There has lately come to my mind (if so desired the word may be used with quotations) the recipe by which any aspiring young poet may become an ultramodern in his versifying as his ambition may require — may even attain to the "Dial" school. The thing is simple enough; take any thought of no importance, preferably one concerning one's own phases of nauseation, and state it as awkwardly and obscurely as possible. Voila! Cummings and Eliot!
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Tuesday, October 21, 2025
Recipe for Ultramodern Poetry
George Sterling (1869-1926), "Rhymes and Reactions," Overland Monthly LXXXV.3 (March, 1927) 95: