THE UNITED AMATEUR MARCH 1921
Winifred Virginia Jackson: A "Different" Poetess
H. P. LOVECRAFT
In these days of unrestrained license in poetry, it would at first sightseem difficult to single out any one bard as the possessor of ideas andmodes of expression so unique and original that the overworked adjective"different" is merited. Every poetaster of the modern school claims tobe "different," and bases his claim to celebrity upon this "difference";an effect usually achieved by the adoption of a harsh, amorphous style,and a tone of analytical, introspective subjectivity so individual thatall the common and universal elements of beauty and poetry are excluded.Indeed, eccentricity has come so completely into fashion, that he whofollows up the wildest vagaries is actually the least different from thehectic scribbling throng about him.
But notwithstanding this malady of the times, there does remain among usan ample field for genius and artistic distinctiveness. The laws ofhuman thought are unchangeable, and whenever there is born a soulattuned to real harmony, and inspired by that rare sensitiveness whichenables it to feel and express the latent beauty and hiddenrelationships of Nature, the world receives a new poet. Such an one willof necessity break through the decadent customs of the period; andfalling back to the forms of true melody, sing a spontaneous song whichcan not help being original, because it represents the unforced reactionof a keen and delicate mind to the panorama of life. And when thisreaction is enabled to bring out in the simplest and most beautifulstyle fancies and images which the world has not received or notedbefore, we are justified in claiming that the bard is "different."
Such a bard is Winifred Virginia Jackson, whose poetry has for six yearsbeen the pride of the United Amateur Press Association. Born in Maine,and through childhood accustomed to the mystical spell of the ancientNew-England countryside, Miss Jackson for a long period quietly andunconsciously absorbed a prodigious store of beauty and phantasy fromlife. Having no design to become a poet, she accepted these etherealgifts as a matter of course; until about a decade ago they manifestedthemselves in a burst of spontaneous melody which can best be describedas a sheer overflowing of delightful dreams and pictures from a mindfilled to the brim with poetic loveliness. Since that time Miss Jacksonhas written vast quantities of verse; always rich and musical, and ifone may speak in paradox, always artless with supreme art. None of thesepoems is in any sense premeditated or consciously composed; they aremore like visions of the fancy, instantaneously photographed for theperception of others, and unerringly framed in the most appropriatemetrical medium.
When we peruse the poetry of Miss Jackson we are impressed first by itsamazing variety, and almost as quickly by a certain distinctive qualitywhich gives all the varied specimens a kind of homogeneity. As weanalyse our impressions, we find that both of these qualities have acommon source--the complete objectivity and almost magical imaginationof supreme genius. Objectivity and imagination, the gifts of the epicbards of classical antiquity, are today the rarest of blessings. We livein an age of morbid emotion and introspectiveness; wherein the poets,such as they are, have sunk to the level of mere pathologists engaged inthe dissection of their own ultra-sophisticated spirits. The fresh touchof Nature is lost to the majority, and rhymesters rant endlessly andrealistically about the relation of man to his fellows and to himself;overlooking the real foundations of art and beauty--wonder, and man'srelation to the unknown cosmos. But Miss Jackson is not of the majority,and has not overlooked these things. In her the ancient and unspoiledbard is refulgently reincarnated; and with an amazing universality andfreedom from self-consciousness she suppresses the ego completely,delineating Nature's diverse moods and aspects with an impersonalfidelity and delicacy which form the delight of the discriminatingreader, and the despair of the stupid critic who works by rule andformula rather than by brain. There is no medium which the spirit ofMiss Jackson can not inhabit. The same mind which reflects the daintiestand most gorgeous phantasies of the faery world, or furnishes the mostfinely wrought pictures or refined pathos and sentiment, can abruptlytake up its abode in some remote Maine timber region and pour out such awild, virile chantey of the woods and the river that we seem to glimpsethe singer as the huskiest of a tangle-bearded, fight-scarred,loud-shouting logging crew sprawling about a pine campfire.
