous Max Perkins, rang me up from South
Station in Boston"I was in Cambridge"and said
he was very much interested in Blue Voyage, but
he thought it was too short. And I said, ~Well,
everybody else seems to think itTs too long, and in
particular they object to the final chapter, a series
of letters describing, amongst other things, a trip
down BuzzardTs Bay in a whale ship.� And he
said, oWhat whale ship?� And of course it turn-
ed out that what he had was only the first four
chapters of Blue Voyage, which had somehow got
detached at Brandt and BrandtTs, my agents, and
had been circulating by itself, apart from the
whole book.
The next story about Blue Voyage was that Boni
and Liveright was supposed to publish it"they
published the first short stories, Bring! Bring!"
and by contract I was bound to give them my next
book, which was Blue Voyage. So it went to them,
and they celebrated with a solemn board meeting.
We all sat in a circle and had marvelous drinks"
this was Prohibition time, of course. They had a
bar ceiling high, and produced these wonderful
drinks. But it turned out this was an inquest on
Blue Voyage, and one editor after another, and
then all the salesmen, got up and each said, oNo
no, we couldnTt possibly publish this thing"itTs
unreadable,� until finally it came to the editor-
in-chief, and he said he just really hadnTt been
able to get beyond the third page, and so would I
please release them from the contract. And I said,
oWell, obviously if you donTt want to publish it,
it isnTt going to do me any good to let you publish
it, so youTre free.� So he didnTt think it was funny.
INTERVIEWER: Do publishers still operate that
way now?
AIKEN: Well, you never know what the publish-
ers are up to. ITve been having the damnedest
time with Holt, Rinehart, and Winston over my
Limericks. They first were enthusiastic about do-
ing the Limericks, and then they handed me over to
a young editor who wanted to rewrite them en-
tirely, and proceeded to do so, and just made a
hash out of them. And I protested about this and
the whole thing"the contract was about to be
signed"and they withdrew it, because of this
impasse. And Arthur Cohen, whoTs my friend,
said, oWell, Conrad, we never really took this
seriously, did we? So why donTt we just forget
it?� And I replied, oDamn it all, I did take it
seriously; I want to publish this book.� Well,
then they fired this young man who was rewriting
me, and everything was peaceful. But there was
still some claim that there were irregularities in
tone in the Limericks. So I said oWell, ITll just
touch them up a bit,� though I didnTt at all; I just
changed the order. I sent them back rearranged
and they published the book, and now itTs sold
eleven thousand copies and still going strong. And
itTs had the distinction of having ads of it re-
jected by both the New Yorker and the New York
Times. ThatTs really something, I think. Each of
these ads had quoted one of the more harmless
limericks.
INTERVIEWER: As a reason for not running the
ad?
AIKEN: They were thought to be oin questionable
taste.� When you think of the ads that do come
out in the New York Times"The Sex Knowledge
of the East, and other such things.
INTERVIEWER: I donTt want to compound DickeyTs
error in referring to you as a historical personage,
but from your earliest volume of poetry right up
until now and in Yeats, Stevens, and Eliot, and
all of you people, there is a spectrum of experience
in there. The modern preoccupation seems to be
with somebody combing his daughterTs hair, and it
doesnTt go beyond to include anything else.
AIKEN: ThereTs no background to it; itTs isolated.
ThereTs no feeling that thereTs a world out there,
and that itTs complex and terrifying, and weTve
got to impose order.
INTERVIEWER: What comes first to my mind is the
omorning song� from Senlin, probably because
itTs in all the anthologies. Robert Watson in Paper
Horses had a long poem about selecting his tie,
but Senlin ties his tie in a sunrise, and thereTs a
bird outside and an earth under his feet. With the
music of the poem, there is a sense of motion and
completeness; itTs as though the whole earth is
rolling when Senlin ties his tie.
AIKEN: Yes. Well, thatTs what itTs supposed to do.
INTERVIEWER: If a poem takes me back through
something"this is the thing which seems to be
absent from poetry now.
AIKEN: Yes, itTs that... The robin sings in the
chinaberry tree. This has always worried me be-
cause robins"of course we see them in New Eng-
land and they sing there, but they winter here and
naturally donTt sing. But last year I discovered in
one of these little nature columns that the robins
love chinaberries and get drunk on them, and then
sing. So itTs all right.
Do you see the Times Literary Supplement"
London? There was a very fine"if I do say so, be-
cause itTs very flattering"leading article on me
about a year and a half ago. In that thereTs a very
interesting analysis of Senlin, and a comparison
of it with Eliot, and noting the likenesses and the
differences. ItTs by Kathleen Raine, actually. I
think in many respects itTs the best thing ever
written on the works as a whole, although she
dismisses the novels and hates Ushant. She calls
Ushant distasteful. SheTs some variety of mystic
herself, and Catholic possibly, or some aspect of,
and this upset her, I think. But sheTs awfully good
on the poetry, and she makes a point that we sort
of skittered around earlier, that this is poetic
thinking of a sort that she says hasnTt been done
since Shelley, although ITm not particularly keen
on having Percy Bysshe dragged into it. But still,
I think sheTs got something when she talks about
sustained poetic thinking, and she cites as exam-
ples of that the first and last poems in my Selected
Poems"it came out two years ago"and the first
one is Palimpsest: The Deceitful Portrait, which is
a section out of The House of. Dust, one of the early
symphonies, and the last one is The Crystal, to Mr.
Pythagoras. And in those I think you can see
really what the whole scheme is going to be, and
especially so of Palimpsest, because itTs a highly
analytic piece, as of consciousness itself, and what
constitutes it, at the same time turning it into a
long metaphor.
INTERVIEWER: I had always thought of you as a
poet, but in my junior year in college I stumbled
on ashort story in an anthology called Silent Snow,
Secret Snow and I saw your name, and it was only
then that I realized you wrote very good prose.
I wondered if you would like to say whether you
consider yourself first a poet and them a prose
writer, or are they both the same?
AIKEN: I always did both"right from the begin-
ning, even at Middlesex School for the school
paper. I would have a short story in one number
and a poem in the next, alternate, and at Harvard
I made a point of alternating the two; I felt that
going from one to the other refreshed the other
medium, you see. So no, I think itTs all of a piece"
they all add up to one thing.
And incidentally, Silent Snow has been made
into a remarkable short film, which I wouldnTt
have thought possible, but this young man named
Kearney wrote me a couple of years ago asking
permission. We had some difficulties with him"
he didnTt have a cent to back him and didnTt want
to pay for an option, so we let it go without the
option, and a long piece came out about him in
the New York Tribune about three weeks ago
which we happened to see, so I tracked him down
in New York. He was listed in the phone book, but
it turned out to be his grandmother, who said that
she hadnTt seen him for years, in a quavering voice,
and then gave me his own phone number and it
turned out he was living only two blocks from us
in New York. So I called him up and we went
over the next morning and saw this picture in his
own living room, and itTs simply beautiful, an ab-
solute heart-breaker. He didnTt know that I was
writing about an English town, so heTs put this
into a little American village, or the outskirts of,
and said he had a terrible time getting enough
snow and thinks he may have to substitute some
bits when heTs got another good snowfall this
winter. But itTs a knockout"runs just under
twenty minutes.
INTERVIEWER: I suppose Kearney hadnTt read
Ushant; otherwise he wouldTve known about the
English town.
AIKEN: No, I guess he hadnTt. I donTt think heTs
much of a reader; heTs got his eyes on movies and
other things. In fact, heTs done a full-length
comedy which is extremely good, too. HeTs mar-
ried to a six-foot-five strip-tease beauty whoTs a
graduate of Hunter College. We havenTt met her,
but we hope to.
INTERVIEWER: What do you think of film generally
as a form of artistic expression?
AIKEN: Oh, wonderful. One of the great things.
Yes, I became an addict when it was still called
the nickelodian, when you paid five cents and went
in and saw Buster Keaton and all the others, and
ITve been an addict ever since.
INTERVIEWER: We arenTt tiring you, I hope. Or
more to the point, boring you.
AIKEN: Would you care to... could we have a
drink? ITll call to my wife. What would you like?
We have martinis.
INTERVIEWER: (Talking about the Red Clay Read-
er) ITm a little sorry that the presentation is so
tricky, or whatever it is.
AIKEN: Yes, I think so. And ITm always a little
sorry when this regionalism thing is pressed.
INTERVIEWER: We talked about that on the way
down"that was one question we were not going
to tie around your neck"what you thought about
southern writers.
AIKEN: I think itTs about time the Confederate
flag disappeared, yes.
INTERVIEWER: Your rooms are beautiful.
AIKEN: These are lovely houses; there are two for
sale next door, a bargain, too, but theyTre just
shells. TheyTve got to be all fixed up inside as this
was, too. They were just tearing them down when
I got the Poetry Society here to invite Hy Sobiloff,
the only millionare poet, to come down and read
to the Poetry Society, and he was taken in hand
and shown this house next door, the one that I
grew up in, and what a pitiful state it was in.
Pickaxes had already gone through the roof. And
so he bought all four of them and fixed this one up
for our use as long as we live, rent-free.
INTERVIEWER: We walked along this particular
row of houses several times when weTve been to
Savannah; theyTre most intriguing. We were also
wondering which hotel it was that you mention
standing on top of in� Ushant.
AIKEN: The DeSoto.
INTERVIEWER: ThatTs where weTre staying.
AIKEN: My school was just next door"and we
used to go up the fire escapes, but you can take
the elevator and get out on the roof and you get a
wonderful view, such as there is; itTs all flat, of
course.
INTERVIEWER: Do you think psychologists can de-
cide what is a poetic or creative personality? I
think you dealt with this somewhat in a piece I
read.
AIKEN: What was this in, do you remember?
INTERVIEWER: A Reviewer's ABC, I think the sec-
ond or third piece in there; you were talking about
Kostyleff.
AIKEN: Kostyleff"oh, yes. Well, ITve more or
less moved away from that position. Of course
the Freudians just give up. I donTt think they
claim to know anything about the workings of a
poet, except that itTs analogous to the dream
mechanism"a directed dream.
INTERVIEWER: Do you feel you are directing your
dreams as you write your poem?
AIKEN: Well, you could call poetry a directed
dream.
INTERVIEWER: In the Atlantic article, I think you
said something to the effect that in your poetry
there was a wedding of the subject and the versi-
fication.
AIKEN: Yes. The subject finding its own form.
INTERVIEWER: What has intrigued me in your
poetry is this lyrical or musical probing as far as
your subject matter is concerned.
AIKEN: Of course thereTs this musical thing; itTs
been one of my handicaps, because I think Louis
Untermeyer started the fashion, saying that my
poems were just music, nothing else. This haunted
me for forty years.
INTERVIEWER: Some people have noted in defend-
ing free forms that traditional rhyme and meter
donTt satisfy the needs of exploring and ordering
the twentieth century world. Obviously you donTt
agree. Would you care to elaborate on that?
AIKEN: Just what?
INTERVIEWER: Some free verse advocates main-
tain that the traditional forms are not a satisfac-
tory means of expression in the modern world.
