Of Modern Poetry

Parts of a World (1942)

The poem of the mind in the act of findingWhat will suffice. It has not always hadTo find: the scene was set; it repeated whatWas in the script.Then the theatre was changedTo something else. Its past was a souvenir.

It has to be living, to learn the speech of the place.It has to face the men of the time and to meetThe women of the time. It has to think about warAnd it has to find what will suffice. It hasTo construct a new stage. It has to be on that stage,And, like an insatiable actor, slowly andWith meditation, speak words that in the ear,In the delicatest ear of the mind, repeat,Exactly, that which it wants to hear, at the soundOf which, an invisible audience listens,Not to the play, but to itself, expressedIn an emotion as of two people, as of twoEmotions becoming one. The actor isA metaphysician in the dark, twangingAn instrument, twanging a wiry string that givesSounds passing through sudden rightnesses, whollyContaining the mind, below which it cannot descend,Beyond which it has no will to rise.It mustBe the finding of a satisfaction, and mayBe of a man skating, a woman dancing, a womanCombing. The poem of the act of the mind.

“Of Modern Poetry” From Parts of a World (1942)