Witter Bynner

Not much read today is the poetry of Witter Bynner (1881-1968), a poet and editor who was widely published and quite famous in the early and mid-20th Century. Two anecdotes from his life illustrate just how enmeshed he was among the celebrated poets of his time. He proposed marriage to Edna St. Vincent Millay (she accepted, then reneged) and he dumped a glass of beer on Robert Frost’s head.

Bynner’s best work exhibits the gem-like sheen of Chinese poetry, of which he was a translator; the worst is more like weak Chinese tea. Of course, during one chortlingly burlesque episode in his life, Bynner intentionally became one of the worst poets ever when he perpetrated, with his friend Arthur Ficke, a delightful—and successful—hoax. They invented a movement called Spectrism, meant to lampoon the then current fashion for schools of poetry such as Imagism. Here’s an uproarious example from Bynner’s own pen:

Opus 14

Beside the brink of dream
     I had put out my willow-root and leaves
As by a stream
     Too narrow for the invading greaves
Of Rome in her trireme . . .
Then you came—like a scream
     Of beeves.

He was a very funny fellow, Witter Bynner, and a noble one who spoke out against racial prejudice when other poets (e.g. Wallace Stevens, T. S. Eliot) sucked their thumbs inside the security blanket of inherited elitist attitudes.

But let me not overpraise Mr. Bynner for his enlightened outlook. The following poem means just what it says, I fear, alas. (Or does this little ditty imply that the girlish way is superior? If so, it’s still a very limiting conceptualization.)

Duet

Let women sing, in little curls
Of happy voice, that they are girls,

While boys come by and sing again,
In breaking voice, that they are men.
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