What Would Walt Think?
No, it's a toss-up just what Walt would have thought about the magazine. Undoubtedly, he would have thought about it just as each of you, whoever you are, now reading this magazine, think about it. For the great dead, curiously enough, always mold their opinions to suit their admirers.
But why is it a sacrilege to speak disrespectfully of poets after they are dead and have secured a fair modicum of public approval? Walt admired Bryant's qualities. Must every admirer of Whitman also admire Bryant? Miss Monroe thinks that the majority of Bryant's poems would mean little to us if published for the first time today. And now Mr. Hervey wants Miss Monroe to say what Carl Sandburg's poems will mean to the reader of fifty years hence, if she thinks any of them will live that long. Mr. Hervey himself does not risk a direct opinion. Fortunately there were people intelligent and courageous enough to risk an opinion on Whitman fifty years ago. And these people were not the editors of magazines, who "knew what the people wanted," and took no risks. If Whitman had waited for them, Mr. Hervey might have missed his Walt, and he would then have had to invoke some other shadowy figure, possibly Bryant, to pass mythical judgment upon the new poetry. At any rate, it is amusing to wonder what Bryant would have thought of Carl Sandburg's poetry, and even more interesting to conjecture the possible opinion of Whitman. Would Walt applaud the risk taken by Miss Monroe in publishing it, or would he, too, like Mr. Hervey, be shocked by her temerity? A. C. H.
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