A Study of Poetry — Background and Themes

The Genetic Method and Its Limits

Perry's preface introduces his "genetic method" as the natural way to approach poetry, yet he immediately cautions against rigid formulas. He states that formulas have "a certain dangerous usefulness for critics and teachers" but are a small part of training in appreciation. This tension between systematic analysis and aesthetic experience runs through the excerpts. Perry acknowledges his debt to Professor R. M. Alden's Introduction to Poetry and English Verse, as well as to Professor Fairchild's Making of Poetry. He also thanks colleagues who read certain chapters in manuscript. The preface thus positions the book as both a classroom text and a work for the general reader, with an appendix and notes suggesting methods and material for students.

Free Verse as a Contested Category

The longest excerpt examines free verse, which Perry calls a "neutral zone" that refuses to be annexed to either prose or verse. He presents opposing views: Edith Wyatt denies any third genre, while Dr. Patterson labels Amy Lowell's work "emotional prose, emphatically phrased" or "spaced prose." Perry notes that typography can deceive the ear, and that "the trained ear must be the only arbiter." He then offers his own taxonomy of four types of free verse: (a) prose disguised by typography, (b) prose rhythms mixed with verse rhythms, (c) verse rhythms predominating with occasional fixed feet, and (d) exclusive use of verse rhythms in new combinations. This classification is grounded in the excerpts' detailed discussion of rhythmic effects.

Walt Whitman as Central Experimenter

Perry devotes particular attention to Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass (1855), calling it "the most interesting of all experiments with free verse." He credits Whitman with extraordinary natural rhythmical endowment and "unwearied" technical curiosity. Perry argues that Whitman succeeded in creating a mode of expression "nearer for the most part to recitative than to aria," neither pure declamation nor pure song. He insists that the case for free verse does not stand or fall with Whitman alone, but Whitman's powerful personality exemplifies the broader effort to produce "rhythmic and tonal beauty through new structural devices." The excerpts show Perry balancing admiration for Whitman's achievement with a critical framework that categorizes free verse types.

Readers approaching A Study of Poetry should note that the excerpts represent only a portion of the book's argument, focusing on free verse and the lyric. Perry's method relies heavily on quoted authorities and taxonomic distinctions, but he repeatedly warns against letting systems replace direct appreciation. The book's value lies in its detailed engagement with early twentieth-century poetic theory, particularly the debate over free verse, and in its attempt to bridge classroom instruction and general readership. Those interested in the history of poetics will find Perry a careful, if cautious, guide.

Perry’s study reminds me how Whitman’s looser lines still hum with a patient music, a quiet pulse beneath the page. That same unhurried breath lingers in these old Virginia verses, where history and melody settle together like dust on a familiar shelf. Lays of ancient Virginia, and other poems — Edition Insights holds that gentle weight, a companion to Perry’s theorizing, both whispering of form’s slow unfolding.