Tag: poetry

In a bid to be more active here I’m going to start posting quotations. I’m getting up to my elbows in Modernism, and this from H.D. is worth sharing for its anger at the degraded status of the poet. Paydirt in the last two lines of this section.

So we reveal our status
with twin-horns, disk, erect serpent,

though these or the double-plume or lotus
are, you now tell us, trivial

intellectual adornment;
poets are useless,

more than that,
we, authentic relic,

bearers of secret wisdom,
living remnant

of the inner band
of the sanctuaries’ initiate,

are not only ‘non-utilitarian’,
we are ‘pathetic’:

this is the new heresy;
but if you do not even understand what words say,

how can you expect to pass judgment
on what words conceal?

H.D., The Walls do Not Fall, p.14 of Trilogy (Carcanet Press: Cheadle, 1973)