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• W1569463730 abstract "By uncovering and recovering the many international and cross-linguistic links of modernist periodicals, scholars in recent years have productively charted the global emergence of literary movements that these media enabled. Periodicals functioned as multidirectional circuits of literary exchange: the Little Review, for instance, not only published Chinese poetry in translation, but also circulated American poetry in new locales, including those that had historically resisted it. We know a good deal now about non-Anglophone writers who published in American modernist reviews; we know less, however, about the foreign interpretation and integration of these reviews and their contents. Poetry, that is, actually worked to create “great audiences” both in the United States and beyond, helping to constitute “American literature” in distant communities. Periodicals transformed both domestic and foreign audiences that were traditionally divided by language or history, functioning as capacious, portable media with translatable contents and form.1 The artifact translated here—a document in the history of transnational periodical circulation—offers a snapshot of what Poetry, the Little Review, and a number of other American periodicals looked like in 1925 to Enrique Díez-Canedo (1879–1944), a dynamic Spanish poet, translator, journalist, critic, and founder of little magazines. In turn, this foreign critic offers contemporary scholars an invitation to investigate some of the forgotten names, places, and media of American modernist poetry that garnered attention in Spain, a country long thought to have been unconnected to this movement.An important figure in early twentieth-century Spanish letters, Díez-Canedo was close to most every major writer in the country. He collaborated with the leading poet Juan Ramón Jiménez in 1921 to found Índice (Sign, literally “Index”), a short-lived but influential avant-garde magazine in Madrid. A translator of figures ranging from Whitman to Verlaine, H. G. Wells to Heinrich Heine, Díez-Canedo spent decades working to connect the Spanish literature of his moment—which he saw as excessively provincial and averse to foreign influences—with that of other countries. In this brief essay, he gives his compatriots an idea of what is happening in magazines across the Atlantic and attempts to account for why it should matter to them. His aim is to give an etiology of American poetry since Whitman, especially as it has flourished in modernist periodicals, into an as-yet unnamed “movement.” His survey is not simply a taxonomy or celebration of the United States' great poets; rather, he is sometimes critical, skeptical, and sarcastic, flippant and whimsical at other moments. He looks beyond the familiar sites of modernist production such as New York City and Chicago and finds a wealth of new writing in such places as Baltimore. And he does so ambivalently, attempting to condemn some poets while announcing others as the heirs to Whitman's legacy. Cover designs, prize competitions, fee-based poetry advice services—everything in the economy of periodicals and poetry, their production and reception, comes under scrutiny.The contexts of Díez-Canedo's essay are key: he published this article in the Revista de Occidente (Review of the West, Madrid, 1923–36), the most influential Hispanophone periodical of the interwar era.2 It was founded and edited by José Ortega y Gasset, the country's most prominent intellectual and a profoundly pro-European philosopher. The journal was generally conservative and spoke to a cosmopolitan cultural elite. At the time, such readers were rarely interested in American literature; furthermore, Spain's loss in its war with the United States in 1898 ingrained an image of Americans as uncultured, crass, and belligerent. Even the letters of Spain's former republics in Latin America had not yet found great respect or institutionalization, and many writers resisted the arrival of Spanish American modernismo in Spain in the early 1900s. Nevertheless, in the following years, thanks to this essay and the translations by Ortega's collaborator Antonio Marichalar, American modernism was a vital part of the blossoming of interest in Anglo-American letters in the Revista. Translations, commentaries, and reviews soon treated Joyce and Woolf alongside Hart Crane, Langston Hughes, William Faulkner, Waldo Frank, and others. Díez-Canedo not only attends to New World literary production, but also highlights the contributions and successes of female poets in the United States, including Amy Lowell, Lola Ridge, and Lillian Caroline Canfield.Díez-Canedo frames his survey with the visit of his friend Juan Ramón Jiménez to New York City in 1916. Jiménez had sailed