(3 of 5)
. . . the coal to kindle,
The blind mask crying to be slit
with eye-holes—
and seeks tracks for its life force to reunite with the cosmic force of the impersonal universe, in "the hollow darkness outside the stars and the dark hollow in the atom." The nerves of his writing are taut under elemental strains—the strain of the Pacific against its granite boundaries, of a mountainous coast verging on earthquake, of oil tanks about to explode and consume themselves, of brains splitting with a dasmon. His greatest word is
. . . Annihilation, the beautiful
Word, the black crystal structure,
prisms of black crystal
Arranged the one behind the other
in the word
To catch a ray not of this world.
Like all poets, he finds language inadequate; is forced back upon "match-ends of burnt experience human enough to be understood." But from his match-ends he extracts white heat, terrific convulsions, monstrous images, without more linguistic violence than a harsh ellipsis and radical translations of character. He pictures
The coast hills, thinking the thing
out to conclusion.
The strata of the continental fault
are
. . . tortured and twisted
Layer under layer like tetanus, like
the muscles of a mountain bear
that has gorged the strychnine.
The sun is "the day's eyeball," and, elsewhere,
The yellow dog barking in the
blue pasture,
Snapping sidewise.
The Poet. Born in Pittsburgh, 40 years ago, he was schooled in Europe until 15. His parents moved to California where he studied medicine at various universities but never with the deep interest he had in poetry. His early work, Californians, is of a surprisingly flat, "native son" variety.
He married Una Call Kuster in 1913. They have twin boys. Lean, athletic, needing solitude, he built a house of sea-boulders on a headland near Carmel, Calif. Falcons nested in his tower of "hawk-perch" stones. Some years ago he offered Tamar and Other Poems to Manhattan publishers but only an obscure Irish printer, Peter G. Boyle, would risk handling such inflammable material as a tragedy of incest (TIME, March 30, 1925). Reviews soon brought him to a notice for which he has small regard but which must become, despite the book world's busy piddlings, nationwide and perpetual.
FICTION
Let-Down