AIKEN: That is absolute nonsense.
INTERVIEWER: I said you obviously donTt agree
with them.
AIKEN: No.
INTERVIEWER: Would you care to elaborate?
10
AIKEN: Well, poetry is an art; why not use it?
Anything else is to abandon it. Every resource
of it should be used, and anything in twentieth
century consciousness can be expressed in it. No,
I think these boys and girls are just lazy, or else
they havenTt the gift for it.
Of course, Marianne Moore made a triumph out
of her failure by using a purely numerical system.
ITve just written a very short piece about her for
that fesstschrift book thatTs coming out this year,
in which I recounted how ITd made the discovery"
for I think I was the first to discover the principle.
Fletcher had given me a copy of the Egoist Press
Selected Poems"1921 or 2 this was"and I was
puzzled by these and went through them carefully.
ITve still got the copy in which I noted the number
of syllables in each line of the first three stanzas of
each poem, and theyTre each exactly alike, using
the same number of syllables and an occasional
hyphen where she had to split a word"carry it
over"and thatTs it. I suppose she found that she
couldnTt use that extraordinary wit and knowledge
in verse because she didnTt have the ability to
swing it; and so substituted this other artifice"
which is an artifice"for it. I daresay she wouldTve
been happy if she couldTve really done it in very
fine poetry ; but that she couldnTt I think is evident
in her translation of Fontaine.
INTERVIEWER: You were among the first to bring
out Emily Dickinson. You were the first editor,
werenTt you?
AIKEN: Yes, I got out the Selected Poems in Lon-
don in 1924, and that really started it. Both Eliot
and Pound were very much annoyed with me for
bringing out Dickinson. They did their damnedest
to stop me from doing it. I think they thought this
was really cutting the ground from under their
feet"I mean, to have a great poet looking over
their shoulders suddenly"a little embarrassing.
So they pooh-poohed it and said no, no, itTs just a
little blue-stocking, a little country blue-stocking.
INTERVIEWER: Oh to be a country blue-stocking.
AIKEN: Yes. Yes, we were talking about Emily
the other day and I remembered something that
ITd noticed in the country. There are two lines of
hers:
Nature rarer uses yellow
Than another hue
but I added two lines to this:
If she were alive Id tell her
It just isnTt true.
And to make it vulgarer still:
Shit
What of it.
How did she get that idea, that yellow was so un-
common? Good God, I mean, you start out with
dandelions, you go to buttercups, you have mari-
golds and daffodils, goldenrod"the whole sum-
mer is just one long sequence of yellows. ItTs very
peculiar, though I suppose maybe that she was just
kept in her fatherTs garden, and that was probably
all violets.
Oh yes, and going back to Eliot, I was going to
put that business straight. Well, what really hap-
pened was that Tom gave me the manuscript of
Prufrock, rather reluctantly, too, because I donTt
think he really had any idea of how good it was,
and was rather shy about publishing the thing.
So I took it over to London, where I met Pound"
I had a letter of introduction to Ezra"and tried
the poem on all the possible magazines, including
Poetry and Drama, run by Harold Monro, and the
English Review, which was then very good, edited
by Austin Harrison, and anything else possible,
but they all sent it back. Harold Monro, in fact,
said he thought it was cuckoo, and really, he just
thought it was crazy, and so I gave up. Well then
I met Ezra and showed it to him, and of course
Ezra liked it at once; and he then sent it to Har-
riet Monroe for Poetry in Chicago. ThatTs how
it happened.
INTERVIEWER: You were the impetus.
AIKEN: Yes. Oh yes. In fact I took it out of
TomTs hands. I donTt think he really wanted to do
anything with it. He now insists that I took out a
whole page from the poem and that that improved
it very much, but I think heTs wrong about this. I
donTt think I did; I donTt remember it at all. I
think heTs perhaps confusing this with what Ezra
did to The Waste Land.
INTERVIEWER: I think ITll go ahead and confess
something: I had read a couple of years ago in one
of the ladiesT magazines that you and your wife
were famous for your martinis.
AIKEN: That seems to be a theory. We travel
with them everywhere; we never could get into the
car without a thermos full of martinis, and weTve
got a whole string of graveyards on the eastern
coast that we stop at and drink martinis.
INTERVIEWER: We were also much interested that
you served your martinis in silver goblets.
AIKEN: Yes, we travel with those too. I think
they add to the ceremony.
INTERVIEWER: In fact, to be perfectly crass about
it, we rushed out"could not afford it" and bought
ourselves a set, nickel-plated.
AIKEN: Well, ours are only silver-plated. Three
of them we got in England, and theyTre very
pretty. One of them was a trophy for a half-
mile race which some boy got in what I think is
South Kensington School or some such. ITm think-
ing of having one of the others engraved with my
name on it for one mile in 1903, in 3:54.
INTERVIEWER: We hear from time to time that
after Stephen Spender, American poetry has
more or less become English poetry.
AIKEN: Yes, ITve said that. I came up with that
in 1944; I said that English poetry is now written
in America.
INTERVIEWER: During your years over there, did
you see any indications that some young English
poets were beginning again to write?
AIKEN: No. ItTs a very poor show. It still is, I
think.
INTERVIEWER: What would you attribute that to?
AIKEN: God knows; I donTt know. I think the war
emaciated them, and I think the loss of the empire
and all their position in the world is bound to be
depressing, but I donTt think thatTs sufficient rea-
son for it. ItTs probably an accident of some kind,
because theyTre exposed to the same winds of doc-
trine and whatever that we are, and theyTre on
the whole better educated and more intelligent
than we are, I think. So"give Tem time.
INTERVIEWER: ITve recently met some people who
said that in England there seemed to be a sense
of the literary community; not strictly literary or
strictly communal, but a certain community of
interests; and something nicer than the same sort
of thing in New York. Do you have any opinion
on that?
AIKEN: Well, I suppose itTs easier to get together
in London than here. But of course the pub is a
great institution"helps"but, I donTt know. I
should think in New York itTs just as easy to have
that sort of thing, if you want it. I stay out of
literary things. I prefer to consort with the sort
of lesser characters of the literary world"the
young people.
INTERVIEWER: I think they meant that as young
people themselves they had a chance there to see
and talk with various writers, and meeting these
people made London special for them in that way.
AIKEN: Yes. Did they go to these arts council
meetings and that sort of thing?
INTERVIEWER: I think it was in part that and some
letters of introduction that they had.
AIKEN: Of course, letters of introduction make
all the difference. The old Poetry Bookshop, of
course, which finally folded in-1933, was a really
wonderful institution. That was great fun, be-
cause you could meet any of your coevals and
x
11
wrangle.
INTERVIEWER: What do you think about these
writersT conferences that people troop off to?
AIKEN: Oh horrible. No, I think theyTre dreadful,
and these colonies like the one at Peterborough,
New Hampshire, McDowell Colony, and the oth-
er one in New York, Yaddo, where you can get
free room and board and whatnot, you see. Mal-
colm Cowley, whoTs a very good friend of mine,
is one of the directors of this thing; heTs been try-
ing for fifteen years to get us to go there, and we
just say no, although ITm told the roast beef is very
good. No, I think thatTs deadly, that sort of thing.
One writer by himself is bad enough, but if you
get five in a room, itTs terrible. And I doubt if
really anything good comes out of it. ItTs much
better to just go and hire a room in a lodging
house and sequester yourself there in the city, and
just get lost. But at these places, youTve got a
little sacred cabin out in the woods and have your
own little lunch put at your doorstep at one PM,
and are just supposed to sit there and produce like
a hen in a hen factory.
INTERVIEWER: This is going to sound very naive,
but after I have done this, I want to come out with
it in my hands and say, oSomebody listen.�T Have
you ever had that feeling after you have been
sequestered ?
AIKEN: Oh yes, very much so. I want to try it on
the dog somewhere in there. Yes, Houston Peter-
son"do you know who he is? He wrote the first
book about me way back in the thirties, not very
good. HeTs a philosopher, and so it was more or
less about the tendencies of thought in the twen-
tieth century insofar as they showed themselves in
my poetry. And he made the mistake of coming to
supper with us just after ITd finished the Pytha-
goras poem, The Crystal, and, having had a few
martinis, I hauled off and read it to him and his
wife after supper, at the table. He was furious.
He loves to talk himself, so to be hung up like that
seemed to him an outrage. All he could think to do
was say, oYou know, I donTt think you should
mention cocktails in that poem"a little out of key,
donTt you think, Aiken?�
"Well, I hope you get something"out of this.
INTERVIEWER: I think we have personally been a
great deal...
AIKEN: Which reminds me of a wonderful remark
that was made by a now-forgotten English poet,
Wilfred Wilson Gibson. Do you remember him?
Frost"it was when Frost was living in England"
and he went on an expedition with Gibson and I
think De la Mare and W. H. Davis, the tramp
poet. They went to a sort of country fair and did
various things, and at some point Gibson sidled up
to Frost and said, oTell me Frost, are you getting
anything out of this?�
December 12, 1964
PAT R. WILLIS
B. TOLSON WILLIS
SANFORD PEELE
TOM SPEIGHT
Savannah from the roof of the DeSoto
12
THE SWINGS
A SHORT STORY BY
ANNE W. NELSON
oLook,� he said, othe part I liked best was when
she stood up on that barge and winked at him.
You have got to see it.�
And I said, oIt will make me nervous. Ever
since I started writing that column for the paper
that kind of thing bothers me.�
oIt is just that terrible job you have,� he said.
oIs.all,�
oWell, they pay me by the word and that is more
than I can say for anything else I have done.�
oBut letTs go and if you get nervous we will
leave.�
oNo, I might not know if I get nervous,� I said,
ountil afterwards. And then it will be too late. I
would rather stay here.�
oBut you have got to see it. It is every bit as
good as the passage in The Waste Land.
oThat is all right. I can read that at home.�
oWhat you need to do,� he said, ois get out and
live. And stop working so hard.� oYou are not
getting any older, either,� I said.
oWell, at least J have lived,� he said.
So I opened a bureau drawer and said, ~Here.
Read all of this crap.�
He looked at all the papers and then read sever-
al pages. I enjoyed thinking the revelation might
make him a little less sure of himself. A little
puzzled. Then he said that I must have been writ-
ing it for a long time.
oEver since I went to work for the newspaper,�
I said.
oReally?� he said.
And I said, oReally.�
He said that it was unbelievable. He did not say
so though in his best stage voice, so I knew that
he was genuinely surprised. I was glad I had
waited to spring it on him until a time when we
needed a change.
Aloud, I wondered why he considered it so un-
believable. I was trying to bait him a little.
oI just absolutely never,� he said, othought of
your doing anything.�
13
oYou mean to tell me,� I said, othat you slept
with me all those times, and you thought that in
between I more or less sat around knitting cob-
webs or something?�
I knew that this was, in fact, the approximation
of how he had felt. I had known it for a long time.
