‘Poetry as a Spoken Art’: A New Interpretation
As discussed in Chapter Two, the epiphany that Lowell experienced during Duse’s performance in 1902 was the starting point of her career. Duse’s de- mands for more active audience participation also brought new awareness to the path Lowell undertook to inhabit the literary world. Soon after the publica- tion of her first collection in 1912, Lowell began to actively participate in criti- cal debates about poetry, gave lectures on French poetry, and expounded upon her views in magazines and newspapers. Most of Lowell’s contributions to magazines were devoted to increasing the poetry readership. However, reading these articles in the context of women’s struggles at the time offers new possi- bilities for interpretation of Lowell’s individual response to women’s emanci- pation in the early twentieth century and its impact on the consciousness of art- ists and their works and desires. Reconsidered in this light, Lowell’s choice of poetry as her profession must be linked to the struggle for rights set up at the turn of the century to free women from prejudices and constraints.
Drawing on Lowell’s articles and essays, which are often overlooked by critics, this chapter will investigate how she responded to the constraints of the time, specifically the marginalisation of the female voice in the arts and how she emphasised the performative aspect of poetry. It will also investigate whether she used her articles to gain respect and authority, shedding more light on her own poetry, or offered her readership new perspectives on ‘listening’ and reading the female point of view. Lowell’s interest in the orality of poetry is especially evident in her essay, ‘Poetry as Spoken Art,’ which is the focal point of this chapter. The significance of her interest in the oral aspects of po- etry will be investigated both in terms of her desire to play an active role in so- ciety and in light of the first wave of feminism. Although Lowell was never di- rectly involved in any feminist movement, certain issues raised by women’s struggles nevertheless affected her own demands for freedom.
Through a re-reading of her articles, the first three sections of the chap- ter will address the literary and social scene in which Lowell operated at a time when ‘America rioted in poetry.’1
By exploring Lowell’s opinions of the new tendencies in poetry in juxtaposition with commentary from poets and critics at the time, the chapter will expose the prejudices and constraints that Lowell and female artists confronted. Two fictional female characters, Philomela and Ma- dame Bovary, will be discussed in the last two sections in order to illustrate that the ‘authentic’ voice of women was silenced and emphasise the original and courageous path that Lowell chose after the epiphany discussed in Chapter Two.
In summary, Lowell’s articles and essays will be used to explore the connection between the oral quality of poetry and women’s increasing desire to be subjects rather than objects in both art and society at large. These essays will provide a lens through which to question the consequences of this privi- leged aspect of spoken poetry in terms of ‘exposure’ of both female feelings and the female body, and the significance of this for Lowell, who did not em- body ideal female beauty. The theoretical framework of the chapter will be provided by works such as Paula Bennett Bernat’s Poets in the Public Sphere: the Emancipatory Project of American Women’s Poetry, 1800-1900;2 David Perkins’ A History of Modern Poetry: Modernism and After;3 Merry E. Wies- ner-Hanks’ Gender in History: Global Perspective,4 and Francesca Sawaya’s
Modern Women, Modern Work: Domesticity, Professionalism, and American Writing, 1890-1950.5
1
Wood, Clement. Amy Lowell. New York: Harold Vinal, 1926. p. 4.
2
Bennett, Paula Bernat. Poets in the Public Sphere: The Emancipatory Project of American Women’s
Poetry, 1800-1900. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 2003. Hereafter: Poets in the Public Sphere.
3
Perkins, David. A History of Modern Poetry: Modernism and After. Cambridge (MA): The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1987. Hereafter: A History of Modern Poetry.
4
Wiesner-Hanks, Merry E. Gender in History: Global Perspectives. 2nd ed. London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011. Hereafter: Gender in History.
5
Sawaya, Francesca. Modern Women, Modern Work: Domesticity, Professionalism, and American Writ- ing, 1890-1950. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004.
