In spite of the prejudice against American poetry as the manifestation of a chromium-plated, juke-box culture, the healthy state of American culture, he said, was one of the hopes of the world to-day. We too readily pass off that which is flashy as American, and claim that which is really good as a branch of English literature because both have a common heritage. Here is a new literature, influencing and moulding our own.

It began with Wait Whitman and Edgar Allen Poe. Emily Dickinson and Edward Arlington Robinson were also quoted. But with the little reviews it really largely developed. All the important poets first appeared here, and here received encouragement. Poetry Chicago, which Ezra Pound begun, and The Little Review, are the biggest of these. Most reviews were and still are parochial; there are hardly any with nationwide circulation.

Imagism, the first big movement, arose from discussions between Flint. H.D. (who is Hilda Doolittle), and Aldington. Pound for a while wrote under their banner. The imagists said to young writers, inter alia. "Don't be descriptive." "It is better to produce one image in a lifetime than volumes of works." Their ideas quickly wore out for Pound. There was a split in the fraternity, and Amy Lowell became the now prophet. A spell of "Amyism" ensued. The Catholic Review, which Pound was now editing, introduced Eliot; but Pound and Eliot played second fiddle to the poetry of Amy Lowell and Carl Sandburg. American poetry was "pretty boggy." Joyce Kilmer was immortalised by "Trees"! There were some occasional good poems. This was a popular movement, but a retreat from life: a woolly pantheism when religious. To-day it is dated, and is considered degenerate. Johnson was distressed that Vachel Lind ray still regarded as the essence of modernism due to a queer sterness of his lines. . . . Pounds and Eliott were sterner and their workled to a flexling of the muscles of poetry.

The Patron in Poetry. .

The patron also had a great part in the development of the arts in America. Hart Crane, who published "White Buildings" in 1926, followed by the masterpiece "The Bridge." was supported by a millionaire for one year on the Continent Crane is a child of the machine age, and believed in progress through the machine. He used the bridge as an allegorical pathway to heaven. (What heaven?) Robert Frost has the largest American reputation of any contemporary poet. Acclaimed the "only really epic poet America has had," ho proved difficult to place in time. He earthy, downright, sentimental, [unclear: hu] popular."

Consolidation.

The thirties were a carry-over from the twenties, a period of consolidation for the chief poets, Conrad Aiken, John Crown Ransom, Alan Tait. These were "fugitives determined to move from the city." Poetry in their hands achieved leisure and refinement, a protest [unclear: again] the economics of the decade. Macleish alone was satirical in contrast. Wm. Carlos Williams demonstrated the more juke box elements of American culture, and was very popular; and E. E. Cummings, with his great virtue of anger, wild man of American letters, wrote lines that sprawl over the page. Since 1940 there has been a return to the mythical-psychological territory skirted by Eliot.

Great Audiences.

[There is more good verse being written in America, to-day than la New Zealand, said Johnson]. It is the one country where many little periodicals flourish, and the audience is great. War assisted literary progress, for the writers and artists sought refuge in neutrality. While Europe was numbed with war, the American poet could still expostulate and be angry. The motto of Poetry Chicago is this: To have great poets there must be great audiences too." These, quantitively, America has. Carl Shapiro, editor, has 5000 poems a month submitted to him. . .

Are they all poets? Obviously not One may argue that only the best may appear in print, therefore the standard must be high. But with such a, huge amount written one feels that that which is eye-taking gets printed. We may miss the solid virtues of American poetry.

Out of the Garret.

This is the age of the populariser. America has proved superior in salesmanship—does she sell literature? Poetry in particular hardly lends itself to popularisation. In Russia art is the people's art, and artists gain their living from the state. Does the artist in the West starve in a garret?

[The artist in America is not starving. The hundreds of little reviews with parochial circulation have been mentioned. There are courses in creative, writing at every University, and one poet at leant on the staff. Much money is spent to bring world-famous people to address interested Americans. Poetry la supported by private business and wealthy patrons.]

This art may not reach all the people all the time, but what art would, and would all the people want it? To aim at all means to limit and simplify aims. Louis Johnson said he would object to Professor Algie like directions.

In England there is scarcely a journal of any size left to-day. And here? "Private and esoteric coteries." A poet might make £7 to £15 an edition; he must pay for public readings out of his own pocket. One does not go in for poetry for money.

Johnson suggested that criticism was not enough, and writers do not spring out of thin air. In America there is a great pool of mediocre talent: but one exists at the higher level if supported by talent beneath. America will have poetry far greater than we who live in isolated contentment.

—B.D.