The Vanity of Print

          Let me draw a picture which many a young man and woman, and some no longer young, will recognize as
          the story of their own experience.

          He is sitting alone with his own thoughts and memories. What is that book he is holding? Something precious,
          evidently, for it is bound in "tree calf," and there is gilding enough about it for a birthday present. The reader
          seems to be deeply absorbed in its contents, and at times greatly excited by what he reads; for his face is
          flushed, his eyes glitter, and--there rolls a large tear down his cheek. Listen to him; he is reading aloud in
          impassioned tones:

                    And have I coined my soul in words for naught?
                    And must I, with the dim forgotten throng
                    Of silent ghosts that left no early trace
                    To show they once had breathed this vital air,
                    Die out of mortal memories?

          His voice is choked by his emotion. "How is it possible," he says to himself, "that anyone can read my
          Gaspings for Immortality without being impressed by their freshness, their passion, their beauty, their
          originality?" Tears come to his relief freely, so freely that he has to push the precious volume out of the range
          of their blistering shower. Six years ago Gaspings for Immortality was published, advertised, praised by
          the professionals whose business it is to boost their publishers' authors. A week and more it was seen on the
          counters of the booksellers and at the stalls in the railroad stations. Then it disappeared from public view.
          A few copies still kept their place on the shelves of friends, presentation copies, of course, as there is no
          evidence that any were disposed of by sale; and now, one might well ask for the lost books of Livy as
          inquire at a bookstore for Gaspings for Immortality.

          All you have read in this chapter so far is quoted word-for-word from Oliver Wendell Holmes's Cacoethes
          Scribendi, written some hundred years ago. As I read it, my first laugh was at the poets who, today as a
          century ago, pour their hearts into pamphlets and are astonished that the world takes little note, nor long
          remembers. My second laugh was at myself, for Holmes might, indeed, have written this book for me, so
          little has the poetic situation changed. If it is vain to write poetry, have it printed, send it to critics, it is equally
          vain to rail against the human habit. Holmes says:

                    For the last thirty years I have been in the habit of receiving a volume of poems or a
                    poem, printed or manuscript--I will not say daily, though I sometimes receive more
                    than one in a day, but at very short intervals. I have been consulted by hundreds of
                    writers of verse as to the merits of their performances, and have often advised the
                    writers to the best of my ability. Of late I have found it impossible to attempt to read
                    critically all the literary productions, in verse and in prose, which have heaped
                    themselves on every exposed surface of my library, like snowdrift along the railroad
                    tracks--blocking my literary pathway, so that I can hardly find my daily papers.

                         What is the meaning of this rush into rhyming of such a multitude of people, of all
                    ages, from the infant phenomenon to the oldest inhabitant?

          Hello, Oliver! I shout through the catacombs of the years. It is much the same now--as it was for Horace
          and Catullus, as it was for Pope :

                    Shut, shut the door, good John! fatigued, I said;
                    Tye up the knocker! say I'm sick, I'm dead.
                    The Dog-star rages! nay, 'tis past a doubt,
                    All Bedlam, or Parnassus, is let out:
                    Fire in each eye, and papers in each hand,
                    They rave, recite, and madden round the land.
                    What walls can guard me, or what shades can hide?
                    They pierce my thickets, thro' my Grot they glide,
                    By land, by water, they renew the charge,
                    They stop the chariot, and they board the Barge.
                    No place is sacred, not the Church is free,
                    Ev'n Sunday shines no Sabbath-day to me:
                    Then from the Mint walks forth the Man of rhyme,
                    Happy! to catch me just at Dinner-time.

          It would be funnier if it weren't so true. At two in the morning, when I was out of town, an angry husband
          called my wife to find out where I was. His wife had disappeared, and he thought I might know something
          about it. The extent of my contact with that woman had been when she called me on the telephone some
          weeks before to ask me to read her novel based on her adventures as a male-impersonator on a battleship--
          and I had refused. The literary life is full of strange hazards.

          When I was a professor, I posted on my office door this motto from Pope (taken, as was the last quotation,
          from his "Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot"):

                    Seiz'd and ty'd down to judge, how wretched I!
                    Who can't be silent and who will not lye;
                    To laugh, were want of goodness and of grace,
                    And to be grave, exceeds all Pow'r of face.
                    I sit with sad Civility, I read
                    With honest anguish, and an aching head;
                    And drop at last, but in unwilling ears,
                    This saving counsel, "Keep your piece nine years."

          I took it down after a while because it seemed unkind--and because, as a teacher, I had no right to abuse
          those whom I invite to come to me for criticism.

          I am not complaining about students and magazine contributors, however; one asks for what one gets in
          those quarters. But how should I have reacted to this conversation, back in the days when I was poetry
          editor for the Antioch Review? I was sitting in my study, work in my typewriter, people gathered for a
          meeting, when a young man called from a distant city.

          "I wonder if I could have your opinion of my poetry?" he asks.

          "Have I seen it?"

          "No, I haven't sent it to you. I was wondering what you would say."

          "Well, I can't say anything without seeing it."

          "I don't have but one copy. Will you return it?"

          "Do you mean to submit it to the Antioch Review?"

          "What's the Antioch Review?"

          "That's a magazine. I'm the poetry editor."

          "But I'm not sure whether my poetry is good enough to be published."

           I am twisting on my chair, smiling and shrugging at the people in the office.

          "Why did you call me?"

          "A friend told me you read people's poetry."

          "I read quite a lot of poetry, but I'm not in the business..."

          "But I heard you do sometimes tell people what you think of their work."

          "Sometimes I comment on work submitted to the Antioch Review, if I think it is particularly promising and I
          would like the poet to send more or to revise."

          "Will you criticize mine?"

          "If you submit it in the usual way, with a self-addressed, stamped envelope, and if it seems close to being
          publishable..."

          "But I just want to know what you think."

          I am abbreviating this conversation which, literally, went on for twenty minutes, long distance. Among other
          things the poet told me he didn't have any money so could not afford to have his work typed.

          On another occasion I received a packet of poems, addressed to me personally, with this note: "Please
          publish these poems. I am not enclosing a return envelope because I'm running away from home and will
          not have any address. But I'll look you up in Cincinnati and collect the money for the poems in person."
          Luck had it that I was nowhere near Cincinnati.

          Nor am I, any longer, poetry editor for the Antioch Review. After finding that I was destroying friendships
          with poets by reviewing their work, I have resolved to do no more book reviewing. I am trying to discipline
          myself to make no comments whatever on most work sent me or handed me. I insist that it be a professional
          relationship. Just as it would be ridiculous for a doctor, whom you pay for advice, to spare your feelings and
          be falsely encouraging or deceptively genial, it would be a waste of your time and mine for me to coddle you
          when you seek professional advice.

          What does professional advice mean in regard to poetry? In my view it is an experienced judgment as to
          whether the work in question is likely to be accepted for publication in a quality periodical or by a reputable
          publisher, and, if not, why not. It includes saying what, if anything, could be done to the work to increase its
          chances of acceptance. This has, notice, very little to do with whether I, personally, "like" the poetry. Much
          is published which I dislike intensely. Nor has it much to do with whether the poet has "expressed" himself or
          said what he really wanted to say. That is a matter for the poet himself to judge. Nor does such professional
          advice attempt to determine whether the poetry is "good" for the ages, regardless of the fashions of the current
          publishing scene. If I were to encounter a poem in manuscript--my own or someone else's--which I thought
          might take a place on the immortal bookshelf alongside work by Shakespeare and Donne and Milton and
          Pope and Keats and Browning and Yeats and Frost, I would undoubtedly say so, before fainting. But I have
          never had that experience.

          Oliver Wendell Holmes reminds me:

                    The authors of these poems are all around us, men and women, and no one with a fair
                    amount of human sympathy in his disposition would treat them otherwise than tenderly.
                    Perhaps they do not need tender treatment. How do you know that posterity may not
                    resuscitate these seemingly dead poems, and give their author the immortality for which
                    he longed and labored? It is not every poet who is at once appreciated. Some will tell
                    you that the best poets never are. Who can say that you, dear unappreciated brother
                    or sister, are not one of those whom it is left for after times to discover among the
                    wrecks of the past, and hold up to the admiration of the world?