there to be with his new bride, Zenobia Camprubí, a Spanish-born American poet and translator who was living in the city. While there, the two assiduously read contemporary American poets, translated and commented on their works, and then began their project of rendering an immense amount of Rabindranath Tagore's poetry in Spanish. Jiménez, who would become a Nobel laureate later in life, hoped to connect with his American counterparts while in New York. But after a terrible experience, he developed a great contempt for the Authors Club in Manhattan, finding his American peers there to be stuffy, pretentious, and loathsome; he was shocked by their dismissals of Frost, Masters, Amy Lowell, and others in favor derivative Victorian verse. This episode encapsulates the perspective that Díez-Canedo himself takes toward American verse, in which he sees innovative promise coexisting with vapid traditionalism. Was there great poetry flourishing in the United States, and how, Díez-Canedo asks? How could periodicals and their formations, coteries, and readerships be evidence of such a phenomenon? And why should Spanish-language readers take interest? These are the questions that motivate Díez-Canedo's survey, which itself allows us to recover some of the overlooked material histories of American periodicals that circulated abroad through modernist networks of exchange. The internationalism burgeoning in the literature of both Spain and the United States in the twenties, that is, traversed these networks and converged through essays such as this one.Kennst du das Land …?3 Do you know the country where poetry flourishes? I will tell you where it is, so that your imagination does not labor in vain: it is commonly called the United States.If Juan Ramón Jiménez, a great poet indeed, were a true arsonist, or if remorse had not attacked him at the last minute, perhaps there would not be so many poets in the United States today. In 1916 he made a futile attempt to meet poets where he feared they did not exist, in the Authors Club of New York:4 “I always thought that New York could not have any poets,” he claimed. “I did not suspect that there would be so many bad poets, gathered in this hovel that is as dried-out and dusty as our Ateneo in Madrid5—despite being on the fifteenth floor, almost as high as Parnassus.”6 A paragraph of Jiménez's follows that alludes to the club members—“tenth-rate gentlemen,” he dismisses them (which supposes, at least, the existence of another nine classes)—and later comes the revelation of his failed plan: “I took a cigarette from a smoker, lit it, and tossed it in the corner on the carpet—just to see if the flames would roar up and down, and, in the place of this scummy Club, leave nothing but a tall, empty space, fresh and deep, with bright stars above, in the clear sky of the April night.”7It follows, then, that if poetry flourishes in New York—and in all of the United States—in an exuberant way, it is in some way thanks to Juan Ramón Jiménez, who pondered, nine years ago, clearing a few weeds off the land. But Allah is wiser, as the Thousand and One Arabian Nights say.The Authors Club must be one of those societies that has been described incisively to me sometimes by Pedro Henríquez Ureña.8 Poetry is read, and once it is read an argument begins: the propriety of the conclusion, the rhythm, the rhyme or lack of rhyme; nothing remains of the work, everything crumbles. The room heats up little by little, and in the thermometer of the debate, the mercury rises quickly to the level of insult. They create poems—and they discuss them—men and women both. Perhaps women constitute the majority. Henríquez referred me to some picturesque details that I won't mention here, now that I am recording our conversations; for before me is pile of fresh magazines that another friend brought back for me. Some of them have already published newer issues; those that I have here, in general, date from November or December of 1924. But there are many quarterlies, and I haven't lost hope that in the United States, as in Spain, magazines—in particular, those of the poets—are not produced with such furious punctuality. I consider, then, the issues that I have in the multicolored collection before me to be a current and fair representation.Almost all of these magazines are clothed in noble typographical attire. Those that initially are not soon fit themselves in this style. Let us take a look at some examples and glance through them, one by one, in roughly chronological order, with brief histories. I won't respond to every detail. Others will come along to fill my gaps and correct my mistakes.One can easily see in an Anglo-American anthology—Stedman's,9 for example—that the poets of the Victorian era (the era that, in America, corresponds chronologically and ideologically to its English counterpart) dominated in this country, too. This will convince one that in the United States there were only almost as many poets as in all of the Spanish American republics combined. And at that time, nothing existed that could be called a “movement.”American poetry then begins to feel the struggles of independence, not in isolated individuals, but as a body and as a separate literary state. A solitary liberator makes no sense in politics. In literature, yes. The George Washington of American letters is Walt Whitman, who is still a strange figure for many people. His shadow, without a doubt, projects itself over every Anglo-American Parnassus: over those he influences and those who rebel against him, in free verse and in traditional forms. Walt Whitman is no longer the “movement” himself; rather, the “movement” would never have existed without him.Let us dive in, taking the hand of a well-read guide: [in 1910] the Poetry Society of America was founded. Its monthly pamphlets sparked the first flames. The large general interest magazines began opening themselves more and more to poetry. This was evident especially in Current Opinion [1888–1925]. As of today, there is no large magazine with a cohort of poets like it has. Right now, the American Mercury [1924–81] highlights itself amid my pile by virtue of its rigid form and the intense green of its cover—as if all the green left in the Atlantic waves was condensed to dye the cover like that of the London Mercury [1919–39], since it resembles its overseas namesake. It opens with an article by Henry J. Ford10—who would dare not give him first position?—and with a poem by Louis Untermeyer, poet and historian of the “movement.” We may find insights here, but we are more interested in exploring the exclusive, sovereign territory of American poetry.Since 1912, there has been a magazine only for poets. It is called, naturally, Poetry, and it is printed in Chicago. It is the forceful work of a woman, Harriet Monroe. A highly expressive line from Whitman graces it: “To have great poets there must be great audiences, too.” Poetry proposes to create great audiences—and great poets. It introduced Rabindranath Tagore. It gives out several annual prizes. According to the issue from last November, which I have before me, the Helen Haire Levinson prize, of two hundred dollars, was awarded to a famous poet—also a historian of the “movement”—Amy Lowell. There are other prizes, of one hundred dollars, and among the poets who have won them the best are Carl Sandburg, Vachel Lindsay, Edgar Lee Masters, Robert Frost, E. A. Robinson, Wallace Stevens, Alfred Kreymborg, Lola Ridge—moderates and wild spirits alike.11 Such awards are given based on the poems published in the magazine. There is little prose in the journal, not more than a few critical notes at the end, a brief sketch of the collaborators in each number, and whatever prose involuntarily arises in some verses.Poetry has a capacious approach. Even so, it is not open to the simple experiment. (For that, there was a magazine of another group, Alfred Kreymborg's Others [1915–19], which no longer exists.) By contrast, the Little Review [1914–29] appears to the naïve reader from Spain—if we look at one of the recent issues—an open field of experimentation, if not a pure joke. Poetry, meanwhile, maintains its initial size, the size of a paperback book, and it has kept the decorative composition of its cover, with a Pegasus that gallops and floats on its wings among the clouds. The Little Review, in turn, is now hard to decipher. I look among my older files for some issues, and here are various items that are found in volume 5 (1918–19): cheap paper, a green, styleless cover, and inside, an Oriental-Occidental “Noh” piece by Yeats, prose and poetry by May Sinclair, John Rodker, Sherwood Anderson, and T. S. Eliot, and some resplendent chapters of James Joyce's Ulysses. Now, the Little Review is “little” only in its title. It continues to have abundant European collaboration, and at the forefront of that effort is Margaret Anderson, along with Ezra Pound, a multiform and suggestive spirit from the family of Apollinaire and Picasso.The Little Review is not an exclusively poetic magazine, but poetry fills large spaces in it. The covers change art and color from issue to issue. Copious illustrations run alongside; in the “Exiles' Number,” of the spring of 1923 (thus called because its collaborators are all residents of Europe), there are four very curious illustrations by the Spaniard Joan Miró, reproduced by photogravure.We turn now to the October number of Contemporary Verse [1916–29], published in Philadelphia and edited by Charles Wharton Stork, a poet and a translator of Swedish poetry. It is like Poetry, but more conservative; not for