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Review of Spectra
(1916).
Several years ago I
discovered a wickedly delicious volume of poetry called Spectra:
A Book of Poetic Experiments, written by Witter
Bynner and Arthur
Davison Ficke,
and published in 1916. Spectra was a literary hoax which
fooled just about everyone who mattered in literary
America of 1916, up to and including Amy
Lowell, Edgar
Lee Masters and William
Carlos
Williams.
The book is fabulous nonsense from beginning to end. It
begins with a gasbag manifesto explaining how the
spectrist "movement" was supposed to be about the colors
of the spectrum and how they produce "spectres", or
something like that. Then you get to the poetry, which
contains a howler in practically every line. Bynner used
the pseudonym of Emanuel Morgan, while Ficke was Anne
Knish. Further details of the hoax are online here.
I have long admired Bynner's work--in 1929 he produced a
wonderful translation of a Chinese poetry anthology
called The
Jade Mountain,
and one of my favorite English versions of the Tao
Te Ching: The
Way of Life
According to
Lao Tzu (1944).
Ficke is not as well known but deserves to be. The
Internet Archive has some of Bynner's work online here,
and Ficke's here.
Spectra was their only joint effort and deserves to be
rediscovered.
Particularly at the present time. One of the most
interesting aspects of Spectra is the remarkable
similarity of the spoof poems and what passes for
"serious" poetry here in the 21st century. Study the
pomposity, the flights of inanity, the disconnectedness,
and the pretentiousness on display in Spectra,
and behold, you will discover identical crap everywhere
in cutting edge contemporary poetry. Witter and Arthur,
where are you when we need you? Why doesn't someone
write spoofs of the prize winning doggerel being tossed
about these days? Well, maybe one day it will actually
happen.
But at the moment, you can read Spectra and
enjoy. As for me, whenever I want my poetry fix, I pay
no attention to contemporary American claptrap. I stick
with the fin-de-siècle, or the Romantics, or the
Elizabethans, and or maybe even old Epicurean fogies
like Virgil, Horace,
and Lucretius.
Read Spectra here.
Asparagus
is feathery and tall,
And the hose lies rotting by the garden-wall.
--Witter Bynner and Arthur Davison Ficke,
Spectra