CONFERENCES: The Epoch of Burned Wings

There was a young lady from Vex,

Who blew smoke onto neighboring

necks.

Said her colleague, to gripe:

“I object to the pipe;

“All it does is detract from our sex.”

With these lines, a Belgian poetess registered her protest against Fellow Poetess Pierette Micheloud, of Vex, Switzerland, who insisted on puffing away at a long-stemmed, elegant pipe. The limerick was by far the sharpest contribution heard at the First International Poetry Biennial, which assembled 200 poets from 30 countries at Knokke le Zoute, Belgian seaside resort, to spend a happy four days talking shop and eying each other’s iambs.

Their chief conclusion seemed to be that the 20th century is a thoroughly unpoetic age. Items:

¶ Jorge Carrera Andrada, an Ecuadorian Romantic: “This is the epoch of Icarus’ fall, the epoch of burned wings; the poet has become a simple son of the earthly city.” (Most of the poets present looked fairly earthly: no-hairs far outnumbered longhairs, and there were only two beards among the 200 bards.)

¶ Mariano Brull, Cuban Minister to Belgium: “. . . The poet is in a wanting without wanting, which, like a disordered stream, runs towards that which attracts it with an illuminated trembling.”

¶ Arthur Haulot, Belgian poet-journalist: “The hell with it all.”

Belgian Poet Pierre-Louis Flouquet suggested a remedy: a worldwide “poetry day” in May during which all schools would devote a solid hour to the muse, sending the students home to brighten their parents’ drab, workaday existence with a bit of T. S. Eliot or Rabindranath Tagore. After spirited debate, Flouquet’s motion was voted down.

Summed up pipe-smoking Poetess Micheloud: “One gets the impression of being at a medical congress … To speak of poetry as one would speak of the causes and effects of illness is to reduce it to the monotonous purr of humanity and kill it.” Perhaps the best evidence of what seems to be ailing 20th century poetry was furnished by a delegate from The Netherlands who quoted a fellow poet and countryman, Koos Schuur:

Me, me and me and me and me and me,

And me me me and me and me and me

And this world, this universe, this life,

And me me me and me me me and me . .