          What will be, will be. I doubt that I, personally, can extinguish any truly immortal flame. I can't even put out
          a grass fire. Pope wrote:

                    Who shames a Scribler? break one cobweb thro',
                    He spins the slight, self-pleasing thread anew:
                    Destroy his fib or sophistry, in vain,
                    The creature's at his dirty work again,
                    Thron'd in the center of his thin designs,
                    Proud of a vast extent of flimzy lines!
                    Whom have I hurt? has poet yet, or Peer,
                    Lost the arch'd eyebrow, or Parnassian sneer?

          One of the things talented poets and, as Pope calls them, scribblers have in common--which makes them
          hard to distinguish--is an irrepressible, stubborn, almost desperate will to write. Poetry is such an unlikely
          way to gain fame or fortune or any external and practical award that those who go into it at all are beyond
          ordinary forms of dissuasion. I do not say this cynically: it is testimony to the deep-rootedness of our need
          that we write poetry at all; and I believe that bad and good poetry have the same mysterious and powerful
          source. We draw, in fact, on the deepest spring of all--the instinct for survival. Recognizing the futility of
          most means of escaping death, we try to embody our most intimate and valuable and essential self in
          language, to shape that language to endure beyond our physical selves. The scribbler spinning his web
          and fevered Keats on his deathbed are similarly driven to record themselves in shapely phrases, steadier
          than the inconstant heart which gave them birth.

          enter the critic

          Who needs him? Most of us who write have less desire to be instructed than to be recognized. I still, myself,
          fall into the trap and delusion of asking people for their opinion of my work. I set my face in a studious, receptive
          way and listen. I pretend I am asking for help. But the only opinion I am listening for is one or another form of
          Wow! If a poem "works" for a reader, I am acknowledged--and get a brief bath of celebration. If it does not,
          no amount of fiddling or explaining or justifying is likely to make it work. I may go back to the study to write
          another poem or start again--or I may wait for another reader, more able to respond to what I have done.
          But detailed "criticism" is usually beside the point: it only says, repeatedly, this didn't work for this reader.
          Cutting and pasting won't help.

          I realize that this confession contradicts the dogma of writing teachers. In a sense criticism and revision are
          always helpful, and, certainly, most good poets revise many times. But the best criticism always comes from
          oneself. The scribbler is likely to be so carried away in admiration of the phenomenon of his creativity that he
          is unable to act as critic for himself. But the criticism of others won't reach him either. The good poet learns
          a lot from general discussions of poetry, and "workshop" discussions of specific poems may help sensitize him
          to problems in his own work. But he is not likely to make a good poem out of a bad one by changing words
          and correcting weaknesses critics perceive. After all discussion is over, he will have to start with himself again,
          start from scratch, come up with something new in hopes it will shimmer in wholeness.

          (The opposite, in my experience, is true of prose. Detailed criticism and discussion can often help a writer
          redeem a poor piece with a good idea behind it. But in a poem the conception and performance must be so
          totally of a piece that this whole process is much less helpful.)

          All of which is to say that when people ask for criticism of their poetry they very often are asking for something
          else entirely, such as personal attention, affection, respect--and the poem is a kind of token to sanctify and
          neutralize the request. The poets who clamor for commentary probably do not understand their own needs very
          well. If they get the kind of professional criticism they seem to be requesting, they are only hurt and indignant,
          as one would be who offered a kiss and received a critical analysis of the way he puckered.

          For example, a woman shyly hands me a manuscript, saying, "I don't know if it's poetry or not":

                    'Twas like the dawn,
                    Meeting you.
                    The night had been dark and chill
                    And lonely.
                    Though I could not say it
                    Except with my eyes,
                    For others were there and the rules dictate
                    That girls upon men's will must wait,
                    I felt the warming rays
                    And clarity of vision
                    And communication with another
                    Which brought the joyful thought:
                    "Twas like the dawn.

          Well, if it isn't poetry, most of what people write as poetry isn't poetry. One could quibble about definitions
          forever and never get around to discussing what matters, the human significance and quality of the words on
          the page. When she asks me if it is poetry I think she is really asking for something other than a classification.
          Suppose I answer yes. Suppose I answer no. What will I have told her? What does she really want to know?

          Though I have just met the woman, I make some guesses about her. This writing is not fiction. Probably she
          recently met some fellow and had an instantaneous sense of awakening, of joy, hope and expectation. She
          couldn't let on. Others were around, as the poem says. Moreover she had been conditioned to accept a
          woman's passive role. All she could do was hope he noticed the sparkle in her eye and that he would take
          some initiative. I would further speculate that he did take that initiative. They must have begun dating, perhaps
          became lovers. At some point she felt that it was important to write something down on paper about what
          had happened. Subsequent experience had verified something about that first instant of meeting. She had
          been right in her intuition. It was a kind of dawn.

          My guess is that she has given the poem to him as a way of saying that their relationship is special. And I
          would bet that he got the message. He thought, "She cares. She went to a lot of trouble to write this. And
          there must be something special about me, or magical about our coming together, if she had these feelings
          at the very first moment of our meeting. Something was going on behind that passive face."

          If the poem did all that, it must be a good poem. It served an important function for her and for him. It may
          have provided a little glue (if not cement) for a rewarding relationship. It brought greater clarity and warmth
          to a pair of human beings. Why demand anything more of it?

          Why bring it to a third party, a stranger, and ask if it is poetry? I once thought she wants to know whether
          there is any chance of publishing the poem, as in a magazine. Perhaps she wants to know whether she should
          spend more time writing poetry--completely aside from her relationship with the young man. She may wonder
          whether critics would notice her, whether she might publish a book or books of poetry, be represented in
          anthologies, become a part of literature.

          That is too much freight for the poem to bear. I would point out the virtues of the poem. First of all, it has a
          neat design. The central image is carried through consistently. The three qualities of the night--dark, chill,
          loneliness--are matched by three qualities of the dawn--warmth, clarity, communication. The poem is direct
          and evidently sincere. The rhymed couplet in the middle approaches wittiness.

          On the other hand the poem has certain defects--and these are more difficult to describe, but immensely more
          important in determining whether, for instance, the poem stands a chance of publication and whether the poet
          stands a chance of a professional career in this realm of literature. The defects are difficult to describe in the
          same way that it is difficult to tell a person that he is uninteresting. He may not do anything particularly wrong.
          But he is just dull. Somehow he doesn't matter--at least to you. How can you tell him that? While this poem
          can be tremendously meaningful and even exciting as communication between two people, the odds are that
          it will not much interest a wider audience at all.

          Why? I can point to some specifics, but I am not sure that, in sum total, they answer that question. For
          example almost any poem which uses a contrast between night and dawn as its central metaphor is doomed.
          The idea is simply too easy, too often used. (But, one may object, if it is used that often, it must have some
          universal appeal!) The poem is too prosy: it just says plainly what it means. (But, says the objector, you just
          called its directness and sincerity virtues.) Archaic devices such as "'Twas" and the inversion in the eighth
          line (that is, use of an unidiomatic word order to make the rhyme come out) mark the poem as amateurish.
          It is extremely difficult to make abstractions such as "clarity" and "communication" work in a poem. The
          cleverness of the couplet is, in the first place, not all that clever, and, in the second, is out of keeping with
          the tone of the rest of the poem. Nothing interesting is done with rhythm, with line division, with imagery.
          The basic idea is commonplace.

          But what do these criticisms mean in regard to the question being asked? Each criterion can be argued: a case
          can be made for plainness, for mixed tonality, for dwelling on the commonplace, etc. But arguing over such
          details is beside the point. Just as you can't argue a person into liking you by justifying the length of your nose
          or your lack of humor or your paunch, you can't save a poem by defending its parts. If it doesn't work, it
          doesn't work. This poem probably worked for its one-man intended audience. It doesn't work for me, and I
          would guess it would not work for most readers, who would find it pleasant, inoffensive, but not memorable.
          I would guess it would not work for most editors who simply have too many poems on their desks, competing
          for the same space, which have more sparkle, profundity, individual style, which are more moving or amusing
          or just plain more interesting.

