Poetry

I too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond allthis fiddle.Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discoversthat there is init after all, a place for the genuine.Hands that can grasp, eyesthat can dilate, hair that can riseif it must, these things are important not because a

high sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because theyareuseful; when they become so derivative as to becomeunintelligible, thesame thing may be said for all of us—that wedo not admire whatwe cannot understand. The bat,holding on upside down or in quest of something to

eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll, a tireless wolfundera tree, the immovable critic twinkling his skin like a horse thatfeels a flea, the base-ball fan, the statistician—case after casecould be cited didone wish it; nor is it validto discriminate against “business documents and

school-books”; all these phenomena are important. One must make adistinctionhowever: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the result isnot poetry,nor till the autocrats among us can be“literalists ofthe imagination”—aboveinsolence and triviality and can present

for inspection, imaginary gardens with real toads in them, shall wehaveit. In the meantime, if you demand on one hand, in defiance oftheir opinion—the raw material of poetry inall its rawness andthat which is, on the other hand,genuine then you are interested in poetry.