And though it was not what bothered me, I
thought it might be good for him to think I was
only just catching on now. I thought he might feel
less miserable about how it had been if I needled
him a little and then let the whole thing drop.
oNot exactly ~cobwebsT,� he said. oJust kind of
always there without any wheels turning.� He
admired wheelessness in people.
But I said, oUhhuh,� as if I didnTt get the point.
I wanted to be convinced that he had been paying
me a double-edged compliment.
oWhat?� he said, trying to draw me out in the
open.
oOh nothing,� I said. And went in the bathroom
and started reading the May 1964 issue of Nat-
ional Geographic with all the good pictures of
England in it. And the section on Wm. Shake-
speare.
He came to the bathroom door and said, intima-
ting nasty affection, oYou might be good, but you
will never be great.�
We both knew that he was trying to get me
back for having sprung the drawer full of writing
on him. But we knew why I had done that, too.
We knew, in fact, how all of it was. But playing
with it a little made us feel better, more alive. It
was all rather a way of choosing colours or sides
in an elaborate game in which we never quite
wanted to beat each other.
I didnTt answer him for a few minutes.
So he said, oBecause you donTt care enough.�
I still didnTt answer him.
oBecause you donTt care enough,� he repeated.
oAre you going to write about us?� he wanted to
know.
oNot that I know of,� I said. And I wasnTt as
far as I knew.
oWhy not?� He tried to hide his surprise and
anxiety with a feigned hurt that was not quite
good enough to divert me.
oBecause you could think I was not doing any-
thing all those years,� I said. Now, I was at the
place where I was beginning to believe what I was
saying.
oT donTt understand,� he lied.
oOh yes, you do,� I said. o~YouTre plenty smart.
You are not the typical reader. The circulation
never even touches your numbers.�
oWhat ~numbnessT?� he pretended to misunder-
14
stand.
I could tell that he also had reached the stage
where he was warming into belief.
oNever mind,� I said. oYour ~numbnessT is ex-
actly what I am talking about.�
oOh, really ?� he said.
oVYes,T�T
It might be important about us to somebody
someday,� he said.
oWilliam Shakespeare,� I read aloud, onever
had any grandchildren.�
oAre you trying to start that business about im-
mortality again?� he wanted to know.
oNo,� I said, oI am not trying to start any-
thing.� But I had known that was what he would
think. That was why I had read the sentence in
the first place. oI was reading it out of the book,�
I said.
oWhat in the hell damn book?� he said.
oThe National Geographic in here,� I said.
oHave you got a goddamned magazine in there?�
oThere are several magazines in here. But that
was the one on top.� I wanted him to think my end
of the conversation had been at random, over the
first magazine I had come to.
oT have got to go now,� he said. oI will be back
later.�
I didnTt know whether to believe him or not. I
had never known whether to believe what he said
about when he was coming back. I just knew that
he would sometime. It was like him to become sud-
denly serious in a discussion, feel that he had lost,
and leave quickly.
oHow many books do you think you can write
without writing about us?�
oT have not counted them yet,� I said, pretend-
ing to speak offhand.
oT have to go do something important,� he said.
I was quiet, letting him figure another line to
leave on.
oListen,� he said, oat first, I would have loved
you if I could have.�
oThat is all right,� I said. That was the only
thing he had ever said that I was sure he believed.
Then he went out saying the part from The
Waste Land about the golden barge.
Later that evening when he came back, we were
very upset about each other. We didnTt want to be
together, but we didnTt want not to be.
oWe could take a walk,� he said. oJust go out
and walk, the way we used to.�
oT donTt know,� I said.
oDown by the Presbyterian Church,� he said.
oThe steeple will be lighted. And over in the park
the swings will be swaying. And the steeple light-
ed beyond the treetops. We will know everything.
And we will walk by the big houses with their
soft lights. Like SwannTs Way,� he said. oWe can
do it like that.�
oYou look too much like somebody whose family
sold land to send them to Harvard in 1910,� I said.
oNo, if you have to look like something, I am
glad it is something Southern,� I said.
oTs it that bad?� he asked.
The switch at the top of the stairs did not work,
so he went down to turn on the light from below.
While he was trying to find the switch down there,
I started down in the dark. I was still not very
happy about our going to walk. I didnTt want to
have to get to the bottom and have to walk out with
him. I wished we didnTt have to be together. So
I stopped midway down and waited for him to find
the switch. I wished I could stand there forever.
Then somebody somewhere down the street turned
on a radio. I could hear music outside coming
across the yards.
oCome on down in the dark,� he said. oI canTt
find the switch.�
He sounded irritable and strange. He sounded
like a stranger. I couldnTt make myself go down.
The music from the radio came faintly through
the darkness. I knew he was angry because I had
not answered nor gone down.
I could see him standing in the moonlight that
came in at the doorway. I could not think of any-
thing and I did not know what to say. I wished I
could say something so he would know. The music
from the radio became sweeter. I hoped it would
last a few moments longer. I could tell we were
a million miles apart.
Love Field last summer with the sun falling like
sleet. The planes falling like sleety leaves, slowly
and icy with light to the runway. Or millions and
millions of chrysanthemums. Wet with the nights
falling forever. And the knights in their silver
armour standing stiffly in old story books. The
nights falling like dew. And the years. And the
chrysanthemums.
The swings swayed. Over in the park the swings
were swaying in the dark to the time that came
from a distant radio.
Once, a bird got in a chimney at home. We
could not get it out. For several days we heard it
there, now fluttering, and now quiet. A flurry of
wings now like rain and yet again like sleet.
Fixed. Lodged. Run like the colors of an ancient
cloth. Mingled with the chrysanthemums. Quiet
again and again. Dark and quiet like a stone. Like
a cherry pit or peach kernel wedged in the throat.
Not waiting to burst with bloom. And not wait-
ing. Somehow eternal.
I could see him standing still in the moonlight.
I knew he was not really waiting for me to go
down. For some reason, I could not bear it some-
how for him. I could not bear it for either of us.
I wanted to say something true. I wanted to say
something better than we had been. The moon-
light was falling like sleet and the music from the
radio was gone. It had dimmed and disappeared.
At least we did not have to die. We were young.
We could breathe good. And our bones did not
ache. We could walk a long way before our hearts
stopped beating or a rock spurted like lava in our
brains. Why then the world, dimmed and disap-
peared? The moonlight like sleet. Here. And in
Ireland. In Mississippi. And everywhere. The
same story, always different.
oGabriel,� I said. oITm sorry I was so rude to you
at the Christmas party that time. After all, they
were your relatives"�
oT know,� he said. oI figured you were think-
ing about something like that.�
I could tell he had liked what I had said better
than any of the other ways I could have broken
the silence.
oT tell you what,� I said, oif you still want to,
letTs go down back of Old SwannTs Place.�
oIf I could remember her name,� he said, oI'd
leave you standing here and maybe go for a ride
by myself or something.
oGerta,� I said.
oYes,� he said, oin a terra cotta coloured dress
with a salmon pink panel.�
When we were just outside town that evening,
I suddenly knew that I should have stayed home.
Sometimes riding in a car is not good. And there
are places I would never go in a car if I could help
it. The mist was rising from the river in white
endless gulfs that looked like nameless masses of
great flowers heaped at the feet of the townTs dark
silhouette. The bridge that led into town was
about three hundred yards long and curved slight-
ly in the middle so that the old street lamps along
both sides made it look like a double-exposure of a
starry half moon in an undeveloped picture. I
didnTt like the way it looked from the car. And I
wished that I had either stayed home or walked. I
would rather it to have been less beautiful. I want-
ed to hear my feet on the concrete. And to reach
out over the railing and pull a leaf off the tops
of the trees that grew up from the river bank.
I would have liked to have seen it all up close. Not
like such a big thing.
15
Then, when we got to the house I did not want
to go to bed. I did not want to just walk through
a dark house and go to bed at ten oTclock at night.
It seemed cold to quit consciousness so abruptly.
I wished there were a cat to put out. Or a dress
to iron. Or fire to stir. But there was nothing.
Only the beautifulness of everything was there.
I suppose that is why the Catholics do so much
with the rosary. Counting it all is better maybe
than leaving it in such numerous disarray. A
rosarium was a garden. That was where they got
the word. I liked thinking about that.
There was a postcard from France during
World War I somewhere in a book I had been read-
ing that day. I wished I had read the message on
the back of it. I wondered what people wrote to
each other on postcards during World War I.
oThe New Yorker wouldnTt touch it,� he said.
oWhat are you talking about,� I replied, know-
ing perfectly well what he was talking about.
oWhatever you are thinking about us,� he said,
ois not publishable, no matter how good it is.�
oIT was not thinking about us,� I lied. oI was
thinking about a hat, a bonnet.�
oOh, God! In the middle of the night"a bonnet.
God. ThatTs about us all right,� he said. oBullTs
eye. About two yards off center.�
oYou get funnier and funnier all the time,� I
said. oFunnier and funnier.�
I was still thinking about World War I, and it
was not funny. But it was about us. I didnTt know
how it had got to be about us, but it was. I began
trying to think why thinking about World War I
in the middle of the night felt so much like think-
ing about us. Then I began thinking about the
bonnet because it had slipped out of my mouth in
the wake of the lie in such a way that the elaborate
shape of credulity formed a great apparition-like
question mark with streamers and exposed stitch-
ing where the flowers"big roses, probably, pink,
out of that stiff, slick material"had been ripped
away. That worried me. I kept fishing around
frantically trying to come up with a spray of flow-
ers. I couldnTt remember enough about how roses
on that kind of hat would have looked. Any flower
would do, I decided. I could not go to sleep and
leave the hat hanging there. But I couldnTt place
the period of the hat, and it kept shimmering into
shape just under my eye-lids. Somehow not being
able to place it blocked the flowers. Not one flower
I could remember. Just names. Rose. Daisy.
Nothing. Echoes in a big black chamber. I wanted
to get the hat straight because I was afraid he
was going to ask me about it. I hoped heTd gone to
16
sleep. I knew heTd know I had been lying about
it unless I hurried and saw it whole. What I really
wanted to do was get back to World War I and
France before I went to sleep. Something about
that bothered me. I listened and could tell by the
way he was breathing that he was not asleep.
And I could tell that he was thinking about the hat
and was on the brink of asking me about it. He al-
most believed I had been telling the truth, I knew.
With a good description of a hat I could convince
him. Flowers. Flowers. oAnd soft perfume and
sweet perfume...� But that was not the one"
imagine the Thames blossomless, bathed in the
scents of faceless flowers. I had to save it for an-
other time. All I could get now was odeep pillowed
in silk and scented down�. Deep pillowed. Deep
pillowed. I couldnTt get to the part of the poem
about flowers.
He touched my arm. I felt strangely like a child
restrained from meddling in some long-forbidden
drawer or crevice. I wished he would let go. I had
to open a mountain to look at some hats. Beautiful
old hats. With flowers. I could hear them. But I
couldnTt see them. I squinted my eyes. My mind
puckered into sleep; I tried to open it. The blue
velvet bag with the worn white places. Soft. Ever
so richly worn white. The bag with my grand-
motherTs diamond rings in it. I held it in my hand
and opened it wide until I was looking at the dia-
monds, and I was looking at my mind like dia-
monds. Hard and bright and chiseled piecemeal
from the depths of the ages. Fern upon fern was
all that mattered. I liked knowing that.
oListen,� he said and let go my arm.