nothing, a man leads it, but of the fifteen collaborators who fill its pages, eight are women. The ratio should not be so terrifying; in other reviews, it is greater.What is the Quill [1917–19]? A small magazine of Greenwich Village. Prose, music, drawings, a map of Greenwich (indicating its very close relationship with the Village). A distant connection, too, with the “movement,” though produced prolifically.The Lyric West [1921–27], from Los Angeles, California, is led by a man and a woman (Roy Towner Thompson and Grace Atherton Dennen) and is younger. The October number begins volume four. It is purely in the style of Poetry, but it lacks famous names.From Guadalajara, Mexico, comes another magazine with a similar look: Palms [1923–40], which is exclusively in English. Its verses appear anonymous, relatively. At the head of the issue is a list of authors; one must guess which name corresponds with which poem, then wait for the next issue to clarify. Palms features a unique prize: ten dollars, offered by Dr. G. E. Purnell, for the best poetry by a native of Maryland that is published in the review. Is it not mere caprice: the donor “wishes to discover if there is any of the spirit of Poe left in Maryland.” Among those who preside over the magazine is a well-known name: Witter Bynner. Another is of Spanish heritage, doubtless Mexican: Agustín Basave Fernández del Valle.The best response to Dr. Purnell's proposal is found perhaps in the point made in the Evening Citizen newspaper [1877–1974] (Glasgow, Scotland), regarding another poetry review from Baltimore, Interludes [1924–33]—which, in its fourth number (October–November–December 1924), has just finished its first year with gusto. “Maryland,” says the Scottish daily, “must be a nest of nightingales; of the forty-one poems that the second number of Interludes contains, there is not one that simply mimics technical perfection and a true poetic feeling. Many poems move decidedly away from the conventional, and the experiments in form and new meters are actually very appropriate. The most distinguished composition is by Lillian Caroline Canfield. Her work has to be known in her country; but if it is not yet, I am sure it will be.” The example of Canfield's poetry that this issue contains gives us no reason to contradict its panegyrist.Interludes advertises other magazines that have not yet arrived to me: L'Alouette [1921–38] of Malden, Massachusetts, and the Poets' Scroll [1922–34] of Howe, Oklahoma. This latter one is strict: “Free verse will not be accepted for publication.” Furthermore, it offers free counsel for technical perfection—and this is a rarity. Most of these magazines offer to critique submissions for a fee. For example, the editor of Interludes, William James Price (whose last name is essentially his manifesto), advertises “Expert analysis and constructive criticism for five cents per line; minimum one dollar. After more than one hundred lines, four cents per line; revisions, seven cents per line. Typed manuscripts, at two cents per line, including carbon copy.” This, as we have already indicated, is not an extravagance on the part of Mr. Price. Many do it, and in England also. It is, if one wishes, an economic interpretation of poetry, apposite for countries in which this art flourishes.Even more reviews remain before us to examine. But the Circle [1924–38] (also from Baltimore; Maryland is, decidedly, a nest of nightingales) hardly offers any notable characteristics in comparison to its colleagues, and it is still in its first year. So is the quarterly notebook Four [1923–25] (Los Angeles, California), which is named so because it has four collaborators who boast about having created, in its short life, “a true audience ready to consider poetry a restorer of the forces of beauty and art, one so profound that any attempt to divorce it from the elements of life will not sustain, but rather will stop the pulse of life itself.”We still have in front of us a red notebook, 1924;12 but this review from Woodstock, New York—which, without doubt, will change its title annually—is not one of poetry purely. Waldo Frank, Isidor Schneider, Ezra Pound, and the cartoonist [William] Gropper give it weight and substance. The poems are by Yvor Winters, and they matter less.The audience for poetry could not be more extensive. Although many of these magazines die young, for each one that dies, two new ones are born. The great poet invoked by Whitman now may rise. Perhaps he has risen already. In Sandburg and in Masters, in Lindsay and in Frost, we hear, at times, the voice of the great poet." @default.
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• W1569463730 title "A Spanish View of Modernist Poetry in American Periodicals (1925)" @default.
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