Sermon On: Life's Beggar Truth

Critical Introduction

The Baroness also used genre as a poetic element in her poetry. "Sermon on Life's Beggar Truth" is a prose-poem with wave-like, seemingly unfettered, bouts of prose interspersed throughout more structured lines of poetry. The style, meant to evoke the sensation of poetry and prose at once, is fitting with the poem's theme, which is about the artist's struggle to create imaginative work or poetry when she is without basic (in other words, "prosaic" or unpoetical) needs such as shelter (an "abode" or a "roof"), food, money, and physical freedom. "Imagination" is powered ("battery potency effusions") by cosmic forces that guide the artist by way of her "navel magnetical compass needle," her "cosmos phallus." This force makes the artist free from these more worldly concerns: her "legs are unhitched to stray –flinty pavement free – for – nothing," until worldly needs press. Then, one must "build – buy – abode – rent roof" as an act of "common sense," which is prosaic, "sober," and responsible (a "citizen") and reliable, practical, and necessary for survival (like a "map"). This contradiction is represented structurally by prose sections that read like long lines of poetry—"that feat demands expert steady mind –harsh clutch—sinister harlot smile" juxtaposed with lines of text that look like poetry but either convey no new meaning (sometimes as one word that is part of the previous line such as "Menacing" or "it" in the example below), one word that is more like a misleading heading (such as "Acruise" or "Behold"), or a complete line (such as "There is no higher treasure") that refers back to the prose section like some prophetic outburst.

The contradiction that exists between prose and poetic language is juxtaposed in the poem just as the contradiction that exists between common sense and imagination and the need to eat and the need to create must become unified in the artist at the end of the "Sermon." In conclusion, poets become inherently contradictory as "fragile demigods - teetering architects," who -"in tip-toe equilibrium's continuous peril" are "erecting word castles for world ideas," until these "idealists in flesh - lightning rods [sic] inspired foils –quickened dirt" who are "unpaid - unhoused – unfed / realize: / absolutes demand for:/ concrete / abode." Of course, for the Baroness, there is another contradiction at the heart of the poetic ideal: between creating art for art's sake and creating art for money. Thus, she dedicates (or "desecrates") the poem to "Marcel" (Marcel Duchamp) and to "Carlos" (William Carlos Williams) both of whom she denounces in life for becoming popular artists, for "selling out" to the public.

Just as it is not the case that the Baroness's extant manuscripts are all in an unarranged state, of "sixes and sevens" (as Barnes wrote to Peter Whigham). Some of the Baroness's extant manuscripts may be easily arranged from rough draft to final version, sometimes with clear instructions from the poet on a final edit. For example, the Baroness writes in a letter to Marie Jolas at transition, "I am worried by pestering [unclear] flea - ever since I sent you 'lifes beggartruth' that you will forget to put in 'numbskulledly"' in it's proper place – 'snooze in doldrums - numbskulledly defy current.'" In this case, the Baroness has a final, published version in mind, at least for this line in a poem she never saw published, due in all probability to its length. In a letter to the Baroness from Marie Jolas, dated October 12, 1927, Jolas explains that they cannot use another long poem by the Baroness "Contradictory Speculations" because it is "too long for our use" though she does not mention "Sermon on Life's Beggar Truth," a fact which prompts the Baroness to add at the end of her note about "Sermon": "Of course - you have not yet accepted it - to my knowledge?"