I lifted the lid of the hall rack at home. High
up at the mountain the opening of a cave appeared.
Man might easily have crept out of the sea just
this way, I thought. Or out of a diamond. I liked
all of it so much. But I had to find the flowers for
the hat soon, or heTd know.
oYou donTt have to cry,� he said. oDid you know
you were crying or were you asleep? ItTs all
right.�
For a second I hated him for waking me. Or
for being awake, I didnTt know which.
oYou have tears on your face,� he said. oAt
one time I would have said they reminded me of
forsythia. When I was younger . . . I would have
said that three or four years ago,� he teased.
I hated him now because I knew I would never
remember the flowers that belonged on the hat.
There was the room blazing with moonlight and
the bare, spindly, delicate forsythia branches as
tender as shadows streaming through the window
and across the bed. Forsythia then. Everywhere.
And I knew it would be impossible to get it out of
the room the rest of the night.
oT think you had a nightmare,� he was saying.
oT really think you had a nightmare.�
oT did not have a nightmare,� I said. And then
I didnTt know that I was going to, but I said, oI
was going to tell you about a bonnet.�
oNot again,� he said. ~ooHoney, women donTt tell
men about bonnets in the middle of the night. I
want to go to sleep.�
oThen why did you have to take my arm like
that,� I said, oif you wanted to go to sleep? Why
didnTt you leave me alone?�
oI didnTt mean to bother you. It is just that you
have such nice arms for taking.�
oWell, you ruined it,� I said. I felt better now.
I thought I wanted to hear him talk. And too, I
wanted to aggravate him a little since he was so
sleepy. I wanted to make him laugh. I donTt know
why I wanted to make him laugh, but I did.
oWith forsythia,TT I said. I thought about how
good a milliner I would have made.
oI donTt know what in hell you are talking
about,� he said. oBut I can tell you that women
no longer wear hats. If youTd look in HarperTs
Bazaar or any of the fashion magazines, youTd
know a little more about what is going on in the
world today. In the line of hats and things. Jackie
Kennedy never"�
oJackie Kennedy never period,� I said. oShe
had nothing to do with World War I. She has
had enough.�
oWorld War I what?�
oJust World War I.�
oWell, you canTt just lie in bed all night saying
~World War IT. You have to have a reason for
something like that,T he said.
oI want to go home,� I said. I hadnTt known I
was going to say that, but it sounded true so I let
it stand.
oYou donTt know what you are saying,� he said.
oT donTt mind not knowing. I just want to go.�
oNow there is no reason to get mad because I
wanted to go to sleep,� he said.
oIT am not mad because you wanted to go to
sleep.T�T I wished he had gone to sleep.
oIf you really want to go home, ITll take you,�
he said.
Now, I wanted to go more than I had ever want-
ed to do anything. I felt out of place. I couldnTt
understand what was wrong.
oIf you are not mad,� he said, ojust please tell
me why you want to leave.�
I didnTt want to wake up in that room. I thought
he was more like a stranger now than he must
have been even before I ever knew him. Why did
he have to say that about forsythia? Something
about that had had seemed wrong. About no
longer mentioning it. Like cutting the balloon
loose after the gas had leaked out. Why did he
have to say that?
oForsythia is not the flower you mention to me
when you have known me ten years and couldnTt
mention it to start with,� I said.
oYou can mention forsythia to anybody,� he
said. oIt was just a nice way of saying that you
had been ~weepingT in your sleep.�
oYou might forsythia a little yourself, if you
knew what I was forsythiaing about,� I said.
oLook,� he said, oif something is wrong, I will
straighten it out.�
oNothing is wrong,� I said. oI just want to go
home.� I felt tired of having to live with him in
so many countries, in so many areas, under so
many heartbreaks. I felt as if I had been with him
a million years. oHid its face amid a crowd of
stars� echoed in my mind. I had never felt that
way before. I wanted to leave before it got me
firmly in its clutches.
oThis is a disappointment to me. A great dis-
appointment. Sounds Victorian, doesnTt it?� he
said.
Why did he have to drag oVictorian� into it,
of all things? But I wanted to know.
oWhat kind of disappointment?�
oT donTt know,� he said. oI just thought we were
doing better. I thought we were finally becoming
what we wanted each other to be. I really thought
so."
I didnTt want to get into anything more. I could
tell that if we talked about it, I was going to get
left again in some horrible hut at the edge of a
jungle while he went on another black and restless
safari. I didnTt want to do that anymore.
oOh, I donTt know,� he said. oProbably the
nearest we ever came to anything lasting was
when we were first young and didnTt know what
to do with any of it.�
oT am still young,� I said. oBut this time I am
going to start from the grass up.� I didnTt know
what that meant, but it sounded like something I
thought.
oYou know what this means?� he said. oIf you
really want to go, you know what it means, donTt
you?� -
I couldnTt answer him because I didnTt care
whether it meant anything. I just hoped I could
sé
leave. I wanted to say something to make him
laugh, though. And then I wanted to slip into it
something true. I wanted to fix it so he would
take me home very quickly without pulling it all
down upon us.
oYou remember all the times,� I said.
oWhat times?�
oThe ones you didnTt meet me,� I said. oAt the
planes, and the boats, and the trains. Everything.�
oAs a matter of fact, I donTt know what you are
talking about,� he said.
But I knew that he knew exactly what I was
talking about. He always prefaced his biggest
lies with the words, oAs a matter of fact.�
oHow about that time in Nice?T I said. I could
tell he was game by the way he became suddenly
alert. Intent.
oOh... Nice,� he said. oI didnTt know you had
held a grudge over a little tacky thing like that.�
oAnd all the times you had to go to all those
fronts,� I said. oNow in stiff armour, another
time in sheepskin, yet again in khaki. Always
prowling and parading off into something. Drag-
ging me over the face of the earth and stranding
me in the far reaches of the universe.�
And then as I was saying all that, I knew that
that was how I felt. A great and empty loneliness
sounded like flack"TI think they called it.
oTake me home,� I said. oI just want to go
home. I am afraid something will slip off the page
somehow into what we have done. I am afraid that
all we have done has been something that slipped
off a page. And I donTt want to do it anymore.�
oYou know that this is the end,� he said. oYou
18
know that you have already gone too far, donTt
you?�
I hoped we knew what we were talking about.
I wished it were possible to start at the beginning
somewhere with people. To know where it was
you were whenever you got there. oWoman Bath-
ingTT by Picasso. Like that. Not forever. But once.
Just once. Not to go from frame to frame. From
page to page. From day to day.
oYou are going to start a new life,� he said.
oYou are getting ready to start a new life. That
is what is wrong. And you are afraid.�
oT am not afraid,� I said.
I was tired of him and the whole thing. I was
tired of knowing that everything we could ever do
was something I would hear or read or write or
guess at. Happiness. Joy. Sorrow. Life. Death.
All of it. Too pat. Too much on the end of the
tongue.
oYou will have to dress,� he said. oIf I am going
to take you home... If I am going to take you
home after all these years...�
I knew he was being dramatic to mock us both.
And I wished he didnTt have to take me home.
That I could walk. Just go out and through all the
forests and across whatever waters and deserts
were there.
oYou donTt want to die, do you? That is what
is wrong with you,� he said. oYou donTt want to
die in the rain like Catherine Barkley or with the
asp at your breast that way or many and many
a year ago in a kingdom by the sea"�
And he was right. I didnTt ever want to do that
part of it. But I knew I couldnTt save both of us.
LINES FOR MY DAUGHTERTS
SEVENTEENTH YEAR
Suddenly beholding myself reflected totally, lovingly,
In the twin mirrors of her larkspur-eyes
(The ME MYSELF"sans every worldly stage
On which a Hamlet ever nurtured his cicatrice of soul;
Or a Punchinello, clowning in peppermint,
Ever played Liar with the laughter of tears) ,"
Seeing FOREVER miracled in her marigold-morning gaze,
I, for a moment at least, share
With Dante and Blake and Emily"and Cambrian Dylan, on fire for the Infinite"
An intranslatably real vision of yew and heather .. . heavenly roses .. . skies bluer than God.
WALTER BLACKSTOCK
19
20
MAY 14, 1942
(Four British sailors, serving aboard the H.M.S. Bedfordshire, were killed
when their ship was torpedoed by a Nazi U-boat off the North Carolina
coast. Their bodies came ashore at the island of Ocracoke. The island resi-
dents arranged for services and burial in a special plot. They maintain the
graveyard to this day.)
The long lonely finger of sand dunes
Stretches far into the Atlantic
Impervious to mainland changes
Of rising land values and neon signs.
As strong winds churn in their carefree way,
Storms born of the eager conflict between Gulf
And Atlantic portend violent battle.
Mind turns to the Indian past
Turns to the small tribe of Woccos rising
Phantom-like out of the sand and scrubby hills.
To give chase to wild pigs.
Mind turns to the duel of Blackbeard and Maynard
And the headless corpse of the savage pirate
Swimming seven times around the otherTs sloop
And staining red; and the severed head,
Black beard plaited, beribboned,
Impaled on the bowsprit like a shrikeTs victim.
Mind turns to the impermanent past
Turns to weathered cottage of shipwreck timbers
Embosomed among loblolly pine; and the stunted oaks,
Bent over like old men in redundant talk,
Resist sand shift and capricious sea wind,
Mind turns to the sun change
Of sleepy bumblebee creeping between zinnia petals
To escape the chill of evening,
And the quiet devout cardinal singing vespers
From its wax myrtle retreat.
Mind turns to the silent time of adoration
Turns to the verdigrised cannon ball
And the silver sand.
The silver sea, calm, gently undules
Like a half-ripe meadow on a soft spring night.
Lieutenant Cunningham turns to the youthful past
Turns to the cottage
And the blackbird suspended on Maytime sky
And the belling of hounds
And the pealing from steeples
And the wind on the heath.
The urgent piping of the bosun call,
Shriller than the liquid notes of the spring peeper,
Teases thought, intruding on home and dream.
Dying a strident death,
The bosun pipe flutes its final
Mournful wail: ominous silence.
Black night cracks a second time
As the persistent sonority of klaxon
Hastens sailors to battle station.
Alerted, blind eyes scan surface quadrants:
Ship-to-horizon: 000 to 090 degrees
For full cycle to begin cyclic scan anew.
Behind dormant yet insatiable pom-poms
Taunt fingers tighten inside trigger guards
Awaiting that dread command before the night sky
Is split by flaming seed like the farmer
In parabolic tracery feeding furrows.
Half-blind eyes search heaven.
Submerged stern drags sinking bow,
And the nameplate... H.M.S. Bedfordshire . . . vanishes.
The ocean is empty.
Across the ocean worn dreams
And faded memories gown the still countryside
On that precious stone set in the silver sea.
