Verse With a Character All its Own

POETS have an art. There must be an art that poets have. Milton, Spenser, Keats were poets, and had an art of poetry; but Pope had an art of poetry more than the art of poetry of Milton or the art of poetry of Keas, yet Milton and Keats were more poets than Pope. Question: Is an art of poetry necessary to poetry? (An art implies conscious knowledge and choice of what is art and what is not art.) Answer: Walt had no art of poetry and Walt was a poet.

Vachel Lindsay is a poet without art; he is an inspired poet without art; he has inspiration without taste. Not tasteless is the inspiration that has Vachel Lindsay, but I mean that his inspiration, the song on his lips, is not restrained by dictates of taste. Not restrained at all is his inspiration, not by question of taste at all, not by question of art at all, not by question of what-is-absurd-and-what-is-not-absurd at all. For absurd often is his inspiration, not dictated, no, nor emendated, not yet always ill-fated, for children are absurd nor yet always ill-fated; Vachel Lindsay is a child and not ill-fated. Walt Whitman was a mammoth child and not ill-fated.

But except ye be as a child ye cannot ascend Parnassus without art. And Vachel Lindsay is a child without art, and as a child without art he sets out bravely not toward Parnassus but toward the mountains of Glacier Park, toward Sun-Mountain, and Wolf-Peak, and the Red Gods, and various flowers, and love in a cabin, and far horizons. As a child he returns with a bouquet of words about Sun-Mountain, and Wolf-Peak, and various flowers, and far horizons, and the Red Gods, and love in a cabin. As the bouquet of a child is this fruit of his return, for it is culled as is the bouquet of a child, with too much of this and not enough of that and too much that is not necessary to a bouquet. There is too much Not-Singing about mountains and flowers.