Comments by the Poets'
E. E. CU MMINGS:
\
IS SOMETHING WRONG?~"ls something wrong with America's
so called creative artists? Why don'{our poets andpaihters and
composers and so forth glorify the war effort? Are they Good
Americans or are they not?" . ' . ; .
First: are they Good Americans. . . . .,'
when I was a boy, Good Americans were...:..believe it. or don't
"':"adoring the Japanese and loathing the Russians; now, Good
Americans ar~ adoring the Russians and loathing the Japanese.
Furth~rmore (in case you were. born yesterday) yesterd~y Good
Amencans wereadonng the Fmns; today Good Amencans are
either loathing the Finns or completely forgetting that FinIand
exists. Not even the fact that twice during my lifetime Good Americans
have succeeded in disliking the Germans Can convince me
that any human being (such as an artist) is a Good American:
Second: why don't they glorify ....
when you confuse art with propaganda, you confuse an act !of
God with something which can be turned on and off like the hot
water faucet. If "God" means nothing to you (or less than nothing)
I'll cheerfully substitute one of your own favorite words,
"freedom." You confuse freedom-the only freedom-with absolute
tyranny. Let me, incidentally, opine that absolute tyranny is what
most of you are really after; that yout socalled ideal isn't America
at all and never was America at all: that you'll never' be satisfied
until what Father Abraham called "a new nation, conceived i in
liberty" becomes just another subhuman superstate (like the
"great freedom-loving democracy" of Comrade Stalin) where:an
artist-or any other human being-either does as he's told or turns
into fertilizer. '
Third: is something wrong ... '. J
all over a socalled world, hundreds of millions of servile and insolent
inhuman unbeings are busily rolling and unrolling in the
enlightenment of propaganda. So what? There are still a few erect
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,}: .h~~apbeings ~ the so called world. Proudly and humbly, I say to·
;:v .,;:.tliese' human bemgs:
~;:,':',! "0 my fellow citizens, many an honest man believes a lie.
~:(;,rhoughyou are as honest as the day, fear and hate the liar. Fear
:,,;it~ndhate him when he should be feared and hated: now. Fear and
;::·i.nh~~~ him where he should be fe.are.d and hated: in yourselves.
'~p::' Do no~ hate and fear .the artist ~ yourselves, my fellow citizens.
~~;:) ~onour him. and love hun. Love hIm truly-do not try to possess
:!;,hIm. Trust him as nobly as you trust tomorrow.
ttit>;,,"Only the artist in yourselves is more truthful than the night."
i;r{~ji. .'
:·'::;'·,GEOFFREY GRIGSON:
f:> { ~i. j ,
.j·:'\·WAR-You ask about war: one must be self-deluded if one sim~'
Jrp¥es so~ething so muddled as a 20th century compl~te war into
\~,:!t ca,uses, _eIth~r good or bad .. The only clear thing that I can see is
,,<,
itter .conten;tpt.· time, due to their confrontation of the holocaustic
and distaste for the bureaucracy and class-dlstmctlOn WIth WhICh, of the present conflict. The imponderables of this.
the British Army is permeated. In the Army I had the useful ex-, are unresolvable. I am inclined to believe that the man who
perience of seeing this bureaucracy and class-distinction from the . : ' ,write poetry will write it. The war may present or force a
bottom of the social scale; in civilian life I'm halfway up it. These, .itrriay bring out a poet, or shock him into insensibility of .
two feelings, of comradeship and bitterness, I've tried to put into, ',.. It may kill him; Or gern1inate the best war poems for exsome
poems. . '. .years after the event.
i:War is another kind of show than the peace show, intractable,
. :ingrained in man's nature. It is the evil standing up. A
Lieut.-Commander RICHARD EBERHART: ,may. cope with these examples, as he can with the natural
of normal peacetime phenomena. The best war poetry will
A NOTE ON WAR POETRY -Generalizations about war' I 1*>.L,l .... ~'''_''u·u· war, just as it transcends nationalistic or sectarian boundpoetry
are easy and ~ang~rous to ~ake. War len~s the poet obJet~s .which is to say that the best war poetry will have to be of the
upon which to exerCIse hIS perceptlOns. These objects .are.multifan- Like God, it will have to be on both sides, or on none. It
ous; they mayor may not be seized upon: They may Impmge up~n ' . applicable to different peoples and centuries.
the sensibility in curious. and ~iffering ",:"ays. It cannot be .sald· universality of utterance I claim for the best war poetry
whether the poetry res~ltmg. will ,be s~penort? poetry conceIVed to make it less about war than about man. Therefore, it is
against other sets of objects, m ot,het tImes. Objects the,msel~es ~re ' ..... the spirit; judgment upon it cannot be limited to its context,
loose determinants; the poem wIll result from endless subjectIve 'must run the whole gamut of poetical possibilities. It is the lack
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