          For years I responded very stupidly to such questions as this woman raised. I tried to advise such people
          as though they had intentions of revising the poem or writing other poems for the market. That is not only
          hopeless, but is very punishing for the person who has to sit and listen to herself being measured against
          Sylvia Plath or Edna St. Vincent Millay or Emily Dickinson. For the truth is--though she would never say this
          nor can one say it to her--she has no serious intention of writing poetry which can be evaluated as literature
          or even for publication.

          An easy dodge is to say she has no talent. I don't believe that. Does she have talent as a thief, as a whore,
          as a welder? She could probably do very well at all those vocations, and at being a poet, too, if she really
          wanted to; but she doesn't. Consequently the advice I might give her about becoming a better poet would
          fall on deaf ears.

          But somehow it is easier for a woman to admit that she has no serious intention of becoming a thief, whore
          or welder than that she has no serious intention of becoming a poet. This woman was using poetry as a means
          of reaching or searching for something else, something which is difficult for her to understand or name.

          She gives us the clue in the poem when she says that "rules dictate/That girls upon men's will must wait." What
          she seeks is love, recognition, approval--not of her poetry but of herself. But the rules of society have made
          it necessary for her to be devious. This is true not only for girls. I have learned that society often disapproves
          of direct expression of needs and desires. I cannot get what I want by asking, by being honest. It is very difficult
          even to be honest with myself about my needs. The needs and desires are real and powerful, however, and I
          engage in all variety of games to achieve them.

          So I do not blame her for asking me if her poem is really poetry. She is not a fool. She is not dishonest--except
          in the way most of us are dishonest, inescapably. Nor do I want to hurt her. I especially do not want to score
          some mythical points in some mythical game by demonstrating to her my superior knowledge of poetry.

          What do I say to her, however? (For she will come; she will come again; they come to me in droves with
          such poems and such confusions.) What I can do is accept the token for what it is--a way of gaining entry.
          Yes, I know what it feels like to want to write a poem about what you are feeling. I know how good it feels
          to give expression some form, some dignity, some beauty. I know how language itself is beguiling, and how
          one is drawn on and satisfied by the exercise of imagination. I know how art can be a way of storing up
          something of semi-permanence against the transient and ephemeral quality of life and, especially, tender
          relationships. I know what it feels like to want to be respected by others, even strangers, even poet-critic-
          writer-professor types like myself. I know especially how frustrating it is to know that "rules dictate" that we
          not speak out what we are and what we feel. I know the little spurt of satisfaction that comes of making
          that rhyme, awkward as it may be. I say these things honestly--not because I know they are what she wants
          to hear, but because I identify with her and believe that such mutual affirmation is the most important thing
          we can do for one another.

          But if she wants my severity, she should come again and give me the freedom to exercise it. Real artists,
          real poets, are not hurt by negative criticism; they learn how to ignore what is irrelevant to their vision,
          what is superficial and merely mean, and to hear that which will help them do better work. The need for
          survival teaches them these listening skills. Especially, they do not need to ask whether what they write is
          poetry. It is what it is. It is what it has to be. That is not to say it cannot be improved. The comments of
          others who understand the basic vision and who share a love of fine craft and profound poetry can be
          especially helpful. But the one thing they know as surely as they know their own hunger is that what they
          are doing is essentially necessary and right, whether one chooses to call it poetry or not.

          Most pathetic are those so deeply confused that they have put a couple of thousand dollars or more into a
          subsidy press edition of their works. (To have one's work privately printed-- by a printer, not a "publisher"--
          is quite another matter: Many good poets do this regularly.) I receive weekly three or four such handsome
          hardbound books (and many pamphlets). Usually they are inscribed somewhat as follows: "Dear Dr. Judson,
          I have long admired your column and hope these modest efforts bring some joy into your life." I wish I could
          say my heart was big enough to be moved, my leisure sufficient to enable me to respond to such gaspings
          for immortality. I wish I even had bookcase space to store them, but, alas, I can only drop them in the
          wastebasket. It is expensive and sad.

