Critic Under Fire

When a magazine hires a poet to review poetry, it hopes for authority. But it may also invite violent opinions and firm prejudices. Latest case in point: John Ciardi, 40, Boston-born, Tufts-educated poet, critic, and professor. When, in the course of his side job as poetry editor of the Saturday Review, a new book of verse by Anne Morrow Lindbergh--The Unicorn and Other Poems--came across his desk last month. Critic Ciardi communed with Poet Ciardi and then, in 1,500 sulphuric words, poured damnation on it. "I can certainly sense the human emotion that sends Mrs. Lindbergh to the writing." wrote Ciardi, "but of her poems I have, in duty, nothing but contempt to offer."

Ciardi dripped scorn on the internal structure of Anne Lindbergh's poetry, railed at the placing of commas and her use of grammar ("Am I to assume that Mrs. Lindbergh is actually illiterate?''). A line that went "Down at my feet/ a weed has pressed/ its scarlet knife/ against my breast" Ciardi scoffed at as "the neatest trick of the literary season."

Shriek in High-C. "I must believe," continued Ciardi, author of five books of verse,* "that the art of poetry is more important than Mrs. Lindbergh or than you or than me. I am compelled to believe that Mrs. Lindbergh has written an offensively bad book--inept, jingling, slovenly, illiterate even, and puffed up with the foolish afflatus of a stereotyped high-seriousness, that species of aesthetic and human failure that will accept any shriek as a true high-C."

When Ciardi's review reached the Saturday Review, Editor Norman Cousins blue-penciled little but the title (changing "The Slovenly Unicorn" to "A Close Look at the Unicorn"), and sent it off to the printers. Thus was produced, in the words of Editor Cousins, "the biggest storm of reader protest in [our] 33-year history."

With her series of books, and especially her bestselling meditation on the place of women--Gift From the Sea (TIME, March 21, 1955)--Author Lindbergh had built up a large and passionately loyal following among U.S. females, as the first mail deliveries to the Saturday Review quickly proved. "How could any one individual be so cruel?" cried one writer. "I have never seen such cruel, carping criticism of even the trashiest book!" exclaimed another. The Review received a cascade of letters, the vast majority attacking Ciardi's review. Most were from women, and they assailed Ciardi's blunt rancor more than his assessment. There were, however, rumbles from men readers as well. Historian Geoffrey Bruun solemnly declared: "Ciardi exceeded his privileges as a poetry editor to insult a sincere and sensitive writer." Another writer protested: "Why take a baseball bat to club a butterfly?"

The most pertinent attack of all came from inside the Review itself. In this week's issue, Editor Cousins took over the editorial page to criticize Critic Ciardi's criticism and to extol Anne Lindbergh. "He has given literalness far more sovereignty than it needs or enjoys in verse." wrote Cousins. "Nor can we accept the adjective 'illiterate' when applied to Mrs. Lindbergh or her books. There are few living authors who are using the English language more sensitively or with more genuine appeal."

"Pernicious Poetry." Cousins hastened to point out that he was not trying to "chastise" his poetry critic and he gave Ciardi space in the same issue to reply to his critics. Ciardi's second salvo was as fiery as the first. "They [are] that sort of pernicious poetry I mean to have none of in SR and . . . they provided an opportunity to offer an essential challenge to the whole pussyfooting process of book reviewing in our national mass media," Ciardi said. "The reader deserves an honest opinion. If he doesn't deserve it, give it to him anyhow."

In Rome, where he is on a leave from his English professorship at Rutgers, Ciardi added more gently: "I think she is a distinguished lady and a great lady indeed --a lady above discussion ... I am not discussing Mrs. Lindbergh, but her performance as a poet." As for Anne Lindbergh, she declined to discuss the matter at all.

* Some sample lines:

The joy-trees rust in tumbles of the snow

Like fishbones at the backdoors of the feast . . .

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