The Poetry of Eberhart by Richard Eberhart

First published:A Bravery of Earth, 1930; Reading the Spirit, 1936; Song and Idea, 1940; Poems, New and Selected, 1944; Burr Oaks, 1947; Selected Poems, 1951; Undercliff: Poems 1946-1953, 1953; Great Praises, 1957; Collected Poems, 1960; Collected Verse Plays, 1962; The Quarry, 1964

Critical Evaluation:

Richard Eberhart is one of the least easily classified of modern poets. The directness of his statements and forcefulness of his language prevent his being within the realm of the moderns who remain aloof and intricate. His moralistic tendency to explain his allegories removes him from the sophisticated circles of understatement. As many critics have pointed out, Eberhart is a Romantic in an age of anti-Romanticism. He is also a quasi-mystic. He calls himself a relativist, a modern dualist. As a result of his two-sides-to-every-issue stand, much of his poetry seems contradictory; the “truth” of one he denies in another. His almost militantly individualistic use of language has been compared to D. H. Lawrence’s. Finally, his philosophic poetry deals with everyday questions which are dramatized in everyday experiences. Thus his “metaphysical” poetry concerns not the heavenly, but the mundane. Yet it is exactly his romantic impulses, his Whitmanesque egocentricity, his apparent inconsistencies, his idiosyncratic language, and the realm from which he draws his poetry which make it difficult to read him without becoming involved.

Eberhart’s major theme is death, which he explores both as an active man and as an intellectual. The irreconcilable duality between action and intellect has long been a concern of poets; Eberhart’s concern in, for example, “In a Hard Intellectual Light,” is neither revolutionary nor overwhelmingly modern in a scientific age.

One of Eberhart’s first answers for the active man who seeks escape from mechanization is in nature. Hence much of his poetry, especially relatively early work, is easily Romantic, as is his deification of the age of innocence recorded in “Recollections of Childhood.” Loss of innocence comes, however, with the knowledge of death, and even his most fervently Romantic poems do not escape a persistent questioning about when death will come. Romanticism deserts him completely when he sees man in “Maze.” To transcend reality as seen in this poem, Eberhart creates visionary states close to the mystical. The reality which he questions most frequently is death; his visionary poetry, therefore, seeks to transcend death, as in “Imagining How It Would Be To Be Dead.” Eberhart is not, however, willing or able to maintain the wholly visionary level; for he feels that it is not human.

Both his romanticism and his mysticism consistently return to a persistent concern with the reality of death and of God. His lyric longing for death is expressed in “Cover Me Over.” But in “What If Remembrance?” this mood of longing is deliberately questioned. Again, in “The Groundhog,” both lyricism and questioning are rejected when the dead animal reminds the poet of his own mortality and coming decay. Such deliberately polemic statements are not a flaw in Eberhart’s philosophy; rather, they illustrate what he means when he says that he tends to philosophize on everything but to arrive at no conclusions. He claims also that he is by nature contemplative, but active.

Perhaps one of his most forceful examinations of the recurrent anguish of a man faced with religious abstractions, is “Reality! Reality! What Is It?” Eberhart comes back again and again to his assertion that there are few things that man can be certain of, but death is always one of them. Although each individual poem presents only one side of the issue, his attitude about death remains nebulous: sometimes Romantic, sometimes mystical, sometimes protesting its interruption of human joys. He allows his poetry to be inconclusive, so seemingly contradictory, because he finds life contradictory. Furthermore, he believes that poetry is a matter of fleeting, perhaps fragmentary flashes of inspiration, and his poem must capture that moment for the part of truth it contains. The next blinding inspiration will contain a new insight, perhaps contradictory, but nonetheless true. He must, therefore, report that moment and let it speak for itself.

As a craftsman, Eberhart seldom revises because the inspiration has passed and the revision would not be faithful to the original truth. For this reason objection has been raised against the fast-moving fury of some of his poems. Critics regretfully point out that sometimes it seems as though Eberhart loses control and the poem directs or misdirects him. Eberhart would not disagree, but neither would he object. The uncontrolled poems, whether we approve of them as true works or not, are written as he wants them, agitated by violent speculation and equally violent contemplation.

Many of his most recent poems deal explicitly with poetry. “Winter Kill,” for example, is at first a dramatic regretting of the death of a bear, then becomes an allegory on the nature of poetry, its elusiveness, its hold upon the known, its flashing insights into the unknown.

The most conclusive statement that one can make about Eberhart’s poetry is that it is inconclusive. He is a personal poet. Therefore much of his poetry seems almost confessional, or at least self-examining. Just as Whitman used himself as an archetypical democratic man, Eberhart uses himself as a representative of modern man in a confused world. Honest readers at whatever literacy level recognize their own questions in Eberhart’s poems. Whether or not we always agree, it is not difficult to identify with the only answer he offers: love.