LYN PALADINO
21
CON MIL FLORES
+
Yes, I have supped,
I drank the wine of your breasts
grown too humanly warm against my lips,
knew the warm delicacy
of your hand resting softly on mine
when mind and logic
were thrust aside in a winter night,
when the being of you and I
made no little difference.
We were as the wind blows together
a little spring"a little winter
joined to warm snow-quilts
we lived under.
Though you have gone
I still find the spring and winter
joined,
a warmth that feels through
a long winter of knowing,
knowing what we had,
what we could never have had,
and sensing some yesterday pain $
I dream of yesterdays in today,
say softly with love,
I have loved
with a thousand flowers.
DWIGHT W. PEARCE
22
SEVENTH ANNIVERSARY
As gray stripes echoed silver on a sudden day
To sing on Easter, birth, re-birth in every way,
So silver gray has burst or bowed over seven years
of cliffs, of sea, seen at a melting time,
of pond knifed over with the cutting skate
when hush hung vaulted over snowy trees,
And that same color burst from stream when steelhead leaped
arched silver"shooting out and back
A knife, a leaf, a silver lightning from the brackish brown,
Were soft hued willows leaned in eddies
and in bays the rain pocked water filed from mouse holed banks.
And that same color in the sky the day a cormorant resting on the rock
rose weakly, battered, but he rose,
wind sifting through his oil-soaked wings, and sloped away
into a silent sky, and gray,
And that same color once before and now
When birth is near, has touched your hair,
Has echoed dress and eyes and cliffs and fish and birds,
And into silence, each time, whispered shimmering news
of birth, re-echoing birth throughout our lives,
And marking love in shimmers of a silver gray.
PETER F. NEUMEYER
23
24
PAINTINGS BY
GEORGE BIRELINE
Self-portrait
GEORGE BIRELINE:
Associate Professor, School of Design, N. C. State; B.F.A., Bradley
University; graduate work, University of North Carolina. Exhibitions
and Awards: Michiana Regional Art Exhibition: first prize in oil painting,
1950; oOld Northwest� Exhibition, 1951; Pennsylvania Academy of the
Fine Arts 147th Annual Exhibition, 1951; 17th Annual Butler Art Institute
Exhibition, 1952; N. C. ArtistsT Annual Exhibitions, Purchase Prize, 1956;
Honorable Mention, 1958; First Purchase Award, 1964; Los Angeles
County Museum show, oPost-Painterly Abstraction ;� One-man show at the
André Emmerich Gallery, New York, 1964.
1958
foe)
N
NOTES ON
E. E. CUMMINGS
JAMES FORSYTH
In this essay of E. E. Cummings, I have not tried to point out any theme"if there
is anything which recurs often enough in his poetry to be called a theme, it is love. All I
have attempted to do is illustrate some of the basic devices used in his poetry, show a few
of the things which interest me, and sum it up by printing a poem which gives some in-
sight into the feelings of the poet.
A person should remember that the basic purpose of most artistic endeavors is to en-
tertain, and secondly to inform. Art is fun. While it should not be approached only from
that angle, it helps to keep it in mind.
Cummings is usually, and justifiably, known as somewhat of a typesetterTs terror. He
All of the poetry used here may be found in:
a. Poems 1923-1954. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1954.
b. 95 Poems. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1958.
The volume, poem number, and page references have been indicated below each poem.
The most perceptive critic of CummingsT works that I have read is Norman Friedman. His books and
two others have good secondary material. They are:
Baum, S. V. (ed.). HETI: e ec: HE. E. CUMMINGS AND THE CRITICS. East Lansing, Mich.: Michigan
State University Press, 1962.
Friedman, Norman. e.e. cummings: the art of his poetry. Baltimore, Md.: The Johns Hopkins Press,
1960.
Friedman, Norman. e.e. cummings: The Growth of a Writer. Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois Univer-
sity Press, 1964.
Norman, Charles. The Magic-Maker: E. E. Cummings. New York: The Macmillan @ompany, 1958. A
biography which includes criticism of his poetry.
29
does, however, have a large number of oregularT�T poems, including some sonnets. Such as:
it may not always be so; and i say
that if your lips, which i have loved, should touch
anotherTs, and your dear strong fingers clutch
his heart, as mine in time not far away;
if on anotherTs face your sweet hair lay
in such a silence as i know, or such
great writhing words as, uttering overmuch,
stand helplessly before the spirit at bay;
if this should be, i say if this should be-
you of my heart, send me a little word;
that i may go unto him, and take his hands,
saying, Accept all happiness from me.
then shall i turn my face, and hear one bird
sing terrible afar in the lost lands.
(a, I:61)
The movement in this poem, from that which is near to something at an imaginary dis-
tance, is obvious. The bird, a traditional poetic symbol of joy, becomes a symbol of truth
in CummingsT work and is often associated with his ladyTs eyes. Here it is used in one
of his poems written while he was still a student at Harvard.
One of the things most disliked by Cummings is the type of conformity which, as
John Stuart Mill so aptly pointed out 100 years ago, tends to become an ounworld� tyran-
ny of the masses, or, in many instances, a tyranny of a minority elected by the masses. To
Cummings, problems like Communism are best solved by the individuals without the guid-
ance of the John Birch Society"this is very much in line with the thoughts of William
Faulkner. Cummings feels that the mind of collective man has become evil through be-
ing dehumanized. Conversely, that which is personal, or individual, is natural and is the
humanized good. Since love is basic and good, the idea of that which is humanized shows
up in much of his poetry where the speaker and his lady are isolated:
If i have made, my lady, intricate
imperfect various things chiefly which wrong
your eyes (frailer than most deep dreams are frail)
songs less firm than your bodyTs whitest song
upon my mind-if i have failed to snare
the glance too shy-if through my singing slips
the very skillful strangeness of your smile
the keen primeval silence of your hair
-let the world say ohis most wise music stole
nothing from deathTT-
you only will create
(who are so perfectly alive) my shame:
lady through whose profound and fragile lips
the sweet small clumsy feel of April came
into the ragged meadow of my soul.
(a, V:219)
30
= 7
aS
The absence of capital letters is to show emphasis which normal rules of English
grammar do not cover. If custom had been followed in the above poem, oi� would have
been capitalized, but not olady,� and that would destroy the balance. Incidentally, Cum-
mingsT name is actually e. e. cummings because he had it legally put into lower case. That
seems to be a bit too much. oApril� is capitalized in his poems probably more than any
other word. As far as Cummings is concerned, April is the most important time of the
year because it signifies new life, such as that created after a hard New England winter.
That is well illustrated in this segment:
i say
that even after April
by God there is no excuse for May
(a, XX XIII: 189-90)
If the reader is careful to place the emphasis on the capital letters, much misinter-
pretation will be avoided. One poem, for instance, starts:
may i feel said he
and the last two lines in the final verse are:
youTre divine! said he
(you are Mine said she)
(a, 16: 288-298)
The last line tells what the poem is about. Sex is used as a vehicle of expression, but could
hardly be interpreted as the subject of the poem. Since sex is part of that which is natur-
al, it is good and is treated like all other things which are still humanized. An adolescent
attitude in his treatment of sex is found more often in the interpretation than in the
poem.
Obviously a large number of CummingsT poems are experiments. It is painfully ob-
vious that a few of them fail, but that is to be expected. The important thing is the ones
that he is able to bring off right in discarding old forms and creating new ones. The idea
that anything can reach the point of diminishing returns is shown in this section from
oPOEM, OR BEAUTY HURTS MR. VINAL:�
i would
suggest that certain ideas gestures
rhymes, like Gillette Razor Blades
having been used and reused
to the mystical moment of dullness emphatically are
Not To Be Resharpened
(a, I1:167-168)
31
However, his most noteworthy experiment, the separation of words by other words,
is basically nothing new at all. It just has not been used oto the mystical moment of dull-
�
ness.� This splitting of words was used by the Greeks and is known as tmesis, which also
is hard to pronounce. This can be used to create a picture poem which freezes motion:
l(a
le
af
fa
I]
s)
one
]
iness
(b, no. 1)
In this the isolation of the letters give the words a feeling of loneliness. The splitting
makes the leaf a part of loneliness and allows oone� to stand out by itself and complement
the mood. Like paintings, some poems cannot be read aloud.
Cummings takes this as a starting place and often uses space to separate parts of
words, creating another effect:
mortals)
climbi
ng i
nto eachness begi
n
dizzily
swingthings
of speeds of
trapeze gush somersaults
open ing
hes shes
&meet& j
swoop {
fully is are ex
quisite theys of re ¥
turn
a
n
d
fall which now drop who all dreamlike
(im
(a, 48 :385)
32
"a
The splitting off of oClimbi,� oi,� and obegi� emphasizes the oi� of each, or the perform-
erTs individuality. Also, the poem becomes a word picture of the performersT actions. This
device can be used to give letters two differerent words. Part of one poem reads:
a snowflake twi-
sts
yon
its way to now
-here
(b, no. 4)
The last seven letters can read onow here� or onowhere,� creating two distinctly differ-
ent moods.
Another structure akin to this, although the words may not always be split, is the
use of parentheses to make a poem say more than one thing;
why
do the
fingers
of the lit
tle once beau
tiful la
dy (sitting sew
ing at ano
pen window this
fine morning) fly
instead of dancing
are they possibly
afraid that life is
running away from
them (i wonder) or
isnTt she a
ware that life (who
never grows old)
is always beau
tiful and
that nobod
y beauti
ful ev
er hur
ries
(b, no. 52)
Here the parenthetical sections can be read like they were set off by commas, or it can
33
be the old lady saying something to the poet which changes the meaning of the poem:
ositting sewing at an open window this morning, i wonder who never grows old.� The
following poem says about the same thing:
old age sticks
up Keep
Off
signs) &
youth yanks them
down (old
age
cries No
Tres) & (pas)
youth laughs
(sing
old age
scolds forbid
den Stop
Must
nTt DonTt
&) youth goes
right on
gr
owing old
(b, no. 57)
Motion may also be created on paper by breaking up the words:
Among
these
red pieces of
day (against which and
quite silently hills
made of blueandgreen paper
scorchbend ingthem
-selves-U
peurv E,into:
anguish (clim
b)ing
s-p-i-r-a
]
and, disappear)
Satanic and blase
a black goat lookingly wanders
There is nothing left of the world but
into this noth
ing il treno per
Roma si-nore?
jerk.
ilyr,ushes
(a, II: 199-200)
34
A poem previously given, omortals),� shows the same thing, but not
to such an extent.
The next poem should be seen before any remarks are made:
bright
bRight s??? big
(soft)
soft near calm
(Bright)
calm st?? holy
(soft briGht deep)
yeS near sta? calm star big yEs
alone
(wHo
Yes
near deep whO big alone soft near
deep calm deep
Who (holy alone) holy (alone holy) alone
(a, 70 :326)
The question marks are used for two purposes. First, the question mark is a physical
metaphor which resembles a light filament. Second, it emphasizes that the quality of
stars can only be gradually realized. The words obright,� oyes,� and owho� are capita-
lized letter-by-letter as the realization becomes complete.
