Criticism of his work only strengthened his conviction
that it was of a high order. Letters to his father and to his wife
indicate his positive conviction that he was meeting with the misunderstanding
that every great artist has met since the world began:
"Let my name perish, -- the poetry is good poetry and the music is good music,
and beauty dieth not, and the heart that needs it will find it."
"I KNOW, through the fiercest tests of life, that I am in soul,
and shall be in life and utterance, a great poet," he said again.
Accordingly he hoped that he would accomplish something different
from the popular poetry of the period. Time and again he spoke
of "the feeble magazine lyrics" of his time. "This is the kind of poetry
that is technically called culture poetry, yet it is in reality
the product of a WANT of culture. If these gentlemen and ladies would read
the old English poetry . . . they could never be content to put forth
these little diffuse prettinesses and dandy kickshaws of verse." And again:
"In looking around at the publications of the younger American poets,
I am struck with the circumstance that none of them even ATTEMPT
anything great. . . . Hence the endless multiplications of those
little feeble magazine lyrics which we all know: consisting of
one minute idea each, which is put in the last line of the fourth verse,
the other three verses and three lines being mere surplusage."
His characterizations of contemporary poetry are strikingly like
those of Walt Whitman.
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