There are magazines whose policies are as devious as a river; there are others that, like the proverbial arrow, aim straight toward their destination. Certainly, it is no exaggeration to say that I have tried to keep Wings in the latter category, particularly with regard to the perennial controversy between traditional and “modernistic” verse. In this controversy Wings has played a part that some would call conservative, or even ultra-conservative—which is a little strange, in view of the fact that the editor is not in other things a conservative. He has sometimes wondered, also, whether the true conservative is not he who drifts with the crowd; whether, in a world where the vast majority proclaims itself in favor of “modernism,” the independent who stands out against “modernism” is not the actual radical.

I will not deny that in some ways the situation in contemporary poetry is deeply confused. But in other regards, everything has impressed me as pellucidly clear. First of all, it has always struck me that certain elements are necessary in poetry, in this age as in all others. One is the ingredient of music: “She dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must die,” has a musical sound, as much today as when Keats wrote it, and therefore has at least one of the qualities of poetry; but “She dwells with ash-cans—ash-cans by a brick wall,” has no more music than the thumping of a garbage truck. In much the same way, poetry creates, and always has created, a magic or suggestiveness which is not that of prose; and in this respect also the line about beauty qualifies, but that about the ash-can does not. And, finally, poetry—like all writing—should be as clear as the subject-matter and the skill of the writer make possible; which does not imply that the meaning must always stand out like a steel engraving, but that it must be as lucid as the theme and the author’s ability permit, and that murkiness must not be sought for its own sake.

These are, in brief, the principles that I have espoused in editorials and reviews in Wings ever since its first issue. But these principles, though they might seem simple and self-evident, run counter to the accepted mandates of the age, which have tended to abandon music, and to make poetry uninspiring as a cement mixer, and unclear as a fog-bank. And what do I mean by the “accepted mandates” of the age? I mean the mandates of the group in power—those who control the policies of our leading literary and sophisticated magazines, those who sit in authority in prize committees, those who act as poetry advisers for some of our major publishers, those who compile anthologies, and write articles and reviews for some of the more influential media. At no time have I denied that many of these are honest, capable, and convinced men; but it seems to me that not a few are bewildered, and ignorant of poetry, its nature and its history; not a few are but following the normal human tendency to embrace whatever happens to be fashionable, and commit the error of mistaking fashion and right.

Yet the fact is that much that is in style nowadays, and much that is generally called poetry, has none of the qualities by which poetry in past ages was recognized. Which majority, therefore, shall one be aligned with?—the great preponderance of all the poets and critics who have lived before our own century, or the few who within the past several decades have striven to undermine yesterday’s accumulated lore and skills? For my own part, I consider one thing self-evident: if “modernistic” critics and verse-writers are right in their dominant attitudes, then all of our famous predecessors, from Chaucer to A. E. Housman, were in error. But if all the latter were in error, that fact must be demonstrated by more cogent arguments than have yet been adduced.

Yet can it be that all the proponents of “modernism” are wrong? Before attempting to answer this question, let us ask whether history shows no other cases of mistaken majorities. What of the belief in witchcraft several centuries ago, when savants and nobles and common men alike, from King James I of England down to the most ignorant serving maid, were convinced believers in the reality of black magic? What of slavery, whose abolition, it was honestly believed by many a good man in England, America, and elsewhere, would bring inevitable ruin to the world? What of headhunting, ceremonial cannibalism, human sacrifice, widow-burning, and other dread rites, all of which were accepted by large masses and even fervently defended, in some cases in comparatively civilized lands? I do not, of course, mean to compare modernism in verse to any of these horrors; but I do wish to emphasize that mass acceptance of any theory, belief, or principle does not prove the validity of the doctrine.

And in the case of recent poetry, what do we find? That some, like Amy Lowell and John Gould Fletcher, came over to the new camp after unskillful efforts to write in the older forms; that others, like Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, and Marianne Moore, revolted against traditional verse without ever having shown that they could write it; that others again, such as T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, formed an entente cordiale of mutually expressed admiration; that still others, always ready to embrace the new, endorsed the “advanced” principles for the sake of showing themselves to be different and emancipated; that certain others, like “e. e. cummings” with his typical lines such as “goo-dmore-ning(en” and “sing thatthis is which what yell itfulls o,” performed the antics of circus clowns, and finding themselves taken seriously, performed still more bizarre antics; that many opportunists, of the sort who exist at all times and in every circle, joined the procession for the sake of personal advantage; that more and more bystanders trailed along out of fear or in order not to appear behind the times; and that the great majority, deeming themselves incompetent to judge and not daring to deny the word of authority, stood by in apparent acquiescence though actually in profound bewilderment and even in secret disgust.

Such, in a word, is my own interpretation of the rise of “modernism” in verse, and indeed in all the arts. And such has been the conviction behind the editorial policy of Wings. From the first, I realized that my stand was challenging giants. I realized that I might put myself under a personal cloud. But in the long run, all that counted was the truth, and the only truth I could defend was truth as it appeared through my own eyes. My judgment, like that of any human, might be blurred, distorted, or perverted; but such as it was, it was my own; it was all I had to go by, and it would have been despicable and cowardly to stand by and muffle the convictions burning within me. And what if I were to be penalized for speaking? In what period of history, and in what land, have men not been penalized for speaking? Not that I had any taste for martyrdom; but that I was convinced that the game of poetry, like every other game, was not worth playing except in one way. There may be those who can complacently accept whatever they believe to be the mood of the age, and adapt their style to that mood; but I must unhappily confess that I am not one of those pliable souls, and that I should hide my face in shame even were the high honor of a Pulitzer Prize or a Nobel Prize to come to me for work that I knew to represent a compromise with standards that were not my own, and a truckling to mere vulgar acceptability.

On the road which I have followed, followed perhaps with a mulish intractability but certainly without wide meanderings, there have been both penalties and compensations. The penalties have been those of shut doors—and of occasional abuse and misrepresentation. Once or twice a small “modernistic” magazine has honored me with a long article in which my purposes, principles, and methods were entirely misstated. And more than once a larger magazine has lent its pages to the controversy; in one case the writer even descended to language of the gutter in counter-attack when logic evidently failed him. And in other cases, as in Randall Jarrell’s widely circulated Poetry and the Age, my statements are subjected to a deliberate or unconscious distortion that make them look about as a man’s image would appear through a convex mirror. I do not wish to harp upon this point, but let me give an example. Mr. Jarrell, referring to the preface of my anthology The Music Makers, reports that I say that any poem must be, among other things, “easy to understand.” This could logically be taken to mean that I think that every poem should be on the level of Mother Goose; and if I meant anything like that, I would be even more of a fool than nature has made me. But what I say is the following:

There are more ways than one of damaging a reputation; and not the least effective is by misstating a writer’s position so as to make him appear silly. I should add that Mr. Jarrell’s publisher, though a man of the highest reputation in his profession, and though writing me that “I certainly would not want any reputable person like yourself to feel that a book published by us did him substantial injustice in any way,” refused my request for changes in the offending passages in subsequent editions of the book; nor did Mr. Jarrell at any time apologize or offer to make even partial amends.

In quite another way, I was to have a glimpse into the sharp and biassed discrimination that occurs in the supposedly high-minded and idealistic realm of poetry. The incident was a minor one, of no intrinsic importance; and would not be worth reporting except for its implications. There was a certain man (let me call him “Jones”) who had once briefly visited me at my home, and was editing a magazine of free verse—to which, naturally, I did not seek admittance. But one day I read that Jones had started a new magazine, to be devoted exclusively to traditional poetry. Since this was in my field, I had no hesitation about mailing him two or three poems, along with the usual stamped return-envelope. Sometime later the poems came back, along with a note: “Dear C.: I rather like your verses entitled Compensation and would have ordinarily accepted them; but in view of what is being said as to the position you have taken in poetry, I am afraid I must send them back.”

Whether or not my poem was published by this particular magazine was, of course, a matter of no importance; I would not under normal circumstances have given a second thought either to its acceptance or its rejection. But Jones, by his naive words, had made immense disclosures; had unwittingly bared things which a shrewder editor would have hidden beneath a gloss of words. That any man could be such a craven as to refuse a manuscript because of what someone else was saying as to the position in poetry taken by the writer!—this to me was a notion so new, so startling that I had to read the sentence several times in order to make sure it was real. I doubt whether Jones had any idea at all how bitterly offensive his comment was; I will even give him credit for meaning the statement by way of a friendly explanation. But his attitude of mind, I thought, was exactly that which has been too familiar in the past, when men have been sent to the dungeon or the stake because of what someone else has said about their heretical views.

Then, for the first time, I fully realized that I too was guilty of heresy—yes, guilty of heresy because I had tried to uphold poetic standards against those who, I was firmly convinced, were the true heretics. I have since had reason to suppose that other editors, and more influential ones, have followed the same principles as Jones. But I still have not learned just “what was being said” as to the position I had taken in poetry. Against known and spoken charges I have never felt any incapacity to defend myself. But against unknown and concealed accusations I am helpless.

Sometimes I have wondered what is really desired by those critics and editors who seem to feel that the devil himself has smoked his way into any attitude of mind that happens to oppose their own. Perhaps their ideal is that which Matthew Arnold expresses in two lines—not, however, as an ideal, but in despair at the modern lack of faith:

These “light half believers,” surely, never find anyone who objects to their position strongly enough to blacklist them.

But whatever the costs of uttering ones convictions, the rewards have been considerable. These rewards have been all the richer for not being of a concrete or material nature; they have come in friendships formed, usually by correspondence only; and in letters that have drifted in from men and women all over the country, and even from Canada and England; many from unknown persons, but some from noteworthy poets. Thus I learned that there was an undercurrent of support for my views, a wide opposition and resentment against “modernistic” perversions, and a simple longing for the poetry that sings, and that speaks to the imagination and the heart. But most of the lovers of the older poetry, I found, could not make themselves vocal; they had no organ for their opinions, which they usually expressed by ceasing to buy or even to read contemporary poetry. Hence Wings filled for them a long-felt need.

I wish that I had space to quote from some of the many letters of commendation. Not, of course, that I took them all seriously; I soon learned to recognize the honeyed words that besought a honeyed favor, the sugary speech that accompanied submitted manuscripts or books forwarded for review—experience was to teach me that the writers would be as likely as not, at the next winking of an eye, to turn to the opposite camp, if this seemed to suit their purposes. But the honest approbation of persons who had no axe to grind, and who wrote from remote places to tell how they had been helped or elated (and who often accompanied their letters with tangible proof in the way of unsolicited subscriptions) has been heart-warming, and has made it easier to keep on at times when I was inclined to wonder why any man in his right mind would run a poetry magazine.

Beyond this, I have been urged on by the knowledge that Wings has provided a medium of publication for poets in a world where media of publication are fast fading out. Perhaps this will seem no great thing; but without the springs that supply the streams, the streams will dry up. True, the poets themselves frequently seem not to realize this, and too often will not support the very magazines that encourage their own efforts to fly; but this is not true of all, nor nearly all. And many of them—though the editor knows that he will never look into their eyes, nor shake their hands—have made themselves as dear to him and as real as persons actually seen.

It is for this reason, more than for any other, that I have never regretted the strange and devious unraveling of fate that has taken me along the road of editorship. And it is for this reason that I would not, even if I could, change one inch of the route I have traveled.