CHAPTER III The Making of Poetry: How the Poet first Deals with his Material I am a part of all that I have met.-TENNYSON's Ulysses. CHAPTER III THE MAKING OF POETRY: HOW THE POET FIRST DEALS WITH HIS MATERIAL I. FROM the material of poetry we turn to the making of poetry. Three rather distinct processes or kinds of activity are involved. The first relates chiefly to the manner of dealing with things and persons themselves, images of which the poet desires to use in his poetry; this process, for the lack of a better name, I call personalising. The second process has to do with the grouping of the images selected by the poet; and this I call combining. The third is versifying. This process does not stand on precisely the same level as the others, and for two reasons. In the first place, versifying has to do directly with language; language is an external thing used, as we have seen, in poetry mainly for the sake of the mental image; versifying, therefore, is only indirectly related to the mental image which is the subjective or internal element out of which poetry is chiefly made. And, in the second place, versifying seems not to be so invariable a process in the making of poetry as personalising and combining are; it is not, apparently, always indispensable in order to produce what we call poetic effect. But, allowing for this partial exception of verse, the details of which will duly be provided for, we may say that the central processes or kinds of activity involved in the making of poetry are three: personalising, combining, and versifying. With each of these we have now to deal. The first is personalising. II. It is an interesting fact, which needs only to be pointed out to be recognised, that everything with which a person ever deals in any way is thought of and treated as something more or less like himself. In the life, action, or state of things and other people, each man finds something of himself or something like himself. Everything, animate and inanimate, seems to possess some degree of a common nature; there is a homogeneity of man with man and of man with things; all share in a common life. I realise this as I look about me. The paper on which I write lies or rests upon my desk; my desk stands upon the floor; my window looks upon a road which goes, runs, or leads to the town of X.; an automobile runs puffing by; an exhausted horse which carries too great a load and is resting by the roadside is frightened; the house across the way is old, it leans forward and looks as if it would soon fall; the eaves-trough, which should catch the rain, hangs down at one end, held at the other by only a few nails; the tree which stands by the house spreads out its branches which move or sway in the breeze, and its leaves tremble, dance, or move, according to the feeling with which I regard them. Everything I see and everything I think of seems to be but a part of myself; it acts in some degree as I myself do, or it carries out actions which, directly or indirectly, I myself know. So the sun and moon rise and set; waves rise and fall, strike and toss; the wind blows, sighs, murmurs, whistles, laments; vines climb; towers reach into the air; mountains rise before one; paths wind; columns rise; walls support or hold up a roof; landscape is smiling; flowers are innocent or pure; duty calls; necessity forces or compels; conscience appeals or pricks; men shout, sing, play, love, hate, are ambitious, proud, grow jealous and suspicious, think, and do a thousand things, each one of which has meaning and becomes intelligible and reasonable to me only as I see some phase of my own life or action in them. Everywhere I turn I find something of myself reflected. Things about me take on life, and the life they take on appears to be of a piece with my life; they all seem to be more or less like me. And they are like me, finally, because, so far as each thing will permit, I read my experiences into them. I project myself, as it were, into things; I infuse and breathe life into everything with which I come into contact. Subject to the limits set by the nature of each, I read my own exper |