Observations on Poets and Poetry

Abstract

The Thomas Ollive M abbott Collection at The University of Iowa covers adequately the recorded M abbott interests and accomplish­ ments. One may see there his work on Milton, W hitman, and Pinkney, and his more extensive work on Poe, including Volumes I, II, and III of the M abbott edition of the Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe (Belknap Press, Harvard University Press, 1969, 1978). The shelves contain copies of his articles on minor figures in English and American literature, and a file of the Numismatic Review he edited, as well as copies of the sale catalogues of his coin collection. They do not, how­ ever, exhibit anything of what was perhaps the most important of all the M abbott accomplishments. Classroom teaching, like acting on the stage, leaves few w ritten records; and T. O. M., who often referred to himself as a failed actor, was, as students testify, an inspired teacher. As it happens, the collection does contain, in a series of letters and notes not yet open to the public, a small sample of the Mabbott way with poets and poetry. Most of these letters were w ritten in 1923 and 1924 when he was a new Ph.D. in charge of one of the sections in the M aster’s Program at Columbia University. The recipient was a senior at the University of Chicago, majoring in English literature and obvi­ ously reporting on poets studied at the tim e.1 Some of the passages that follow are combinations of isolated statements, and the whole is arranged so that the general statements precede the more particular observations. Time and experience changed T. O. M.’s emphasis on some of the individual poets, but only deepened his commitment to poets and poetry. The following excerpts from these letters reveal an aptitude, shall we say, for the teaching of undergraduates he was shortly to begin.