he seems to forget that there is more in that poem than its imagism—as we would call it now; that it is record of a personal experience, that is not only a trespass on the domain of the painter (to speak as if we agreed with our critic) but that it is a personal reaction to the picture painted in those words, that it tells us something that no mere picture could do. The poem, in fact, is a picture plus a story of the effect of the picture upon a human soul.
But the point in which I agree with Professor Gass is that—whatever the ultimate purpose of literature, including the lyric; whether, as he says, it is “a reflection of human nature, intellectual in its mode, critical in its spirit, and moral in its function”; or whether it is legitimate to regard its rhythms in words and “secondary” connotations and associations of words as materials for an art rather than for a criticism of life—the point beyond all this that I think fundamental is that literature does what it does—inform, enlighten, or transport—by understandable statement.
Certainly all appreciation of literature that dares to voice itself—that is all criticism—must proceed on this supposition, and it is just this supposition that is flouted by some of Mr. Bodenheim’s poems.
Take the following, for instance:
TO ——
You are a broad, growing sieve.
Men and women come to you to loosen your supple frame,
And weave another slim square into you—
Or perhaps a blue oblong, a saffron circle.
People fling their powdered souls at you: