We have our affections, in all this, for the fragmentary and ugly as for the abrupt small hideousness--oddly akin to virility--of gargoyles. We have our affections, too, for the rawest of our very raw realisms--for the maddest of our colourisms, the most idiosyncratic subtleties of our first introspectionists. Do we hesitate a little to ask something more of any of the poets whom we thus designate? What we fear is that in attempting to give us our something more, they will give us something less. What we want more of, what we see our contemporary poets as for the most part sadly deficient in, is “art.” What we are afraid they will lose, if we urge them in this direction, is their young sharp brilliance. Urge them, however, we must. What our poets need most to learn is that poetry is not merely a matter of outpouring, of confession. It must be serious: it must be, if simple in appearance, none the less highly wrought: it must be packed. It must be beautifully elaborate rather than elaborately beautiful. It must be detached from dogma--we must keep it away from the all too prevalent lecture platform. What we should like to see, in short, is a fusion, of the extraordinary range of poetic virtues with which our contemporary poets confront us, into one poetic consciousness. Do we cavil too much in assuming that no one of our poets offers us quite enough? Should we rather take comfort in the hope that many of their individual “personalities” are vivid enough to offset their onesidedness, and in that way to have a considerable guarantee of survival? We have mentioned that possibility before, and certainly it cannot be flatly dismissed. But I think it cannot be contested that many of these poets already feel, themselves, a sharper responsibility, a need for a greater comprehensiveness, for a finer and richer tactile equipment, a steadier view of what it is that constitutes beauty of form. They are immeasurably distant from any dry, cold perfectionism, however; and if we cheer them in taking the path that leads thither, it is in the hope of seeing them reach the halfway house rather than the summit. For to go all the way is to arrive exhausted; to go half way is to arrive with vigour.... That, however, is to interpose our own view and to lose our detachment. We return to a reiteration of our conclusion that American poetry is at the moment extraordinarily healthy. Its virtues are the virtues of all good poetry, and they are sufficient to persuade us that the future of English poetry lies as much in America as in England. Its faults are the faults of a culture that is immature. But again, we reiterate that we have here many cultures, and if some are immature, some are not. Let those who are too prone to diagnose us culturally from “Spoon River Anthology” or “Smoke and Steel” keep in mind also Mr. Robinson’s “Merlin” and Mr. Frost’s “North of Boston”; Mr. Fletcher’s “Goblins and Pagodas” and Miss Lowell’s “Can Grande’s Castle.”