A critic has grouped the poetical work of Miss Jackson into six classes:Lyrics of ideal beauty, including delightful Nature-poems replete withlocal colour; delicate amatory lyrics; rural dialect lyrics and vigorouscolloquial pieces; poems of sparkling optimism; child verse; and poemsof potent terror and dark suggestion. "With her," he adds, "sordidrealism has no place; and her poems glow with a subtle touch of thefanciful and the supernatural which is well sustained by tasteful andunusual word-combinations, images, and onomatopoetic effects." Thisestimate is confirmed by the latest productions of the poetess, as weshall endeavour to show by certain specimens lately published or aboutto be published, selected almost at random:
"The Bonnet" is a characteristic bit of Jacksonian delicacy andoriginality. We here behold a sustained metaphor of that striking typewhich the author so frequently creates; a metaphor which draws on allNature and the unseen world for its basis, and whose analogies are justthe ones which please us most, yet which our own minds are never finelyattuned enough to conceive unaided. The swain in the poem tells of hisintention to make a bonnet for his chosen nymph to wear. He will fashionit with "golden thimble, scissors, needle, thread"; taking velvet fromthe April sky as a groundwork, stars for trimming, moonlight forbanding, and a web of dreams for lining. He will scent it with theperfume of "the reddest rose that the singing wind finds sweetest whereit farthest blows," and "will take it at the twilight for his love towear." Here we have nothing of the bizarre or the conspicuous, yet inthe six little stanzas of quaintly regular metre there is suggested allof that world of faery beauty which the eye can glimpse beyond theleaden clouds of reality; a world which exists because it can be dreamedof. The poem is "different" in the truest way; it is original because itconveys beauty originally in an inconspicuous and harmonious vehicle.
But turn now to "Ellsworth to Great Pond" and marvel! True, we stillfind the vivid delineation of human feelings, but what a distance wehave travelled! Gone is the young dreamer with his world of moonshine,for here roars the Maine lumberjack with all the uncouth vigour and rudenatural expressiveness of the living satyr. It is life; primal,uncovered, and unpolished--the ebullient, shouting vitality of healthyanimalism.
"Drink hard cider, swig hard cider, Swill hard cider, Boys! Throw yer spikers, throw yer peavies, Beller out yer noise!"
We have drifted from the aether of Keats to the earth of Fielding, yetunder the guidance of the same author. Greater proof of Miss Jackson'sabsolute objectivity and marvellous imagination could not be produced orasked.
Yet who shall say that the Jackson pendulum is powerful only at theextremes of its sweeping arc? In "Workin' Out" we discover a pastorallove-lyric which for quaintness and graphic humanness could not well besurpassed. Here the distinctive and spontaneous inventiveness of MissJackson's fancy is displayed with especial vividness. The rural youth,"workin' out" far from his loved Molly, enumerates the prosaic chores hecan perform with easy heart; but mentions in each case some more poeticthing which stirs his emotions and gives him loneliness for the absentfair. He can cut and husk corn, but the golden-rod reminds him of hisMolly's golden hair. He can milk cows, but the gentian reminds him ofhis Molly's blue eyes. Aside from their intrinsic ingeniousness, theseimages possess an unconscious lesson for the poet who can read it. Theyexpose with concrete illustrations the fallacy of the so-called "newpoetry," which disregards the natural division between beautiful andunbeautiful things and rhapsodises as effusively over a sewer-pipe asover the crescent moon.
"The Token" exhibits Miss Jackson in her airiest lyrical mood; a moodoriginal because it possesses the rare lyrism of pure music and fancyrather than the common lyrism of unsubtilised emotion. There
is boundingmusic in thought and medium alike, whilst the naive plunge into thetheme without introduction or explanation is a stroke savouring of thesimplicity of genius. Equally effective is the simple metricaltransition whereby the chorus assumes the trochaic measure of achildhood chant or carol:
"Lightly O, brightly O, Down the long lane she will go! Dancing she, glancing she, Down the lane with eyes aglow!"
In "Assurance" and "It's Lovetime," the author displays a lyricalfervour of more conventional type; adding the touch of originality bymeans of melodious simplicity and reiteration in the one case, and purelyric ecstasy in the other.