          And the view it evokes of the human condition is sadder still. Who are these poets? I wrote a poem about them:

                         POETRY  EDITOR  AS  MISS  LONELYHEARTS

                         Round the horizon I see silhouettes
                         of sweet old ladies who live with their pets,
                         parents neglected by their children, scholars
                         bullied by schoolmates, men in starchy collars
                         whose daily wisdom always falls among swine,

                         girls who read on Saturday night, fine wine
                         merchants, inmates, shut-ins, neglected wives.
                         Love is a seller's market.  Hope arrives
                         in bundles on my desk, these poems blest
                         with kisses, tears, stamped envelopes--self-addressed.

          Is there not love enough in the world to go around? Have we not succor more sustaining than the printing press
          for people gasping in their loneliness?

          
          
          the publisher's role

          On the other hand, a poet seriously seeking to enter the profession cannot expect compassion, love, or even
          much understanding. Editors are not likely to finish a manuscript--or even a single poem--which begins badly.
          As John Ciardi has said, if a performer plays half a dozen bars badly on the piano, you don't have to listen to a
          whole recital in order to know what to expect of him. Often an editor judges from the first line whether to read
          another--thinking that a poet who turns out one monstrosity is not likely to produce a publishable poem.

          For example, a rather curious collection of poems begins with a line which might cause any professional editor
          to reject the whole packet without further consideration: "From fairest creatures we desire increase." The language
          is abstract, colorless. The stance seems a trifle pompous--telling us what "we" desire. But I am put off most by
          the imprecision of that word increase. He means something like abundance, progeny, reproduction, I gather,
          and increase is simply a vague stab in the general direction. He goes on:

                    From fairest creatures we desire increase,
                    That thereby beauty's rose might never die,
                    But as the riper should by time decrease,
                    His tender heir might bear his memory:

          The rhymes are abominable: die-memory is called an eye-rhyme, which only serves to bring attention to the
          dissimilarity in the sounds of the words; but increase-decrease, an identical rhyme, is much worse. The sure
          sign of an untalented poetaster is the rhyming of words differing only in unstressed prefixes, such as enable-
          unable-able, light-delight, inform-uniform-reform, etc.

          Notice the grammatical imprecision of "beauty's rose." He might mean that the beauty of the rose might never
          die, or that the beautiful rose might never die; but it does not make sense to say that the rose belongs to beauty.
          There is similar awkwardness in the use of riper to mean an old, or aging rose. Decrease, an odd word for
          wither or fade, seems to be used only for the sake of that bad rhyme. Everything--grammar, diction, rhyming,
          imagery--seems wrenched, strained, artificial. We know at once the poet is an amateur--and not likely at this
          stage of his career to produce a publishable poem.

          The complete poem is a sonnet. The next quatrain is this:

                    But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,
                    Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel,
                    Making a famine where abundance lies,
                    Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.

          In spite of his use of the archaic second person forms, we can see that this poet is addicted to many of the
          worst faults of modern poetry. First we notice, in the second line above, rough meter combined with heavy
          f alliteration, resulting in a line almost impossible to pronounce musically. Secondly, as is characteristic of
          much modern poetry, there is a bewildering inconsistency of imagery, or what is commonly called "mixed
          metaphor." In the first line the person addressed is engaged (as to be married) to his own eyes. Ignore
          for a moment the grotesqueness of that fanciful notion and look what becomes of it. Bright suggests light,
          so now this man engaged to his eyes is feeding his "light's flame." Compare that phrase with "beauty's rose,"
          above: does the flame belong to the light, the light to the flame--and what relation has either notion to "bright
          eyes"? The fuel is "self-substantial" in one line--suggesting that it is inexhaustible; but, no, in the next it is
          "Making a famine." The first two lines suggest that he is sustaining himself, the next two that he is destroying
          himself. Fantastic and purely cerebral analogies are piled on one another until they make very little sense
          at all--and bear almost no relation to concrete, felt human experience.

          It would be only fair to show you the conclusion of the poem:

                    Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament
                    And only herald to the gaudy spring,
                    Within thine own bud buriest thy content
                    And, tender churl, makest waste in niggarding
                    Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
                    To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee.

