Word: poem
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...account for Whitman's change. She says that he read George Sand's The Countess of Rudolstadt. The epilogue of that typical romantic novel tells of a seer who dressed in humble clothing, preached the doctrine of man and in his inspired discourse composed "the most magnificent poem that can be conceived." Deciding to do the same thing in Brooklyn, says Mrs. Shephard, Walt spent the rest of his life "imitating, in his dress and utterance, a character in a French work of fiction." But he was always afraid he was going to be found...
...christenings that Poet Rukeyser gives her books. Theory of Flight, her first, carried too many pinfeathers to rate its machine-finished title. U. S. 1* the title of her second book, is an ambitious, almost a cocksure misnomer. The book's titular material is actually a series of poems called The Book of the Dead. This series "will eventually be," Poet Rukeyser states, without batting a weather eye, "one part of a planned work, U. S. 1. This is to be a summary poem of the life of the Atlantic coast of this country...
Part journalism, part lyricism, part Marxian mysticism, the 20 poems composing The Book of the Dead are so many strong shakes given to its readers' complacencies. That Poet Rukeyser has shaken her own complacencies first is shown in her book's 20-odd other poems, notably The Drowning Young Man, probably the best poem on a suicide yet written in America. Taken all together, the poems are an exciting and, on the whole, trustworthy appeal to all the belligerents who [and only who, if you ask Poet Rukeyser] know the world. Only these, she implies...
READING THE SPIRIT-Richard Eberhart-Oxford University Press ($2.50). Wet-behind-the-ears poems of unusual intensity, sponsored by English Anthologist Michael Roberts (The Faber Book of Modern Verse). Poet Eberhart is a young Minnesotan who graduated from Dartmouth in 1926, bummed around the world to St. John's College, Cambridge, now teaches English at St. Mark's School. Author of at least one unforgettable poem (The Groundhog), Poet Eberhart is one of the rarest human types known-a genuine ham poet...
...educated in a convent in Georgetown, D. C., grew dreamy, introspective and so romantic that her admirers were unable to measure up to her ideal of a lover. She had resigned herself to spinsterhood, had published a few verses, when in 1891 she got the commission to write a poem for the opening of the World's Columbian Exposition. Opponents wanted to replace her with John Greenleaf Whittier, then 85. Despite illness, an operation, a nervous attack, Harriet Monroe finished her ode in time, demanded and received $1,000 for it, had the satisfaction of hearing it read before...