The metrical originality of Miss Jackson, displayed in all classes ofher work, should not be slighted amidst the enthusiasm one entertainsfor her magical mastery of thoughts and images. No other conservativepoet of the period is more versatile and individual in choice ofnumbers, or in adaptation of measure to mood. "Driftwood," a wonderfullyoriginal poem of imagination describing the fancies which arise from thesmoke of logs wafted from far mysterious lands where once the trees grewunder strange suns, moons, and rainbows, is as remarkable in form as inidea. One may judge by a sample pair of stanzas:
"You warm your hands And smile Before the fire of driftwood.
"I feel old lands' Wan guile That writhes in fire of driftwood."
We have so far viewed poetry which would lead us to classify MissJackson as a delineator of moods rather than of character; yet knowingher versatility, we naturally expect to find among her works some potentcharacter studies. Nor are we disappointed. "Joe," a song of the Mainewoods, describes in admirably appropriate verbiage--as simple and asnearly monosyllabic as possible--the typical Anglo-Saxon stoic of farplaces, who faces comfort and disaster, life and death, with the sameunemotional attitude which Miss Jackson sums up so skilfully in the oneejaculatory bit of colloquial indifference--"Dunno!"
"The Song of Jonny Laughlin" is a highly unusual ballad relating thehistory of a peculiarly good and self-sacrificing river character. Thestory is simple, but the piece gains distinctiveness from its absolutelyfaithful reproduction of the spirit of frontier balladry. In words,swing, and weird refrain, there exists every internal evidence oftraditional authenticity; and that such a bit of Nature could becomposed by a cultivated feminine author is an overwhelming testimonialto Miss Jackson's unique gifts.
That Miss Jackson can reflect the spirit of the most dissimilarcharacters is further proved by the two immensely powerful studies ofthe vagabond type entitled "The Call" and "John Worthington Speaks."These things are masterpieces of their kind; the self-revealingnarratives of restless wanderers by land and sea, crammed to repletionwith details and local colour which no one but their author couldcommand without actual experience as a derelict of five continents andas many oceans. They leave the reader veritably breathless with wonderat the objectivity and imagination which can enable a New-Englandpoetess to mirror with such compelling vividness in thought and languagethe sentiments of so utterly opposite a type. Not even the narrowlyspecialised genius of such rough-and-ready writers as Service andKnibbs, working in their own peculiar field, can surpass this one slightphase of Miss Jackson's universal genius.
It remains to speak of the singular power of Miss Jackson in the realmof the gruesome and the terrible. With that same sensitiveness to theunseen and the unreal which lends witchery to her gayer productions, shehas achieved in darker fields of verse results inviting comparison withthe best prose work of Ambrose Bierce or Maurice Level. Among her olderpoems the ghastly and colourful phantasy "Insomnia" and the grimlyrealistic rustic tragedy "Chores" excited especial praise, a criticreferring as follows to the latter piece:
"It has all the compelling power which marks Miss Jackson's darker productions, and is conveyed in an arresting staccato measure which emphasises the homely horror of the theme. The phraseology, with its large proportion of rural and archaic words and constructions, adds vastly to the general effect and atmosphere."
This reference to Miss Jackson's unusual vocabulary deserveselaboration, for one of the secrets of her effective poetry is the wideand diverse array of words and word-combinations which she commands.Recondite archaisms and ruralisms, together with marvellously apt andoriginal descriptive compounds, are things which perpetually astonishand delight her readers. Of recent specimens of Miss Jackson's darkerverse, "Finality," "The Song" and "Fallen Fences" deserve especialpraise. The horrible picture conjured up in the closing lines of thefirst named piece is one well calculated to haunt the dreams of theimaginative.
As we conclude this survey of rich and varied poetry, our dominantimpression aside from admiration is that of wonder at the tardiness withwhich the author has been recognised by the non-amateur public. As yetthe name of Jackson is a comparative novelty to the literary world, athing explainable only by the reluctance of its possessor to adopt thatspecies of trumpeting which helps less modest and less genuine poetsinto the glare of celebrity. But genius such as Miss Jackson's can notremain forever hidden, however slight be her striving for fame; so thatwe may reasonably expect the next few years to witness her establishmentamong the leading literary figures, as one of the ablest, broadest andmost original of contemporary bards.
