TO say of any poet that there is complete individuality in his poems combined with excellent craftsmanship amounts to a charge of arrogance. Craftsmanship in its present-day sense seems necessarily to imply acquaintance with other poetry; polish is only learned from the shortcomings and triumphs of others, it is not natural to the back-woodsman. A poet who after reading the work of those whom he recognizes as masters of the craft, does not allow himself to be influenced into imitation of peculiar technical tricks (as we often find ourselves unwittingly influenced to imitate the peculiar gestures of people we admire or love), that poet must have the arrogance to put his own potential achievements on a level with the work he most admires.

Then is asked the question, “But why do poets write? Why do they go on polishing the rough ideas which, once on paper, even in a crude and messy form, should give the mental conflict complete relief? Why, if the conflict is purely a personal one, do they definitely attempt to press the poem on their neighbour’s imagination with all the zeal of a hot-gospeller?”

There is arrogance in that, the arrogance of a child who takes for granted that all the world is interested in its doings and clever sayings. The emotional crises that make Poetry, imply suffering, and suffering usually humiliation, so that the poet makes his secret or open confidence in his poetic powers a set-off against a sense of alienation from society due to some physical deformity, stigma of birth or other early spite of nature, or against his later misfortunes in love.

The expectation and desire of a spurious immortality “fluttering alive on the mouths of men” is admitted by most poets of my acquaintance, both the good and the bad. This may be only a more definitely expressed form of the same instinct for self-perpetuation that makes the schoolboy cut his name on the leaden gutter of the church porch, or the rich man give a college scholarship to preserve his name in perpetuo. But with the poet there is always the tinge of arrogance in the thought that his own poetry has a lasting quality which most of his contemporaries cannot claim.

The danger of this very necessary arrogance is that it is likely so to intrude the poet’s personal eccentricities into what he writes that the reader recognizes them and does not read the “I” as being the voice of universality.... It was the first night of a sentimental play in an Early English setting; the crisis long deferred was just coming, the heroine and hero were on the point of reconciliation and the long embrace, the audience had lumps in their throats. At that actual instant of suspense, a man in evening-dress leaped down on the stage from a box, kicked the ruffed and doubleted hero into the orchestra, and began to embrace the lady. A moment’s silence; then terrible confusion and rage. The stage manager burst into tears, attendants rushed forward to arrest the desperado.

“But, ladies and gentlemen, I am the author!! I have an artist’s right to do what I like with my own play.”

“Duck him! scratch his face! tar and feather him!”

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Arrogance? Yes, but a self-contradictory arrogance that takes the form of believing that there is nobody beside themselves who could point out just where in a given poem they have written well, and where badly. They know that it contains all sorts of hidden lesser implications (besides the more important ones) which, they think, a few sensitive minds may feel, but none could analyze; they think that they have disguised this or that bit of putty (of which no poem is innocent) so that no living critic could detect it. They are arrogant because they claim to understand better than any rivals how impossible an art poetry is, and because they still have the courage to face it. They have most arrogance before writing their poem of the moment, most humility when they know that they have once more failed.