An important item in studying the work of a writer is realizing by whom he is in-
fluenced in order to understand the use of certain methods. Shakespeare, in Macbeth,
uses inversion of nature as symbolism when England is conquered by evil. This is shown
in the section where the horses eat their own flesh, an unnatural event which contrasts
with the dehumanized Macbeth. Cummings uses inversion of values to contrast good and
evil in:
as freedom is a breakfastfood
or truth can live with right and wrong
or molehills are from mountains made
-long enough and just so long
will being pay the rent of seem
and genius please the talentgang
and water most encourage flame
as hatracks into peachtrees grow
or hopes dance best on bald menTs hair
and every finger is a toe
and any courage is a fear
-long enough and just so long
will the impure think all things pure
and hornets wail by children stung
35
or as the seeing are the blind
and robins never welcome spring
nor flatfolk prove their world is round
nor dingsters die at break of dong
and commonTs rare and millstones float
-long enough and just so long
tomorrow will not be too late
worms are the words but joyTs the voice
down shall go which and up come who
breasts will be breasts thighs will be thighs
deeds cannot dream what dreams can do
-time is a tree(this life one leaf)
but love is the sky and i am for you
just so long and long enough
(a, 25: 366-367)
In the fourth stanza, where things are natural, the world is good.
Cummings shares similar feelings about April with Chaucer, and here he praises the
work of the greater poet:
honour corruption villainy holiness
riding in fragrance of sunlight(side by side
all in a singing wonder of blossoming yes
riding) to him who died that death should be dead
humblest and proudest eagerly wan
(equally all alive in miraculous day)
merrily moving through sweet forgiveness of spring
(over the under the gift of the earth of the sky
knight and ploughman pardoner wife and nun
merchant frere clerk somnour miller and reve
and geoffrey and all) come up from the never of when
come into the now of forever come riding alive
down while crylessly drifting through vast most
nothingsTs own nothing children go of dust
(a, 63: 463)
CummingsT ideas about individuality are well brought out in his poems of praise.
Among other people, he praises Picasso, his father Reverend Cummings, Buffalo Bill,
Ford Madox Ford, and the peculiar Joe Gould.
Joseph Ferdinand Gould was born in Norwood, Mass., the son of a doctor. He gradu-
ated from Harvard magna cum laude in 1911, the year Cummings entered. By normal
standards, Gould never lived up to what society expected of him.
Gould could usually be found in Greenwich Village where he would give lectures on
Cummings and Dos Passos. He wrote An Oral History of Our Time"unpublished"which
contains 11,000,000 words. The work was seven feet tall, so he boasted that he was the
36
only person who had written a book taller than himself"5T4�.
sorts:
In winter ITm a Buddhist,
And in summer ITm a nudist.
He was also a poet, of
He is mentioned in Ezra PoundTs Cantos and appears in several of Cummings poems:
as joe gould says in
his terrifyingly hu
man man
ner the only reason ever wo
man
should
go to college is so
that she Mever can (know
wledge is po
wer) say 0
if i
|
OH
n
lygawntueco
llege
(b, no. 28)
Gould, who the Unitarian Cummings identified with a Christlike quality in the fol-
lowing poem, was a beggar who died on August 13, 1957. Several years before Gould died,
Cummings saw him walking at night near West Tenth Street and Greenwich Avenue:
no time ago
or else a life
walking in the dark
i met christ
jesus) my heart
flopped over
and lay still
while he passed (as
close as iTm to you
yes closer
made of nothing
except loneliness
(a, 50:455)
37
In his criticism of the literati, Cummings normally does not use a personal reference.
He does, however, often pun the names of famous people. CummingsT humor is shown in
his satire of Ernest Hemingway, who had accused Cummings of ocopying.� HemingwayTs
Death In The Afternoon is satirized by exaggerating the speech characteristic of Hem-
ingwayTs prose and by making a parody of ocow thou art to bull returnest� from oA
Psalm of Life� in:
what does little Ernest croon
in his death at afternoon
(kow dow r 2 bul retoinis
wus do woids uf lil Oinis
(a, 26:294)
Similarly, he makes fun of Louis Untermeyer:
mr u will not be missed
who as an anthologist
sold the many on the few
not excluding mr u
(a, X1:394)
The first book of prose by Cummings is The Enormous Room, which is about his ex-
periences in a French prison camp during World War I. He and a friend, William Slater
Brown, were imprisoned because of an indiscreet letter Brown wrote and because of their
suspicious fraternizing with the French troops. They had gone to France as ambulance
drivers, about the same thing that Hemingway did. Many of the reviewers of the book
who had remained in the United States during the war said that Cummings had no know-
ledge of what the war was about. Cummings replied:
my sweet old etcetera
aunt lucy during the recent
war could and what
is more did tell you just
what everybody was fighting
for,
my sister
isabel created hundreds
(and
hundreds) of socks not to
mention shirts fleaproof earwarmers
etcetera wristers etcetera, my
mother hoped that
i would die etcetera
bravely of course my father used
to become hoarse talking about how it was
a privilege and if only he
could meanwhile my
38
self etcetera lay quietly
in the deep mud et
cetera
(dreaming,
et
cetera, of
Your smile
eyes knees and of your Etcetera)
(a, X:197-198)
There is much obscenity in CummingsT satire, but it is rarely in bad taste because it is
usually toned down, witty, or expresses just what is needed to be said. There are at least
two obvious exceptions which even Norman Friedman finds are oangry without wit.�
These are oTHANKSGIVING (1956)�"which is about the Hungarian crisis (b, no. 39),
and oF is for foetus (a�"an attack on FDR (a, 37: 449-450), both poems of artless out-
rage.
In the spring of 1931, Cummings went to Russia. No one at that time knew much
about the place except what was shown in Communist propaganda " plenty of wine and
art. He returned disenchanted and some of_his friends gave him the nickname oKumrad,�
which he used instead of comrade in one of his poems which ends:
every kumrad is a bit
of quite unmitigated hate
(travelling in a futile groove
god knows why)
and so do i
(because they are afraid to love
(a, 30: 296)
The above stanza is from a poem published originally in no thanks (1935), a book
of 71 poems. The book was reviewed in a Communist publication called the Daily Worker
and that poem was quoted"minus the first stanza and lines 3, 4, and 5 of the stanza
above. In the same book there is a sonnet on the previously mentioned Joe Gould and
another poem of protest"the first stanza goes:
Jehova buried, Satan dead,
do fearers worship Much and quick:
badness not being felt as bad,
itself thinks goodness what is meek:
obey says toc, submit says tic,
EternityTs a Five Year Plan:
if Joy with Pain shall hang in hock
who dares to call himself a man?
39
The fourth and last stanza shows the convictions from which the satire arose:
King Christ, this world is all aleak;
and lifepreservers there are none:
and waves which only He may walk
Who dares to call Himself a man
(a, 54:314)
Aside from being a good example of how Cummings uses capitalization, it shows the
dehumanized mind in its surroundings. To the poet, the only salvation is on an individual
level reached through love:
since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world
my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. DonTt cry
-the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelidsT flutter which says
we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for lifeTs not a paragraph
And death i think is no parenthesis
(a, VII:208-209)
A PASSING GRADE FOR BRECHT
A SHORT STORY BY
LYN PALADINO
Pine Bluffs Tech is embosomed on the side of a
steep bluff. The surveyors and engineers who laid
out the site sixty-four years ago were impeded in
their attempt to erect all the buildings on one
level: private homes bounded the north-south ex-
tremities of the college property and, fifty feet to
the west, parallel to the school, ran the railroad
tracks. Within these physical boundaries the
library, two dormitories, and the phys. ed. building
had been constructed. Seventy-eight stairs above
the verdant declivity, auspiciously placed on the
second level, are five buildings (the level had been
carved out from the side of the bluff to accept
them) ; the administration building, Davis, Mac-
Grand, and Steinmetz Halls, and the home ec.
building. One hundred eight steps higher, on the
third level and, laid out on a niche in the side of the
bluff similar to level two, is the football stadium.
Daily climbs from level one to level two elicited the
usual spate of jokes from students and faculty:
oTf I get lost, send a St. Bernard�; oDija ever
think what an escalator cud do for the disposition
of the faculty?T�T; oMan, when you graduate from
this school you get two degrees .. . one for moun-
tain climbing too!�; oAll ya need is that special
booster shot of mountain goat blood from the in-
firmary.�
Although each building was rendered in its own
unimpressive but inimitable architecture, all are
look-alikes because of their common characteris-
tics"unwashed windows and grimy, soot-stained
walls. Although the former could be modified by
the custodial staff, the latter could be remedied
only by monthly sand-blasting, or by rerouting of
the Diesel units and permanent closing of the
industrial plants in the neighborhood. ~Mechani-
cal monsters,� as the Diesels were affectionately
called by the professors, move through the city
of Sylvester in unequalled cacaphony" gutteral
incantation of steel wheels, raucous wheeze of
strident whistles, indecorous blast of sonorous
horns, frenzied clang of urgent bells. In addition,
41
there was the weary spew of engine soot. After
the Diesels passed through Sylvester, the city
returned to its usual drowsy state. Not the
ubiquitous soot and its inexorable assault, how-
ever! Industrial smokestacks regurgitated their
wastes into the air, polluting the atmosphere as
far as six miles away and peppering everything
underneath the vast cloud with black hail.
No wrought iron gates and ornamental iron
fences, nor sprinkling fountains and ponds at-
test to Ivy League tradition and pomp. Even the
bell tower on the administration building houses
a simulated bell that functions electronically: bell
strokes on magnetic tape are emitted twice each
hour, ten minutes before the hour and again on
the hour.
Pine Bluffs Tech, granting degrees preponder-
antly in technology, is a four-year college whose
pedagogical advance is too often commensurate
with the advance of the somnabulist, tottering
city of Sylvester. Administrators canvass remote
ohollers� (hollows) for additional mediocre stud-
ents, politicians plead for additional unnecessary
taxes. Graduating engineers, surprisingly enough,
depart with an engineer education in addition to a
degree. Graduates from the departments of phys.
ed., business admin., general ed., home ec. and
humanities carry off degrees and four memory-
filled years of skylarking and extra-curricular
activities. That these graduates have not learned
to make objective judgments based upon know-
ledge, to render ordered self-expression, to observe
facts with discrimination, to analyze, synthesize
and correlate information, to employ critical
imagination, to seek out research sources and to
think creatively is regarded, if at all, as of no
consequence. They are well-rounded graduates
from a well-rounded college trained to be well-
rounded citizens for a well-rounded democracy.
The administration at Pine Bluffs continues to
wink and nod in its duties toward the student and
the community.
Students classify courses at Pine Bluffs as
osnow,� omediocre,� and orock-breaker.� Know-
ledgeable students only, one suspects, would be
aware of the classification; yet entering freshmen
are prepped, each course minutely identified down
to number of lectures, books, and research papers
assigned. Similarly, professors are placed in cate-
gories that correspond to course classification,
designated respectively as osnap,� oO.K.,� and
otough,� or more popularly, oson of a bitch.�
Instructor Robert Clyde had been given the
oson of a bitch� classification two years earlier,
42
his first year at Pine Bluffs. His colleagues had
warned him to go easy on his students that first
year, but he had disdained their fanciful sugges-
tions. Having flunked nine students in the Ameri-
can lit. final, he believed his appraisal more than
justified because they had been goof-offs all semes-
ter and none had earned a grade higher than
D minus, either quiz or hour-written exam. Ironi-
cally, it was not flunking these students that pre-
cipitated the repercussion behind the sacrosanct
walls of the academic deanTs office.
Sixteen students from the same class went to
the final exam carrying a C minus average. These
students earned DTs for final grades. Howling
like ululating wolves denied food privileges at the
predatorTs kill, two young ladies from this group
had turned on the tears and oWhat will I tell my
mother?� routine to the conciliatory dean. Mr.
Clyde was called into the deanTs office after the
pair had been mollified and dismissed from the
deanTs office. Informed of the histronics and the
hanky twisting of both ladies, Mr. Clyde had
sought to learn from the dean the reason, if any,
for a legitimate complaint. Mr. Clyde produced
the class register, revealed quiz and hour-written
grades, and the final exam grades of both students.
oShould I disregard the grades and ~giveT them
the gentlemanTs grade of C?� oOh, no! Never!�
the dean responded. ~You donTt seem to under-
stand,� he continued. oBoth students were eligible
for oWhoTs Who in American Colleges and Univer-
sities. Now they are no longer eligible.�
Mr. Clyde, wishing to point out the obvious non
sequitur, instead replied, oSo what!� Then, as
though the dean were telepathic, he told Mr.
Clyde of the B average required of students, and
that it must be maintained four years for oneTs
inclusion into the prestigious society. The in-
structor was grimly determined to listen to the
deanTs worn arguments of unorthodox method-
ology, the undermining of student confidence, and
the well-rounded student. None were proffered.
Mr. Clyde admitted that should the dean be urged
to alter the grades, he, Mr. Clyde, would wish him,
the dean, to countersign both grade changes. With
that one stipulation, Mr. Clyde would be amenable
to the deanTs chicanery. This last, however, he
did not tell the dean. The dean was not immune to
that kind of administrative encroachment in a
singularly academic province. Mr. Clyde had been
warned of some of the deanTs past illegalities.
From that time on, Mr. Clyde had established his
reputation: his unpopularity remained unchanged
two years later.
The osnap� instructor who teaches osnow�
courses could be expected to rely on the textbook
as though it were a crutch, and to be a bore. No
lectures, no discussion, no check to learn if texts
are read. Only spoonfed readings, devoid of the
ancillary dividends to be found in lecture-discus-
sion and the Socratic method. Perfect attendance
in his class is tantamount to a grade of C.
The oO.K.,� or ogreat guy,� instructor, intruder
on student bull sessions, moocher of cigarettes and
pipe tobacco, is the jovial, backslapping individual
who had lost sight of his ideals and his philosophy
of education many years ago. Comfortably tenur-
ed and happily settled in his monotonous circum-
stances, he is quite content to accept fatuous
mediocrity and, for the sake of euphemism, call it
oaverage, scholarship.� Complacent as the cow
lying in the shade of a maple thicket, hunger com-
pletely sated, and unperturbed by the steady diet
of pasture grass, he is unremitting in his pursuit
of duty to have students adhere to the same criter-
ia of high standards: five-thousand-word term
paper containing five major and five minor foot-
notes; a corresponding decrease of one whole
grade for each one thousand words short of the
assigned figure. Plagiarism, unchecked footnotes,
mechanics, grammar, unity and coherence, all es-
sential ingredients, are ignored. Five thousand
words, thatTs what counts! Like the fanatic he
redoubles his efforts after he forgets his aims.
From the undeviating past performances of the
ogreat guy� and the previous experiences of the
upper classmen who had sat in his classes, the en-
tering freshmen could adduce the following: same
lectures given from yellowed 5 x 8 note cards;
same ancient jokes; same tests (frat houses shelt-
ered copies in file cabinets and made copies avail-
able to non-Greeks for five dollars each) ; same col-
lateral reading list. The ogreat guy� never flunks.
The average grade, C, is preponderent, a sprinkle
of BTs and a soupcon of ATs, and the remainder
DTs, make up the tasty recipe. Those who do fail-
ing work but attend faithfully are assured a D.
WhoTs going to ruin a good thing because of irregu-
lar attendance? In this category the majority of
Pine Bluffs Tech instructors are pigeonholed.
The otough� instructor is not averse to chatting
with students in the student union over a cup of
coffee. He is polite, mild-mannered, but suspicious
of too much exposure among students.
Robert Clyde, on his first day at Pine Bluffs,
after he had given his classes a cursory outline of
the organization and conduct of his courses, was
hesitantly relegated, by his students, to the third
grouping. Five minutes after the first hour-writ-
ten exam two weeks later, he had been labelled
os.o.b.�, definitely o~s.o.b.�� From the time he had
known that he would make teaching his life work,
that it would be a part of him, growing each day in
some respects like the organic metaphor, he was
determined to remain a scholar capable in assisting
students to learn. He was determined to communi-
cate to students and the public mind the true im-
age, at least, of one respective of the inquiring
mind; he had resolved to awaken in students the
desire to nurture and cultivate excellence. To earn
student respect and admiration for the scholar-
teacher, he would learn and teach himself to be a
paragon worthy of emulation.
Pensive, Robert Clyde moved down the stairs,
thoughts turning on the cryptic note in his pocket.
The note was a pale green sheet, folded once, from
the academic deanTs desk pad, bearing the mes-
sage: oMost urgent. See me after last class today.
Dean Lloyd.� Now what does he want? Perhaps
student behavior at the last social I chaperoned.
Student drinking on campus? Yes, thatTs pos-
sible... Yet I saw no one... in the menTs room?
How can one be sure? Still, I signed the chaperone
card attesting that there had been no drinking.
Yes, thatTs true... But if they drank, they drank
in secrecy ...I signed the card in good faith...
ThereTs nothing to worry about. Maybe itTs some-
thing else. At the bottom of the stairs he turned
left, walked toward the deanTs office. Robert Clyde
was tall, slender, almost too thin to be athletic, but
the appearance was deceptive. His propensity
for striped ties and natural shoulder suits intensi-
fied the slender build. He had lettered in track,
baseball and football in college. His hair was
muddy yellow, partly curly, and his eyes were
green.
He knocked on the deanTs office door, waited for
the response, walked in. Simultaneously, the dean
requested that he take a seat and motioned him
to sit in the large leather chair opposite the desk.
Robert Clyde sat. He took out a black, long-stem-
med pipe, tobacco pouch and a book of matches.
A knock. The door opened; in stepped Dennis
Kanehl. So he is ~Most UrgentT. Now I know why
I am here. The dean spoke.
oYou know Mr. Clyde, Dennis. Close the door.
Take a seat over there.T The dean pointed to an
unoccupied chair several feet from Mr. Clyde.
oYes, sir. Thank you, sir.� |
He sat. The dean went through his customary
office procedures"pushed the swivel chair away
from the desk, leaned back, locked hands behind
43
|
:
:
:
|
}
|
head, coughed.
oNow, gentlemen. ITd like to make one point
clear: What we say here today must be kept in
strict confidence. Not a word to anyone beyond
these walls. Understood?�
Mr. Clyde sank back into the deep leather chair,
crossed his legs, nodded. He heard Dennis say
~Yes, sir.T
Dean Walter Lloyd, completing his first year as
academic dean, was forty-nine years old. He was
a portly man who parted his black hair in the
middle, giving him the look of a saturnine person
and one older than his years. He had taught busi-
ness administration at Pine Bluffs fourteen years,
six of them as chairman of that department. He
had acquitted himself at both jobs, teacher-chair-
man, in the usual desultory manner of one con-
fronted by two jobs who is incapable of doing
either job adequately"unprepared to teach, too
confused to administrate. Colleagues in the busi-
ness administration department had discharged
his departmental responsibilities and he had ac-
cepted the praise and recognition. Faculty who
had known, and there were few, winced each time
he committed the egregious errors ocould of� and
owould of.�
oTTve requested both of you to come to my office
because ITve heard something that distresses me
very much. ITm sure I donTt have all the facts.
This, I hope, youTll provide.�
Mr. Clyde was somewhat appalled. He calls me
into his office, knows only what the student tells
him, and expects me to fill in the gaps! Why had
he not accorded me the courtesy of a private meet-
ing before the three of us met? Dammit! The
blundering, incompetent...
oFrankly sir, I have no idea how much you
know. I assume we are here to discuss my flunk-
ing Dennis three weeks before the end of the
semester. Correct? With your permission, sir, I
would like to hear, for the first time, what Dennis
has already told you,� Mr. Clyde said.
oWould you tell Mr. Clyde what you told me,
Dennis?� Dean Lloyd asked.
Dennis Kanehl was a Korean veteran who had
attended two colleges before entering Pine Bluffs.
His accumulative credit hours from these schools,
and those he had received for courses taken while
in the Army, numbered one hundred fifty-four,
thirty-four more than the amount required to
graduate. Yet he could not graduate because he
had not completed six hours in biology! Older
than most students, he was the anachronism on
campus: erudite, perspicacious, and at times,
44
showing flashes of critical acumen. He was stocky,
aman of great physical bulk, and red-faced.
oWell, sir,� Dennis said, looking at Mr. Clyde,
oT told Dean Lloyd that our class took the Ameri-
can lit. test Monday last and that you returned
the graded test papers this Monday. Then I told
him of my stopping at your office during confer-
ence hours the following day to check something
on my paper. But because you were busy with
two other students, you asked me to point out the
passage in question and said you would take the
paper home for a closer look. The next day, Wed-
nesday, after our class meeting, you requested I
stop by your office. I did, and thatTs when you
told me I had failed the course. I went to Dean
Lloyd and told him what you told me: that I had
failed American lit. for the year and that my pres-
ence in class was optional from that time on. I
asked the dean ~How could I fail with a C minus
on my paper? and he said that he would find out.
He told me to be in his office two oTclock Thursday.
And thatTs it.�
oThatTs the substance of what he said to me,
Mr. Clyde,T�T Dean Lloyd said.
Mr. Clyde nodded. He tamped tobacco into pipe
bowl, clamped teeth on pipe stem, returned pouch
to pocket, lit the pipe. Expelling smoke from
around the stem in rapid puffs, he jumped out of
the chair, brushing off bits of glowing tobacco
that had fallen on his trousers.
oMr. Clyde, I promised I would get to the bot-
tom of this incident. Now, begin anywhere you
wish, but be mindful to show the justification of
your decision.�
Dammit! Again that condescending attitude
that eats away at the heart like a corrosive acid.
oITm fully aware of the gravity of the situation.
Before I can do any explaining, however, I need
several pages. Because I did not know the reason
for this meeting, you can see that I am unprepared.
