Lovecraft's "Brick Row"
by
Joseph Payne Brennan
H. P. Lovecraft, who yearned for vanished decades with a sincere and abiding passion, made some effort to establish himself as a poet-recorder of old New England. Most of his attempts in this direction -- "New England Fallen", "On a New England Village Seen by Moonlight", "To Templeton and Monadnock", etc. -- are interesting failures. "New England Fallen", the most ambitious of the poems named -- it runs to about 150 lines -- contains some rewarding word pictures of early rural New England, and can be read for a rather stark reflation of Lovecraft's attitude toward certain aspects of twentieth-century New England. But the piece never achieves genuine poetry an at best can be labeled average verse.
In one poem however, Lovecraft reached a level of success which more than atones for his several failures. This Poem is "Brick Row" (dated Dec. 7, 1929), a 48-line piece written in traditional quatrains. Lovecraft was impelled to write the poem when a row of venerable brick warehouses in South Water Street, Providence were threatened with the wrecker's sledgehammers.
The poem is probably the best H. P. ever wrote. It surpasses the weird sonnets and any others I can think of. As I have said elsewhere, I still believe that the bulk of Lovecraft's verse is inferior work, derivative, imitative, often pompous -- but a rare felicity is found in "Brick Row." There are some original, memorable lines: "The dawn's bright ingots like an open chest", "They are the sills that hold the lights of home", and the poem as a whole possesses an impact which is lasting. There is never any doubt of Lovecraft's sincerity, nostalgia and deep concern, an these emotions are successfully transmitted to the reader.
While "New England Fallen" is rather strident, rather overdone, "Brick Row" is relaxed, persuasive. Its easy reminiscent charm wins us over, seemingly without effort:
