Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 May 1884 — Boston as a Poetry Mill. [ARTICLE]

Boston as a Poetry Mill.

To write poetry is merely considered, in Boston, as an elegant accomplishment suitable to the litterateur, and less a special gift than the natural and expected result of scholarship and culture. The charming assumption with which a society or meeting of any description designates its members to write a poem on such and such an occasion i 3 infinitely amusing. “Why did you not come to the literary coterie?” questioned a friend the other day. “Mrs. Dias and Mrs. Anagnos wrote poems for the evening, and we had a philosophical pajjer and tableaux.” This was an illustration of the Boston nonchalance regarding “writiug poems.” It is discussed in a matter-of-fact way, as an affair quite of industry rather than of inspiration. If the birthday or wedding anniversary of a prominent person is to be celebrated, a fair gotten up, an exhibition opened, or the “Old South” receive another contribution toward saving it from the destructive march of trade, the instigators of the affair all write poems—as a natural feature of the entertainment. Though the so-called “poems” are numerous, the poets are few, yet these rhymers and versifiers all enroll themselves under that banner, and enjoy the felicity of their belief. The genuine poets of Boston are almost as few as of any other city. Longfellow, Lowell, Whittier, Emerson, Louise Chandler Moulton, who has a gift of the almost perfect lyric verse; John Boyle O’Keillv, Dr. Holmes, and Mrs. Howe, in her “Battle Hymn of the Kepublio” and her “Sealed Orders,” make up all that I now recall who seem to have any claim to poetic immortality. Yet the people who grind out their poems to, on, aud for every occasion, are as numerous as the prose'writers. Y'olume after volume is published here of mere prosaic prose that rhymes, and is labeled—l came near saying libeled —poetry. What becomes of it is a mystery I cannot fathom. Where do all the dull books go to, any way? one wonders. The number of volumes of “poems” that contain, perhaps, one that really merits the name and retains the whole, is a signal advance over those that have nothing in them but mechanical rhyme. It is singular that in a city which may, perhaps, not unaptly be designated as the literary capital of the country, there is so marked a lack of fine literary discrimination. Form more than spirit, quantity more than quality, appears to take precedence. To “publish a volume of poems” is as much the part of the natural expectation as to read the current literature and attend the symphony concerts. Whether the poems are worth publishing is a consideration that does not seem to present itself. —Boston Cor. Cleveland Leader.