-23_Recent English Poetry – 3.htm chapter XXII   Recent English Poetry - 3 THE rhythmic change which distinguishes the new poetry, may not be easy to seize at the first hearing, for it is a subtle thing in its spirit more than in its body, commencing only and obscured by the outward adherence to the apparent turn-out and method of older forms; but there is a change too, more readily tangible, in the language of this poetry, in that fusion of a concentrated substance of the idea and a transmuting essence of the speech which we mean by poetic style. But here too, if we would understand in its issues the evolution of poetic speech in a language, it is on the subtler things of the spirit, the

SECTION  THREE Poetic Rhythm and Technique TWO FACTORS IN POETIC RHYTHM      1 If your purpose is to acquire not only metrical skill but the sense and the power of rhythm, to study the poets may do something, but not all. There are two factors in poetic rhythm, — there is the technique (the variation of movement without spoiling the fundamental structure of the metre, right management of vowel and consonantal assonances and dissonances, the masterful combination of the musical element of stress with the less obvious element of quantity, etc.), and there is the secret soul of rhythm which uses but exceeds these things. The first you can learn, i

-08_The Character of English Poetry – 1.htm CHAPTER VII The  Character  of  English  Poetry  -  1 OF ALL the modern European tongues the English language, I think. It may be said without serious doubt; has produced the most rich and naturally powerful poetry, the most lavish of energy and innate genius. The unfettered play of poetic energy and power has been here the most abundant and brought forth the most constantly brilliant fruits. And yet it is curious to note that English poetry and literature have been a far less effective force in the shaping of European culture than those of other tongues inferior actually in natural poetic and creative energy. At least they have had to wait till quite

I THE FUTURE POETRY II LETTERS ON POETRY, LITERATURE AND ART CHAPTER I Introductory IT IS not often that we see published in India literary criticism which is of the first order, at once discerning and suggestive, criticism which forces us both to see and think. A book which recently I have read and more than once repressed with a yet unexhausted pleasure and fruitfulness, Mr. James Cousins' New Ways in English Literature, is eminently of this kind. It raises thought which goes beyond the strict limits of the author's subject and suggests the whole question of the future of poetry in the age which is coming upon us, the higher functions

-45_Poets–Mystics–Intellectuals.htm SECTION TEN Poets – Mystics – Intellectuals THE POET, THE YOGI AND THE RISHI 1 It is quite natural for the poets to vaunt their métier as the highest reach of human capacity and themselves as the top of creation, it is also natural for the intellectuals to run down the Yogi or the Rishi who claims to reach a higher consciousness than that which they conceive to be the summit of human achievement. The poet lives still in the mind and is not yet a spiritual seer, but he repre­sents to the human intellect the highest point of mental seership where the imagination tries to figure and embody in words its in­tuition of things, though that stands fa

-18_The Poets of the Dawn – 2.htm CHAPTER XVII The Poets of the Dawn – 2             A POETRY whose task is to render truth of the Spirit by passing behind the appearances of the sense and the intellect to their spiritual reality, is in fact attempting a work for which no characteristic power of language has been discovered, —except the symbolic, but the old once established symbols will no longer entirely serve, and the method itself is not now sufficient for the need, —no traditional form of presentation native to the substance, no recognized method of treatment or approach, or none at once sufficiently wide and subtle, personal and universal for the modern mind. In the past indeed there

SECTION EIGHT Beauty and Art BEAUTY 1 Beauty is the special divine Manifestation in the physical as Truth is in the mind. Love in the heart. Power in the vital. Supra-mental beauty is the highest divine beauty manifesting in Matter. 19.2.1934 2 Beauty is the way in which the physical expresses the Divine — but the principle and law of Beauty is something inward and spiritual and expresses itself through the form. 23.8.1933 SUPRAMENTAL ACTION AND BEAUTY Yes—supermind action is direct, spontaneous and automatic like that of inframental Nature—the difference is that it is perfectly conscious. As there is no disagreement or strife wi

-17_The Poets of the Dawn – 1.htm CHAPTER   XVI The Poets of the Dawn – 1             THE superiority if the English poets who lead the way into the modern age is that sudden almost unaccountable spiritual impulse, insistent but vague in some, strong but limited in one or two, splendid and supreme in its rare moments of vision and clarity, which breaks out from their normal poetic mentality and strives constantly to lift their thought and imagination to its own heights, a spirit or Daemon who does not seem to trouble at all with his voice or his oestrus the contemporary poets of continental Europe. But they have no clearly seen or no firmly based constant idea of the greater work which thi

SECTION SIX Indo-English Poetry – Current Use of English Language ACHIEVEMENT OF INDO-ENGLISH POETRY—LITERARY DECADENCE IN EUROPE 1 The idea that Indians cannot succeed in English poetry is very much in the air just now but it cannot be taken as absolutely valid. Toru Dutt and Romesh of the same ilk prove nothing; Toru Dutt was an accomplished verse-builder with a delicate talent and some outbreaks of genius and she wrote things that were attractive and sometimes something that had a strong energy of language and a rhythmic force. Romesh was a smart imitator of English poetry of the second or third rank. What he wrote, if written by an Englishman, might not

section five Modern Poetry CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH POETRY 1 I admit I have not read as much of "modern" (contemporary) poetry as I should have — but the little I have is mostly of the same fundamental quality. It is very carefully written and versi­fied, often recherché  in thought and expression; it lacks only two things, the inspired phrase and inevitable word and the rhythm that keeps a poem for ever alive. Speech carefully studied and made as perfect as it can be without reaching to inspi­ration, verse as good as verse can be without rising to inspired rhythm — there seem to be an extraordinary number of poets writing like this in England now.... It is not