Ex Oblivione
WARD PHILLIPS
When the last days were upon me, and the ugly trifles of existence beganto drive me to madness like the small drops of water that torturers letfall ceaselessly upon one spot of their victim's body, I loved theirradiate refuge of sleep. In my dreams I found a little of the beauty Ihad vainly sought in life, and wandered through old gardens andenchanted woods.
Once when the wind was soft and scented I heard the south calling, andsailed endlessly and languorously under strange stars.
Once when the gentle rain fell I glided in a barge down a sunless streamunder the earth till I reached another world of purple twilight,iridescent arbours and undying roses.
And once I walked through a golden valley that led to shadowy groves andruins, and ended in a mighty wall green with antique vines, and piercedby a little gate of bronze.
Many times I walked through that valley, and longer and longer would Ipause in the spectral half-light where the giant trees squirmed andtwisted grotesquely, and the grey ground stretched damply from trunk totrunk, sometimes disclosing the mould-stained stones of buried temples.And always the goal of my fancies was the mighty vine-grown wall withthe little gate of bronze therein.
After a while, as the days of waking became less and less bearable fromtheir greyness and sameness, I would often drift in opiate peace throughthe valley and the shadowy groves, and wonder how I might seize them formy eternal dwelling-place, so that I need no more crawl back to a dullworld stript of interest and new colours. And as I looked upon thelittle gate in the mighty wall, I felt that beyond it lay adream-country from which, once it was entered, there would be no return.
So each night in sleep I strove to find the hidden latch of the gate inthe ivied antique wall, though it was exceedingly well-hidden. And Iwould tell myself that the realm beyond the wall was not more lastingmerely, but more lovely and radiant as well.
Then one night in the dream-city of Zakarion I found a yellowed papyrusfilled with the thoughts of dream-sages who dwelt of old in that city,and who were too wise ever to be born in the waking world. Therein werewritten many things concerning the world of dream, and among them waslore of a golden valley and a sacred grove with temples, and a high wallpierced by a little bronze gate. When I saw this lore, I knew that ittouched on the scenes I had haunted, and I therefore read long in theyellowed papyrus.
Some of the dream-sages wrote gorgeously of the wonders beyond theirrepassable gate, but others told of horror and disappointment. I knewnot which to believe, yet longed more and more to cross forever into theunknown land; for doubt and secrecy are the lure of lures, and no newhorror can be more terrible than the daily torture of the commonplace.So when I learned of the drug which would unlock the
gate and drive methrough, I resolved to take it when next I awaked.
Last night I swallowed the drug and floated dreamily into the goldenvalley and the shadowy groves; and when I came this time to the antiquewall, I saw that the small gate of bronze was ajar. From beyond came aglow that weirdly lit the giant twisted trees and tops of the buriedtemples, and I drifted on songfully, expectant of the glories of theland from whence I should never return.
But as the gate swung wider and the sorcery of drug and dream pushed methrough, I knew that all sights and glories were at an end; for in thatnew realm was neither land nor sea, but only the white void of unpeopledand illimitable space. So, happier than I had ever dared hope to be, Idissolved again into that native infinity of crystal oblivion from whichthe daemon Life had called me for one brief and desolate hour.
OFFICIAL ORGAN FUND
Providence, R. I., July 1, 1921.
RECEIPTS SINCE APRIL 1, 1921
From Treasurer, up to July 1, 1921 $18.50 Verna McGeoch (2 instalments) 10.00 E. Edward Ericson 10.00 Mr. and Mrs. Leo Fritter 2.00 John Milton Samples 1.00 Balance on Hand, April 1, 1921 8.50 ------ Total Receipts $50.00
EXPENDITURES
To E. E. Ericson, for March U. A. $46.00
Balance on Hand, July 1, 1921 $4.00
H. P. LOVECRAFT, Custodian.