Democratic Sentinel, Volume 13, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 February 1889 — Boston as a Poetry NIE. [ARTICLE]

Boston as a Poetry NIE.

To -write poetry is merely considered, tn Boston, as an elegant accomplishment suitable to the litterateur, and less a special gift than the natural an-5 expected result of scholarship and culture. The charming assumption with which a society or meeting of any description designates its members to write » poem on such and such an occasion is infinitely amusing. “ vV’hy uld you not come to the literary coterie ?* questioned a »riend the other day. •‘Mrs. Dias and Mrs. Anagnos wrote poems for the evening, and we had a philosophical paper and tableaux. * This was an illustration of the Boston nonchalance regarding “writing 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 instigator, of the affair all write poems—as a nab Ural feature of the entertainment Though the so-called “poems” are numerous, the poets are few, yet these rhymers and ve tiersail enroll themselves uhder that banner, and enjoy the felicity of their belief. The genuine poets of Boston are almost as few as of any otner city. Longfellow. Lowell, Whittier, Emerson, Louise Chandler Mouiton. who has a gift of the almost perfect lyric verse; Jo|m Boyle O’Heilly, Dr. Holmes, and Mrs. Howe, in her “Battle Hymn of the liepublic” and her “Sealed Orders,” make Cp all that I now recall -who seem to have any claim to poetic immortality. Yet the people who grind out their poems to, on, and for every occasion, are as numerous as the prose writers. Volume after volume is published here of mere prosaic ; o-e 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 won levs. T ■ .. .über of volumes of “poems” that cun uin, perhaps, one that really merits the name and retains the whole, is a signal advance ever 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 oap ital of the country, there is so marked a lack ol 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 tC rod the current literature and attend ti.e symphony concerts. Whether the poems are worth publishing is a consideration that doe« not seem to present ito-wf.— Boston Cor. Leader.