Last week, I posted an E.B. White poem, and a few readers commented that they didn’t realize E.B. White was a poet. Neither did I, until I browsed through his Poems and Sketches. And neither, one could argue, did E.B. White know. Consider his own words in the introduction:
This is a fraudulent book. Here I am presented as a poet, when it is common knowledge that I have never received my accreditation papers admitting me to the ranks of American poets. Having lived happily all my life as a non-poet who occasionally breaks into song, I have no wish at this late hour to change either my status or my habits even if I were capable of doing so, and I clearly am not.
But the poems in this book, interspersed with his beautiful prose, convince me that his occasional bursts of song make him an accredited poet. Take this one, “Portrait,” for instance:
He goes his way with a too cautious stride
That checks him safe just short of every goal;
Seeks not conclusions lest they try his pride,
Claims not fair booty lest it glut his soul.
If it be love, he finds it unrequited,
And seasons it with sadness to the taste;
If it be fame, he finds his name is slighted,
And turns his luck aside in conscious haste.
Frustration tickles his most plaintive strings
And satisfies his bent for somber living;
He daubs with mystery the obvious things,
And holds fulfillment off — always contriving
From life (held very gingerly) to press
The fine musk odor of unhappiness.
It sure seems like the work of a poet to me, a portrait sketched out line by line in deft, rhythmic strokes. I have to admit, some lines strike me with the uncomfortable shock of recognition. The emerging picture reminds me of something out of The Screwtape Letters, another study in the art of cultivating self-deception and joyless living. The tragedy isn’t in the impulse toward safety, but in the man’s final embracing of it. Here’s to preserving the true, bitter taste of unhappiness — the best deterrent to the familiar temptation to keep “safe just short of every goal.”
Poetry Friday is at ayuddha.net today.
E.B. White, feeling like a fraud! When it’s clear that he knows his way around words. Thanks for showing me another side of one of my favorite writers.
OH, you’re right. Some of this hits a little too close to home. Regardless of what he says, E.B. wrote poetic prose to begin with — so it follows that he could also write poetry well. He definitely knew what to do with a word.