Girls High School of Brooklyn - Blue and Gold Yearbook (Brooklyn, NY)

Page 17 text:

The Cruise of the Artemis HERE is no state so admirable as the unconscious one: poets, oblivious to all save the Muse, are, undoubtedly, thereg musicians, dancers, painters, all, the artists, the blessed of God, have become insensitive to reality as personified in frigidity, frivolity, and friction. This aesthetic torpor is produced, we are told, by the semi-conscious, by mystic communi- cation with a realm forbidden, and justly so, to any individual who might dare call a spade a spade. How much more effective it is to suggest the spade, in the inimitable manner of the Imagists, thus: Deeper Deeper Deeper Into the stony ground- Earth-stained, storm-battered, iron-hearted- Deeper Deeper Deeper Into the worm-souled earth- That is a spade. And it is quite evident that nothing half so eloquent could have been written by the stolid brotherhood who have seen spades. Thus, unawareness lifts one above earthly things and deposits one on a lofty eminence from which one may clutch at halos, wings, and other heavenly trappings. Naturally the unconscious are small in number and cherish this sign of individuality with all the fervor of the artistic tem- perament. Unfortunately a strange thing is happening. Persons who are neither artists nor blessed of God have become possessed of the power of unconsciousness, whereas the artists and the blessed of God have be- come increasingly aware of their position. The former are, quite surpris- ingly, simple beings, entirely brainless and utterly charming. Fifteen

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- -- Fourteen Felled Tree HIS tree, this tree, whose eager hands Were curving up against the sky To catch the swoop of beauty bound In April flaming, swift and high, Has had the emerald notes cast out Of its deep throat and the song-begun., And lies, a broken thing., against The smoky moving of the air, Its lips too mute for bitter moan, Its heart too still to care, to care- How can you know who are not tree, Who are not sister to the wind, Who are not mother to a bird, The sorrow of a body pinned Within a cerement of frost, The passionate negation and The breaking of the burning wings- Almost its opal tongue had thrown Into the day, a joyous word, But it was cruelly refused, Like a dropped star, a stifled bird, A crystal heritage, its all. Nearly within the tremulous hour, It was deprived of the dream, again, It was refused its heart's flower .... But if you had said to the cruel night That this was nothing-a tree denied Its April right, and beauty's spears And gloryis wounds, you lied you lied' Anna Elizabeth Bennett, June, 1931

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Perhaps the one quality makes possible the other, but without doubt Shar Davis possessed the two. He was a young, aimless vagabond with a gift for idleness and an itch for adventure. His education had been wholly neglected, and had left him delightfully ignorant. Nothing wrong or ugly had ever disturbed him, for his presence, in itself, banished evil and 'thought of evil. He was lying on the deck of a battered sloop, twiddling his thumbs, and gazing whimsically into the air. Near him stood a pail of dirty water, wedged in firmly by some coal bags. A rather pitiful mop leaned on the bags. The deck should have been swabbed an hour ago, but Shar had for- gotten all about it, and at any rate, Shar thought the ship looked unnatural when she was clean. This was very true. The Artemis, named by a late ship-master with a passion for mythology and salt-pork, looked very much like a small boy scraped clean for Sunday, when she was tidied. Shar had seen her first, looking dark and wobbly. She had just come in from sea and she had weathered her storms none too well. In fact, Artemis had such an adventurous air about her, that Shar was moved to get a place aboard her. Another individual had been moved as strongly as Shar, and had succumbed to the temptation of having a lark from which the regulation brass band and blue buttons would be absent. Life was a procession of brass bands for him. His name was Kennard Wood, and he was an author, who wrote psychoanalytical novels and gave speeches on modern culture. He had blown his own horn so effectively that he could aiord to stand by and listen to other people's horns. Nor was this as gratifying as Kennard had imagined. The literati were becoming ridiculous in his eyes, and the very thought cloyed. Kennard soon discovered Shar, and Shar's literary possibilities. The two spoke together, when the work was done, of what they thought, and hoped, and loved. Since Shar was untainted by the influence of other men's ideas, he was refreshingly new and delightful to Kennard. Unable to escape pen and ink, Kennard wrote a book about Shar. It was not as consciously analytical as the others had been. The reviewers pounced on it eagerly. A breath of fresh air, a wind which blows the cobwebs from one's consciousness, and lets something beautiful and young enter in. This was a variation on the theme of delighted response which greeted the novel. And Kennard wondered silently, What do they know about it? Ruth Goldzweig, June, 1931. Sixteen