3.1. Poetry, Magazines and Articles: A New Space for the Woman’s Voice
In the early years of the twentieth century, ‘an epidemic of poetry swept through the States.’6 This statement may seem excessive, but clarifies the rap- idly increasing interest and involvement in poetry throughout the country at the time. At the turn of the century, periodicals, magazines, and newspapers pro- vided poets and artists with opportunities to exchange opinions, build aesthetic theories, and express visions of the world.7 Poetry published most of the poets working with vers libre and Imagism, the new trends in poetry at the time.8 In her editorial in the first issue, then-editor Harriet Monroe explained the reason for the existence of the magazine.9 She disagreed with the general opinion that there was no audience for poetry in America, and criticized the general opin- ions among most magazine editors that poetry ‘must appeal to the barber's wife of the Middle West’ (27). Monroe particularly emphasised the role and the connection between the artists and their readers, highlighting the necessity for both artists and readers to cultivate and irrigate the soil if the desert is to blos- som as the rose’ (27).
According to Damon, the rapid success of Monroe’s magazine among the new poets was due to three factors. First, it was timely: ‘[t]he coming poets were already writing; now they found a place prepared for their writing’ (195); second, although it welcomed poets from Europe, it was essentially American; and third, it paid poets for published poems.10 The Dial, North American Re- view, and The New Republic, among others in New England and Chicago, also welcomed the new trend but did not offer the same remuneration. According to Paula Bernat Bennett, in Poets in the Public Sphere, all these magazines and newspapers also offered women the chance to inhabit a public space and estab-
6
Wood, Clement. Amy Lowell. New York: Harold Vinal, 1926. p. 4.
7
See West, Darrell M. The Rise and Fall of the Media Establishment. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2001; and Mott, Frank Luther. A History of American Magazine. Vol. IV: 1885-1905. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press, 1957. For further information about magazines and their definitions, see Hoff- man, Frederick J., Charles, Allen and Ulrich, Carolyn F. The Little Magazine: A History and a Bibliog- raphy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1946; Churchill, Suzanne W. The Little Magazine Others
and the Renovation of Modern American Poetry. New York: Ashgate, 2006.
8
Harriet Monroe takes credit for having published the most important female voices of the period, includ- ing H.D., Amy Lowell and Edna St. Vincent Millay, as well as male poets such as Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot in her magazine.
9
Monroe, Harriet. ‘The Motive of the Magazine.’ Poetry 1.1 (October 1912): pp. 26-28.
10
Damon, S. Foster. Amy Lowell: AChronicle, with Extracts from Her Correspondence. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1935. Hereafter: Amy Lowell: A Chronicle.
lish an ongoing practice of discussion, which helped to spread ideas on gender issues.11 Ultimately, these discussions became a fertile ground for many women who were struggling for acknowledgment of their acquired profession- alism in artistic and journalistic fields. Lowell took an active role on the cul- tural debate of the time, quickly embracing Monroe’s appeal for participation, subscribing to the magazine, and submitting her own poems and articles.
Lowell’s first article, ‘Vers Libre and Metrical Prose,’ appeared in Po- etry in 1914.12 Explaining that the term originated in France, she made a dis- tinction between ‘pure prose’ and ‘pure poetry’ (213) maintaining that their difference was mostly the long and the short rhythm on which they rely. Lowell insisted on the long ‘rhythm of prose’ which is ‘slightly curved,’ as op- posed to the ‘very much shorter’ rhythm of verse ‘with a tendency to return back upon itself’ (215). She finds this return that makes the distinction between the two forms; it is this return, in fact, that creates the musical effect, and in the
vers libre ‘the return’ is stronger than in other forms. In supporting her point on the musical effect, she offered plenty of examples; according to Lowell, one of the ‘excellent’ examples in English can be found in Fiona Macleod’s The Founts of Song’ (218).
In another article in the Boston American from that same year, she shifted her focus on the necessity of poetry.13 Conceived as more of a speech than an academic essay, Lowell compared the need for poetry to the need for food, if a culture wants to survive. Lowell acknowledged that the Bible also expresses this idea of poetry as food for the soul ‘in the best possible way’ (3), and called on unusual images to draw her readers’ attention. For example, she used a striking metaphor comparing the emotional response to poetry with the ecstasy, which a baseball game produces in the routine of men’s daily life. Without this ecstasy, she argues, the enchantment of game is lost.
