THE FLOOD TIDE
The red in me
Lives too near my throat.
My heart is choked with blood,
And a rage drives it upward
As the moon drags the flood tide
Raging
Across the marshes.
I will dance
Somberly,
In a ritual
Terrible and soothing;
I will dance that I may not
Tear out his throat
In murder.
THE DANCE
With wide flung arms,
With feet clinging to the earth
I will dance.
My breath sobs in my belly
For an old sorrow that has put out the sun,
An old, furious sorrow ...
I will grin,
I will bare my gums and grin
Like a grey wolf who has come upon a bear.
The Poetry of Paul Fort
Richard Aldington
It is said that there are only three honors in the world really worth accepting. The first is that of Pope of Rome, the second Prime Minister of England and the third Prince des Poètes. Monsieur Paul Fort is Prince des poètes, a sort of unofficial title conferred upon him by the affection and admiration of the young poets of Paris. Paul Verlaine, Stephen Mallarmé and Leon Dierx were M. Fort’s successors, and in the ballot which took place when he was elected M. Henry de Régnier was an excellent second.
Paul Fort is indeed a prince of poets, the essence and the type of the poetic personality, princely in the extraordinary generosity with which he scatters largess of poetry and princely in his disdain for any occupation but that of poet. If I were king of England I believe I would ask Paul Fort to be my Prime Minister, but he would refuse, for he has a better and more interesting kingdom of his own. He should have been Grand Vizier to Haroun-al-Raschid, and when the Sultan went to war or to love, when he was idle or busy, vainglorious or craven, happy or sad, wanton or grave, M. Fort, Grand Vizier, would have made a poem to express or correct the Sultan’s mood.
Critics are fond of making epigrams on Paul Fort. They say he is “genius pure and simple”; that he has a nature continually active and awake. It would be simpler to say he is a poet. Everything he lives, everything he sees, everything he hears or smells or touches or experiences is matter for poetry. Everything from Louis XI. to the “joli crottin d’or” goes into his varied subtle rhythms. He is the only living poet who can gracefully introduce his own name into a poem without appearing ridiculous. He is continually interested in himself and notes with pleasure the interest of others:
“Cinq, six, sept, huit enfants me suivent très curieux du long nez éclairant la cape au noir velours, ‘de ce monsieur tombé de la lune, avec des yeux de merlan frit!’ dit l’un d’entre eux.”
He writes that in the midst of a poem describing a visit to the village of Coucy-le-Chateau. I have no doubt thousands of other people have been to Coucy-le-Chateau, among them many poets, but Paul Fort is the first to make a poem of it:
Les sires d’autrefois portaient: Fascé de vair et de gueules. Pour supports: deux lions d’or. Au cimier: un lion issu du même. — Or voici que, premier, notre gai souverain, missire le soleil,
porte un écu vivant! “Sur champ de vert gazon, Paul Fort couché près d’une amoureuse Suzon mêle distraitement cent douze violettes à sa barbe, et Suzon rêve sous sa voilette.”
There you have the “familiar style” over which so many gallons of ink have been shed. Observe how perfectly naturally the author speaks of “Paul Fort”; can you hear Tennyson doing it, or Keats or Francis Thompson or the disciples of Brunetière? One might make a pleasant little literary sketch on poets who possess the familiar style to the extent of using their own names in their verse. Thus, that admirable man, Browning:
And Robert Browning, you writer of plays,
Here’s a subject made to your hand.
And old Walt:
I, Walt Whitman, a Cosmos, turbulent, fleshly, sensual,
Eating, drinking and breeding.
It is, at least, agreeable to find poets who consider themselves as human beings instead of very inflated, somewhat simian demi-gods. Better a thousand times have desperate vulgarity than the New England pose au Longfellow and Emerson, or the still more horrible old England pose au Wordsworth, Tennyson, Shelley. Heaven preserve me from saying M. Fort is vulgar, but if to hate pomposity and moral pretentiousness be vulgar, then let us be vulgar, as M. Fort is. Better be obscene than a ninny.
Those who have not read M. Fort’s work and who suspect from the foregoing quotations that he is really a prose writer impudently palming off his productions as “sweet poesy,” are asked to read the following poem with attention: