He represents the
critical awareness of life that has come to modern fiction of
the Southwest, in contrast to the sterile action, without
creation of character, in most older fiction of the region.
_33_
Poetry and Drama
"KNOWLEDGE itself is power," Sir Francis Bacon wrote in
classical Latin, and in abbreviated form the proverb became a
familiar in households and universities alike. But knowledge
of what? There is no power in knowledge of mediocre verse.
I had rather flunk my Wasserman test
Than read a poem by Edgar A. Guest.
The power of great poetry lies not in knowledge of it but in
assimilation of it. Most talk about poetry is vacuous. Poetry
can pass no power into any human being unless it itself has
power--power of beauty, truth, wit, humor, pathos, satire,
worship, and other attributes, always through form. No poor
poetry is worth reading. Taste for the best makes the other
kind insipid.
Compared with America's best poetry, most poetry of the
Southwest is as mediocre as American poetry in the mass is as
compared with the great body of English poetry between Chaucer
and Masefield.
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