In addition to her declaration of the supremacy of poetry, Lowell as- serted its power to understand humans; only through reading poetry, she ar-
11
Bennett, Paula Bernat. Poets in the Public Sphere. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003. See especially pp. 1-13.
12
Lowell, Amy. ‘Vers Libre and Metrical Prose.’ Poetry 3.6 (1914): pp. 213-220. There were only two editorial comments in this March issue; Lowell’s editorial comment is followed by Ezra Pound’s ‘Hom- age to Wilfred Blunt.’
13
Lowell, Amy. ‘Why We Should Read Poetry.’ Poetry and Poets. New York: Biblo and Tannen, 1971. pp. 3-9.
gues, is it possible ‘to know man in all his moods’ because poetry can enter deeper than other artistic forms ‘in the most beautiful thoughts of his heart,’ ‘in the nakedness and awe of his soul confronted with the terror and wonder of the Universe’ (8-9). This nearly sacred power of poetry is not dissimilar from that expressed by other poets before her, particularly Percy B. Shelley who declared in ‘A Defence of Poetry’ that poetry is ‘at once the centre and the circumfer- ence of knowledge’ and that poets are ‘the unacknowledged legislators of the world.’14 It is clear from the beginning of her article that Lowell was ready to take this power for herself.
In 1916, Lowell’s ‘The New Manner in Modern Poetry’ appeared in
The New Republic, and a few months later in Craftsman, she embraced the challenge of the time in her answer to the question she posited in the title: ‘Is there a National Spirit in the New Poetry of America?’15
In speaking of the new poetry movement in America, Lowell highlighted the decision of the new poets to distance themselves from the traditional English form. She explained their choice in terms of Nationalism, one of the relevant points on debate at the time, linking it directly with the need to achieve a cultural independence, to cultivate and grow ‘the American race.’ She believed, in fact, that poetry also can ‘free ourselves from the tutelage of another nation’ (342). Although she was aware that acceptance and the spread of this change is a long process, she ensures her readers that this process has began irreversibly. Just one month be- fore the publication of her third collection, Men, Women and Ghosts, Lowell’s
letter to the editor titled ‘In Defence of Vers Libre’ appeared in Dial.16 Her let- ter testified that she was becoming one of the major representative voices of
vers libre among readers, and the resistance encountered by the new trend ex- pressed in the anthology Some Imagist Poets, published in 1916.
In January 1917, ‘A Consideration of Modern Poetry’ appeared in
North American Review, and in it, Lowell again gave ‘explanations and eluci-
dations’ of the new tendencies in order to reaffirm the characteristic aspects of
14
Shelley, Percy B. ‘A Defence of Poetry.’ Essays, Letters from Abroad, Translations and Fragments.
Ed. Mary Shelley. 1840. In Literature Online: http://lion.chadwyck.co.uk/search. pp. 47 and 57.
15
Lowell, Amy. ‘Is There a National Spirit in the “New Poetry” of America?’ Craftsman 30.4 (1916): pp. 339-349.
16
Imagism.17 She used a musical comparison to demonstrate that the ‘new ten- dencies’ in poetry needed both time and knowledge to be completely under- stood, arguing that Wagner’s music was not initially appreciated, and that it took time for the audience to become accustomed to it, to understand his new ‘idiom’ (104).18
Lowell emphasised that this musical analogy refers not only to poetry, but to all arts, pointing out that the recognition of the new forms had always met with some resistance in history, because ‘no generation ever learns to wait a little before judging’ (104).
Lowell was also acknowledging here the literary war between those for or against the new tendencies that was being fought in magazines, journals, and anthologies. This war continued when Lowell’s musical analogy was harshly criticised by Llewellyn Jones in ‘Free Verse and its Propaganda’ in 1920. Jones expressed his doubts about her conception of verse rhythm, and focusing on her tertiary education, highlighted that she: ‘has read no metrician later than Pope, whose Rationale of English Verse left much to be desired as a systematic treatise.’19
This inclination to discredit the new tendencies and the poets who en- couraged them was not uncommon among critics at the time, but journals and magazines continued to welcome both the new poets and their adversaries, al- lowing both of them to express their new ideas. In ‘The Process of Making Po- etry,’ Lowell tried to explain the inner process of writing, arguing that it is not possible to find appropriate definitions, because, according to her, it is a result of a personal process. She clarified, however, that it is not a ‘day-dream, but an entirely different psychic state and one peculiar to itself (25).20 Lowell drew upon her personal experience to reinforce her statements throughout the article, speaking candidly about the task of writing a poem and referring to a subcon- scious gestation that works for her first, preparing her for the event of writing.
17
Lowell, Amy. ’A Consideration of Modern Poetry.’ North American Review 205.734 (1917): pp. 103- 117.
18
The musical analogy is also expressed by Lowell in ‘Some Analogies in Modern Poetry.’ The Musical Quarterly 6.1 (1920): pp. 127-157. The connection between poetry and music is often discussed by poets. T. S. Eliot, for example, talked about ‘The Music of Poetry’ during one of his lectures at Glasgow Uni- versity in 1942.
19
Jones, Llewellyn. ‘Free Verse and its Propaganda.’ The Sewanee Review 28.3 (July 1920): p. 385.
20
Lowell, Amy. ‘The Process of Making Poetry.’ Poetry and Poets: Essays. New York: Biblo and Tannen, 1971. pp. 24-29.
She made clear her conviction that creativity was strictly linked to hu- man craft, and that the poet, being a craft-man, has to learn his art. This decla- ration distances her from the concept of poet as genius, and was in one respect nearer to the American concept of the ‘handyman’ or ‘do-it-yourselfer,’ as Per- kins highlights in A History of Modern Poetry.21 Lowell’s statement also high- lights her notions of a non-elitist literature. Lowell believed that anyone who has time, space, and education could be an artist. Lowell emphasised the im- portance of time and space when writing poetry; when the ‘words are there,’ she declared, one must simply sit and write them down.
Virginia Woolf expressed the same concept in ‘A Room of One’s Own,’ highlighting how a lack of time and space prevented the majority of women from being represented in literature.22 Lowell however, did not de- nounce this with the same clarity and strength as Woolf. In 1917 ‘Poetry, Imagination, Education,’ Lowell focused on another aspect of the problem: the inefficiencies of education, in particular their impact on creativity.23 Lowell showed her awareness of the manner in which poetry was taught in schools; the focus was on establishing technical ability rather than developing imagination and a taste for beauty. Lowell criticised the lack of humanity in the curricula and the quality of books written for children because she believed that children were capable of much more, and they were able to take pleasure even ‘where the full meaning is only faintly grasped.’ (44).
In ‘Poetry, Imagination, and Education,’ Lowell used incisive prose and skillfully maintained the attention of her readers with anecdotes taken from her personal experience. For example, in order to reinforce the importance of lis- tening and reading at an early age, she wrote about her grand-cousin, the writer James Russell Lowell, to whom his sister used to read Edmund Spenser’s
Faerie Queen before bed. Likewise, Lowell explored the impact of environ- ment on education by writing about Charlotte Brontë, who did not have an op- portunity to attend a good school and spent her life in a small town. Lowell ar-
21
Perkins, David. A History of Modern Poetry. Cambridge (MA): The Belknap Press of Harvard Univer- sity Press, 1987. p. 89.
22
Woolf, Virginia. ‘A Room of One’s Own.’ London: Penguin Books, 2004. I have been unable to find evidence of contact between Virginia Woolf and Amy Lowell.
23
Lowell, Amy. ‘Poetry, Imagination and Education.’ Poetry and Poets: Essays. New York: Biblo and Tannen, 1971. pp. 30-58.
gued that Brontë was able to reach great literary heights because she became accustomed to reading and listening to stories from an early age.
Lowell regarded reading an important part in the creative process, and praises the book that can stimulate it, and focuses on the power of imagination. She pointed out that it is the fertile ground on which all changes and transfor- mations in the world had grown. Lowell believed in the power of imagination to create another reality, and valued the book that can elicit it. In this article, she credited a book she found in her father’s library, Leigh Hunt’s Imagination