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Show 156 MADELYN CANNON STEWART SILVER No matter how serious, one must gain a sufficiently objective view to play with it. He gave as an example his poem: "Fire and Ice." For great work there must be the play of will against material. That is why handicraft has even a tiny flaw; to show where for an instant the material wins. Great poet ry is the triumph of will over materials of poetry, rhyme, meter, idea. Poetry must have an idea, as a joke must have a point. He spoke much of wisdom-unwisdom. A fancy may carry us away by its beauty, its apparent truth, but common sense tells us it is not true wisdom. But it is one of the rich phases of poetry. It was so easy for Frances and me to wait around until most everyone was gone and then to slip up qui etly and tell him what "Two Roads" has meant to me. Perhaps Robert Frost is a great poet because he has humor, a great and tolerant understanding of people, and a deep insight into the vital forces of life. There was a poem about eyes seeking stars and flowers, and another, about two tramps, which cried that love and need must be one, avoca tion must be vocation. He said that the present thesis of science that we are as atoms in a great universe, is no better than religion's [not Mormonism's] idea that we are worms beneath God's heel." When she went back to the ranch in the summer of 1939, Madelyn found the rest and revitalization that carne with every visit. As in other summers, she once more felt the urge to write, to create poetry. In the following Italian sonnet she, like others before her, called for inspiration to return to her mind. Using images of light and flame and music, she extols the power of words: COME BACK, OLD CHARM Corne back, old charm, old ecstasy of word; Flare forth again, imagination's glow, Light me up to Creation. Let me go Beyond the ways of living, all bestirred Into the old clean passion, where I heard The harmony of ages, joy and woe. |