          The man addressed was formerly a rose; now he is a bud, an early bud of springtime. The poet is telling
          him to have an heir to carry on his beauty--unlikely advice to a man, or to a rose, but almost ludicrous
          when addressed to a bud. Notice the confusion in the third line above: content seems to mean contentment,
          and the idea of being contented with oneself is mixed up with that of burying one's attention in oneself--
          which is not a matter of burying contentment. The last line is almost completely obscure--not with the
          difficulty of concept which sometimes characterizes great poetry, but with sheer ineptitude of phrasing,
          which characterizes the posturing of an amateur. The final couplet seems to mean, "Either take pity on the
          world (by perpetuating your beauty in offspring), or you will be the sort of glutton which devours that
          (your Beauty) which belongs to the world. You will devour your beauty until the grave finally devours it."
          That last idea is not actually expressed in the poem at all; I have generously supplied it as the only
          conceivable way of making sense of the poem's last phrase.

          But the general intent of the poem is clear enough--and it is certainly strange. Moreover, the next sixteen
          poems in the collection repeat the same message. A male poet is asking a young man to have children so
          that his beauty can be preserved. It is difficult for any reader to identify with the implied dramatic situation.
          Before we can care about a poem we must recognize in it some valid, humanly important raison d'etre.
          Seventeen sonnets telling a young friend to have children seem merely impertinent.

          No editor is likely to give as much thought and attention to that poem as I have here; it is a clear case of
          premature submission--and it can do a neophyte more harm than he knows, for an editor just might
          remember his name the next time a packet of poems comes in, and brush by it hurriedly. In this case, that
          would be a pity, for I have gone over this collection with some care--and see evidence of what might
          prove to be considerable talent. Even in those first seventeen poems there are phrases and turns suggesting
          latent ability. There is, for example, a certain intensity in this poem, gleaming through its crudities:

          When I do count the clock that tells the time,

          (I must interrupt to point out that the expletive do, simply to fill out meter, is a dead giveaway of the
          amateur poet.)

                    When I do count the clock that tells the time,
                    And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;
                    When I behold the violet past prime,
                    And sable curls all silver'd o'er with white;
                    When lofty trees I see barren of leaves
                    Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,
                    And summer's green all girded up in sheaves
                    Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard,
                    Then of thy beauty do I question make,
                    That thou among the wastes of time must go,
                    Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake
                    And die as fast as they see others grow;
                    And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defense
                    Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.

          But at critical points the poem simply fails to come across. "Past prime" gives us no vivid image of the
          wilting violet. Silver and white either fight each other or are redundant in the fourth line. I like that mid-line
          trochee, barren, in the fifth line--but notice the awkward did in the sixth. The image of the frost-covered
          sheaves of grain in the seventh and eighth lines is the strongest detail in the poem--and a good conclusion
          for the octave. But how pathetic the poem becomes when it returns to the dreary theme running through
          these poems--the problem of the survival of the young man's beauty. "Do I question make" is a completely
          impotent and clumsy phrase for introducing the poet's concern. The sestet limps into an absurd couplet.
          The enjambment, or runover line, leading to "Save breed" is a powerful device, but it only points up the
          awkwardness of "breed" used in this sense. An image of screaming youngsters is evoked, hurling taunts
          at Time as he carries off the young man. The use of brave in two senses (in lines two and fourteen) seems
          to be merely careless, not a meaningful association. And, of course, braving time is not, after all, a defense
          against his taking one hence; the problem the poem introduces remains unresolved.

          Finally the poet gives up on the idea of the young man's immortalizing himself through progeny and decides,
          rather vaingloriously, that his own poetry will immortalize his friend's beauty. Here is one The New Yorker
          should print with a sarcastic remark about the short time remaining for men to breathe and see:

                    Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
                    Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
                    Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
                    And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
                    Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
                    And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
                    And every fair from fair sometime declines,
                    By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
                    But thy eternal summer shall not fade
                    Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
                    Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
                    When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
                    So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
                    So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

          If the young man has to depend upon progeny or such verse as this to make him immortal, he'd better stick
          to breeding! Such sentimental words as "lovely" and "darling" are the weak efforts of the amateur to make up
          for lack of craft with feeling and sincerity. "Short a date" is wordy and inexact. The "eye of heaven" for sun is
          a trite circumlocution. "And every fair from fair"--meaning something like "every fair thing from its state of
          fairness"--is one of those pieces of cleverness which a good poet learns not to be tempted by. I know what
          it means to trim a sail, but I cannot imagine what an untrimmed course is. And what does it mean to grow
          to time in eternal lines? "So long lives this"? I wouldn't count on it!

