The new poets have won their way by their differences as well as by their chance similarities. They belong to no one school, represent no single tendency and, differing widely from their present-day English fellow-craftsmen, are far less hampered by the burdens of traditions or the necessity of casting them off. They are more nearly free. One sees this even in the work of the more deliberately conventional singers. Lyricists like Sara Teasdale and Edna St. Vincent Millay write in a clean, straightforward idiom, an intense naturalness that is a frank commentary on the tinkling and over-sentimental verse that used to pass for genuine emotion. Robert Frost and E. A. Robinson continue to use the strictest rhymes and most rigid meters and yet their lines are as “modern,” as searching as the freest free verse. Form _per se_ matters scarcely at all; all forms are employed. Conrad Aiken achieves a flexible combination of rhyme and assonance. Sandburg, “H. D.,” Kreymborg and John Gould Fletcher dispense, for the most part, with rhyme, without sacrificing the beauty of sound or stress. Masters and Amy Lowell use the old forms and the new ones with impartiality and equal skill. A sweeping inclusiveness distinguishes our contemporary verse; it embraces all themes, all cultures, all modes of expression. America has become a melting-pot in a poetic as well as an ethnic sense. The rich variety of its structure and subject-matter is in striking opposition to the thin, specialized product of the transition poets. New England is no longer the single literary center. As the country has matured, the poets have grown with it, singing everywhere and, much to Art’s confusion, in every key. It is as if submerged springs had burst through stubborn ground; instead of one placid stream, there are a dozen rushing currents. SUMMARY—THE NEW SPIRIT It is difficult to draw a line between periods, especially when one is called upon to define “modernity.” But in the case of the development of American poetry, the task is made easier by Whitman. Whitman ended and began an epoch. This collection therefore begins where he left off; it might well be called, “American Poetry Since Whitman.”