TheyTre in my office. ITll be only a moment. Ex-
cuse me.�
He left and returned with a thick folder, DennisT
test paper on top. From the folder he removed one
sheet of paper and placed it on the desk. Next to
the sheet he placed the test paper. Leaning over
the front of the desk and looking on the upside
down sheets, he pointed to a specific passage on
the test paper.
oRead that segment. Disregard the content of
the essay and the emendation. Then read the
same segment on the duplicate. Finally, compare
them.�
Mr. Clyde resumed his seat, glanced at Dennis.
Dennis had moved forward on the chair as though
trying to gain favorable purchase for a better
glimpse. Eyes scanning first one sheet, then the
other, and back to the first, Dean Lloyd looked up,
eyebrows arched, doubt or confusion, or both,
pervading his face.
oIf there is something extraordinary ...er...
facet about these sheets, it escapes me completely.
They look exactly alike. Why, what should I find?�
Dean Lloyd asked.
oTook at the sentences underscored in red on
the test paper. Now see if those underscorings ap-
pear on the duplicate. Still no difference?� Mr.
Clyde prodded.
Mr. Clyde saw the deanTs head lift, the face
galvanized in amazement.
oWhy, the duplicate is free of underlines! But
what does this difference show? How is it re-
lated?�
oVery simply, it means that the test paper
Dennis returned to me on Tuesday had underscor-
ings on it that it did not have Monday, the day
before. He underscored those sentences in the
hope that I would be moved by his sympathetic
plea to reconsider his paper and then change the
grade.�
oT donTt seem to follow the implication,� the
dean said.
My God, donTt tell me he canTt see through that
dodge! What is it that British historian said?
Obtuse enough to be a menace and stupid enough
to be innocous!
oIt is a smooth piece of subterfuge,� Mr. Clyde
said impatiently. oDennis wished me to confess to
extreme diligence in reading and in grading his
paper. The underscored sentences were then, and
are now, quite acceptable to me. Is it not reason-
able of him to underscore those precise sentences
I had approved? Certainly! Is it not also reason-
able of him to assume that I would admit to over-
zealous examination of his paper and increase the
grade? Without doubt! This particular pony is
just another of a long list. Luckily it is little used
because it is little known. Doubtless the crib
would have been successful were I lacking the
duplicate.�
oDennis, what do you have to say?� Dean Lloyd
asked. Fingers interlaced, hands folded in his lap,
Dennis looked up at the dean. His face appeared
bellicose, softened. The stillness was broken by
the struck match, the gentle burble in the pipe
bowl. Dennis unclenched his fingers, lowered his
head over his hand, palms up, and like the pose
captured in mute marble, exemplified submissive-
ness, almost gratified relief.
oWell, Dennis?�
oTtTs all true,� he said, in a taut voice.
oWhy, Dennis?� interrupted Mr. Clyde. oWhy
you of all persons? There isnTt a scintilla of justi-
fication for doing what you did. If you were fail-
ing, I could understand. But you were not failing.
You certainly would have passed the course. You
were my best student! Above average!�
oT really donTt know, sir.�
oDonTt know!T Mr. Clyde exploded. ~You can
offer a better answer than that,� he said, in a
calmer voice. oCome now, Dennis. You expect
us to believe that? You must have had a reason.�
oNo, sir. No reason. What do you want me to
say? I did it because ITd be denied Phi Beta Kappa
if I didnTt?� Dennis said contemptously. Mr.
Clyde eased out of his chair. He stopped halfway,
bent over like a skier schussing, dropped into the
chair gratefully. He was impelled to go over to
Dennis, take him by the shoulders and shake him.
Biting hard on the pipe bit, he stayed the urge.
oDean Lloyd, you see before you a paradox. A
veritable paradox. On his test paper you will find
intelligent, yes, even penetrating insights in his
essay on OTNeill. In addition, you will find detailed
references to expressionism in Strindberg, and the
intrinsic relationship to the expressionism of
Lorca. These men were playwrights and contem-
poraries of OTNeill, but they were not Americans.
These men are not even mentioned in our text. I
referred to Strindberg in class, once only. Lorca
never. In spite of this he knows as much about
these writers as some graduate English majors.
Would you say this is compatible with the deed?
Again, Dennis. Why did you do it?�
oT think I was testing you.�
Yes.�
oFantastic! Truly amazing!T Then wearily:
oBut ITm not convinced.�
Dennis shrugged.
oI am, however, convinced of one thing: the pen-
alty is not worth the disclosure. ITm curious to
know where you learned the dodge. Mind telling
me?�
oT read a book about Brecht. He did it at the
Realgymnasium and got away with it,� Dennis
answered.
oA book by Gray?�
Dennis nodded.
oWhoTs Breck?� the dean asked.
oItTs Brecht, sir. Bertolt B-R-E-C-H-T. Con-
temporary German playwright. Anything youTd
like to say, Dean?�
45
Dean Lloyd walked over to Dennis and placed
one hand on the back of the chair.
oPlease wait in the outer office, Dennis.�
Dennis left the room.
oBefore we get around to DennisT failure, do
you suppose you could tell me about your system
of duplicate copies? ITm curious, too.�
oBe happy to. I make Thermo Fax copies of
the first hour-written exam of all the students in
all my lit. courses. Then, depending on the stud-
entTs rank in class, that is, failure, average, above
average, I make duplicate copies of subsequent
exams for each of these students only. For ex-
ample, only four or five consistent failures, only
five or six average students, only one or two above
average students have all their tests reproduced.
In this way I note progression in the first group,
consistency or slight fluctuation in the second,
fluctuation or progression in the third. At no
time do I make more than fifteen copies, total for
a class of twenty-four to twenty-eight students.
Students between groupings are checked against
that first duplicate. Finally, duplicates are filed
according to one of three groupings for each lit.
class. ThatTs it.�
oSounds like a lotta extra work to me.�
oNot really. The duplicate is especially useful.
Before a student comes to me for a conference, if
he comes, all I need is several minutes with the
duplicate to refresh my memory.�
oIngenious. Now to our friend outside. WonTt
you reconsider reinstating Dennis in your class?
After all, by your own admission, he is a good
student. Your best. And too, what he did is not
like cheating in the conventional way where secret
notes are used,� the dean appealed.
oUsing less conventional means does not make
it any less a deception. ItTs just like lying"a lie is
a lie, small or big. Dennis is in a similar position.
If we ignore his deceit, it is tantamount to accep-
ting it, and we would have passive roles in the col-
lusion. No, sir. My decision remains unchanged.�
oI guess when you state it that way it does
make sense.�
oYes, sir. What we do now is not for Dennis the
student today but for Dennis the husband, the
father, the worker, the citizen tomorrow. We can
shape his moral values; we canTt supervise them.
He selects his own standard of ethical conduct.
Before we can help him we must recognize the
basic tenet in any system of values"truth"truth
between ourselves. Forgive me, sir. I did not
mean to pontificate.�
oQuite all right, Robert,� the dean said.
46
Robert Clyde wondered if office intimacy promp-
ted the dean to call him ~Robert,T or a breakthrough
on the veneer of self-restraint. Never ~RobertT be-
fore. Always ~Mr. ClydeT or ~Sir.T
oShall I call him in?� Dean Lloyd asked.
oHave you decided?�
*¥equ"�
oEven to what you'll say to him?�
oVes,!
Mr. Clyde did not answer, instead nodded. As
Dean Lloyd went to the door, Mr. Clyde knocked
the dottle from the pipe into the waste paper bas-
ket next to the desk. Dennis entered and Dean
Lloyd closed the door behind him. They sat.
oWeTve decided, Dennis, that Mr. ClydeTs de-
cision stands. You are to be given a failure for
the course.�
Then he launched into elaborate explanation,
utilizing at every turn Mr. ClydeTs argument ver-
batim. He droned on, ramifying minuscule ideas
and uttering redundancies. Mr. Clyde read ob-
vious tedium on DennisT face and wished the dean
would stop. He did.
oFinally, let me say that you could of been al-
lowed to remain in class if we thought you deserv-
ed it. YouTll profit from this experience when you
take American lit. this summer. I suggest you take
it during the summer session. Care to say any-
thing, Dennis?�
Mr. Clyde hoped Dennis would say something,
anything, even if only to get it said and off his
chest.
oNo, sir. Thank you for your time. You too,
Mr. Clyde.�
oYou may leave, Dennis.�
Dennis rose, went to the door.
oJust a moment, Dennis,� Mr. Clyde said, get-
ting out of the chair. oDean, ITd like to leave with
him. Several things to ask. You know. Other
courses, other grades.�
oSure, sure. WeTre through here. See you to-
morrow. Good day.�
oGood afternoon, sir,TT Mr. Clyde said.
Mr. Clyde and Dennis left the deanTs office to-
gether, passed through the outer office into the
quiet corridor. Mr. Clyde was grateful to find the
corridor empty of students. Usually in the immed-
iate proximity of the deanTs office, in the corridor,
students congregated, waiting to see the dean. The
familiar knot of students moved one wag to coin
a name for them: WALTTS WHINERS. Dennis
stood flat-footed, feet spaced wide, arms folded
across his chest. He waited for Mr. Clyde to
speak.
|
|
a
oWhat happens now, Dennis? How do you
stand in your other courses?�
oFine, except for Dr. ThorndikeTs class,T Dennis
said.
Dr. Thorndike, biology prof, was another
otough� instructor.
oYou have a run-in with him?�
Dennis laughed a tight, self-conscious laugh.
oIn a way. He threw me out of his class yester-
day. Over-cutting.T�T He added defensively, oBut
I was doing passing work . .. whenever I was at-
tending class. I donTt know. I guess itTs just that
biology doesnTt interest me and, as a matter of
fact, never had. I rarely took notes, never read
assigned chapters, seldom attended lab session.
You know the usual bit. ItTs not Dr. ThorndikeTs
fault; itTs the course he teaches. Your course,
now, itTs different. It appeals to me. Perhaps be-
cause I read the literature of all cultures.�
oDoes the dean know of your expulsion from
Dr. ThorndikeTs class?�
oNo, not yet. But he will,TT Dennis said.
oWhatTll you do now?�
oProbably go to another school.�
oDennis, ITm sorry about what happ.. .�
oNo hard feelings, Mr. Clyde,�T Dennis interrup-
ted. ~You did what you had to do. Besides, I
didnTt need your class. It was an elective course.
I have enough hours in English to satisfy my Eng-
lish major. Biology, thatTs what killed me!�
oIf there is any way I can help you, count on
me.�
oThanks, Mr. Clyde. You know, theyTre right
about you.�
oWho?�
oThe students. You are a son of a bitch!�
Dennis said. He turned, walked away.
CONTRIBUTORS
Walter Blackstock, Professor of English, Lander College, Greenwood, S. C.
James Forsyth, student
Anne W. Nelson, English teacher, Ralph L. Fike High School, Wilson, N. C.
Peter F. Neumeyer, Assistant Professor, Graduate School of Education,
Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Lyn Paladino, English Instructor, Clark College, Atlanta, Georgia
Dwight W. Pearce, student
47
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