Yet mediocre poetry is not so bad as mediocre
sculpture. The mediocre in poetry is merely fatuous; in
sculpture, it is ugly. Generations to come will have to look
at Coppini's monstrosity in front of the Alamo; it can't rot
down or burn up. Volumes of worthless verse, most of it
printed at the expense of the versifiers, hardly come to
sight, and before long they disappear from existence except
for copies religiously preserved in public libraries.
Weak fiction goes the same way. But a good deal of very bad
prose in the nonfiction field has some value. In an otherwise
dull book there may be a solitary anecdote, an isolated
observation on a skunk, a single gesture of some human being
otherwise highly unimportant, one salty phrase, a side glimpse
into the human comedy. If poetry is not good, it is positively
nothing.
The earliest poet of historical consequence the only form of
his poetical consequence--of the Southwest was Mirabeau
Buonaparte Lamar. He led the Texas cavalry at San Jacinto,
became president of the Republic of Texas, organized the
futile Santa Fe Expedition, gathered up six volumes of notes
and letters for a history of Texas that might have been as
raw-meat realistic as anything in Zola or Tolstoy.
Pages:
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283