          One would gather that this collection, which consists of 154 poems (all of them presumably intended as
          sonnets, though one has only twelve lines and one is in tetrameter) was written over a period of years. A kind
          of narrative is implied. The first 126 sonnets appear all to be addressed to this tiresome young man, who
          emerges as extremely vain, cold and disloyal. It is implied that the poet is a playwright--and is jealous of
          another poet and/or playwright, who is also writing poetry to the young man. He is also jealous--both ways--
          of his mistress, who seems to be having an affair with the young man. It is a sordid tale which might make a
          better novel than material for a sonnet sequence, but our concern is with poetry and the evidence of poetic
          talent buried in a collection of largely misbegotten poems. There is, indeed, reason to believe that the poet
          was maturing both as an artist and a man during the period in which the poems were written. The man who
          wrote the following, for example, may yet develop true poetic craftsmanship:

                    When my love swears that she is made of truth
                    I do believe her, though I know she lies,
                    That she might think me some untutor'd youth,
                    Unlearned in the world's false subleties.
                    Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
                    Although she knows my days are past the best,
                    Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue:
                    On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed.
                    But wherefore says she not she is unjust?
                    And wherefore say not I that I am old?
                    O, love's best habit is in seeming trust,
                    And age in love loves not to have years told:
                    Therefore I lie with her and she with me,
                    And in our faults by lies we flatter'd be.

          The paradoxes are piled skillfully upon one another to create the fabric of deception, self-deception,
          hypocrisy and disgust climaxed by that grossly simple pun on lie, capturing the pathetic sensual dependency
          of the lovers upon one another which makes them endure their vain flatteries. Compared with the other sonnets
          we have looked at, the language here is relatively plain and idiomatic, the diction unadorned but accurate. For
          me the eye-rhyme of lies and subleties works effectively, as it draws out the last syllable of the second word
          in a sinister hiss. The weak phrase, "past the best," seems right to me, also--a kind of frank understatement
          which disguises as it reveals the poet's melancholy acceptance of his age. "Unjust" is somewhat strained--
          meaning "disloyal." And the inversions--"says she not" and "say I not"--are rhetorical flourishes which seem
          slightly out-of-place in the context of the relaxed, natural language of most of the poem. "Habit"--meaning
          both customary behavior and garment--enriches the implications.. And the ingenious "love loves" does not
          seem mere cleverness; it is saved by its bitter tone. A better poet would try to figure out a way to avoid the
          final inversion, "flatter'd be," which is even ungrammatical (it should be flatter'd are"). But the defects are
          minor in a poem which brilliantly illuminates the poignancy and Weltschmerz of illicit love. The word love
          of the first and eleventh lines rings hollowly. Think, thinking and thinks bang against one another with a
          sickening echo reminiscent of Othello:

                    Othello. What dost thou think?
                    Iago. Think, my lord!
                    Othello. Think, my lord! By Heaven, he echoes me
                    As if there were some monster in his thought
                    Too hideous to be shown. Thou dost mean something.

          Simply and simple play against one another, glimpses of the innocence which lies beyond the web and
          can only be feigned in its trammels. Were this poem to come to me in an envelope, unencumbered by the
          lumbering efforts which surround it in this collection, I would probably write the author encouragingly and
          suggest that with a few revisions it might be published.

          Imagine my surprise, then, to discover that not only this poem, but the entire collection, had been published in
          1609 (which, at least, explained the poet's fondness for archaic forms). We have learned a great deal about
          poetry in the intervening years, and taste has been considerably refined. Perhaps, too, less poetry was written
          in those days; publishers may have been forced by shortage to use material they would not
          consider today.