When Winter Comes to Main Street

by Grant M. Overton

i

I have to tell about a number of poets and, regarding poets, I agree with a very clever woman I know who declares that poetry is the most personal of the arts and who further says that it is manifestly inadequate to talk about a poet’s work without giving a sample of his poetry. So, generally, I shall quote one of the shorter poems or a passage from a longer poem.

John Dos Passos, known for Three Soldiers and for Rosinante to the Road Again, will be still more variously known to those who read his book of verse, A Pushcart at the Curb. This book bears a relation to Rosinante, the contents grouping themselves under these general headings:

Winter in Castile Nights by Bassano Translations from the Spanish of Antonio Machado Vagones de Tercera Quai de la Tournelle Of Foreign Travel Phases of the Moon

I will select for quotation the sixth or final poem dedicated to A. K. McC. from the section entitled “Quai de la Tournelle,”

This is a garden where through the russet mist of clustered trees and strewn November leaves, they crunch with vainglorious heels of ancient vermilion the dry dead of spent summer’s greens, and stalk with mincing sceptic steps, and sound of snuffboxes snapping to the capping of an epigram, in fluffy attar-scented wigs ... the exquisite Augustans.

Christopher Morley is too well-known as a poet to require any explicit account in this place. I shall remind you of the pleasure of reading him by quoting the “Song For a Little House” from his book, The Rocking Horse, and also a short verse from his Translations from the Chinese.

I’m glad our house is a little house, Not too tall nor too wide: I’m glad the hovering butterflies Feel free to come inside. Our little house is a friendly house, It is not shy or vain; It gossips with the talking trees, And makes friends with the rain. And quick leaves cast a shimmer of green, Against our whited walls, And in the phlox, the courteous bees, Are paying duty calls.