PART THREE

West Indies-Europe

(1926-1930)

1926

225: TO MALCOLM COWLEY

[_Patterson_] _Jan 3rd_

Dear Malcolm: The poem[41] has been read with approval--is flatteringly apocalyptic and has the proper nautical slant.... Seriously, though, it seems to stand on its own feet as a poem and I appreciate a very great deal the tonality and direction of it in its more intimate aspects. You and Peggy [Baird] have been more than good in remembering me--thanks for the photo, too. --/--/

Are you reviewing _Doc. Transit_ anywhere? Schneider finally sent me out a copy. It intrigued me more than any such tour de force since Poe, though it has its obvious weaknesses. Some chapters, however, of great imagination. I didn’t anticipate half so much from the earlier things I’ve read by Schneider.

I’m coming in town probably about two weeks from now, and should like to know what day or days about that period you’ll be there also. You know what the Governor of North Carolina said to the Governor of S. Carolina--! I’m such a rum-scallion that I never even planned to stay put anywhere very long in the woods. Let me hear from you soon. --/--/

226: TO HIS GRANDMOTHER

_Patterson_ _Jan. 5th ’26_

Dear Grandma: I was sorry to hear from Grace yesterday that you have been undergoing more pain and illness--and I only hope that this finds you MUCH improved. I wish I could be near you--and have a long talk. We certainly will manage that when I come out to Cleveland next spring.

Yesterday I finally got started into my _Bridge_ poem--really the first full day I have [had] for the work since arriving. And from now on I hope to have the necessary inspiration to keep steadily at it. One really has to keep one’s self in such a keyed-up mood for the thing that no predictions can be made ahead as to whether one is going to have the wit to work on it steadily or not.

It is fine to get somewhere where I can sleep soundly again. I’m beginning to feel very much rested. I’m so glad that you both are located in a place where there is nothing more to do than to care for your personal comfort. --/--/

227: TO HIS MOTHER

_Patterson_ _Jan. 7th_

Dear Grace & Grandma: --/--/ There isn’t much news--only the good news (to me!) that I’ve been at work in almost ecstatic mood for the last two days on my _Bridge_. I never felt such range and symphonic power before--and I’m so happy to have this first burst of substantiation since I had the good luck to be set free to build this structure of my dreams.

I sent New Year’s greetings to Kahn and in the mail today comes the most cordial answer--wishing as he puts it, “that you will prove yourself a master builder in constructing _The Bridge_ of your dreams, thoughts and emotions.” --/--/

228: TO WALDO FRANK

_Patterson, N. York_ _Jan. 18th ’26_

Dear Waldo: I am not through working on it yet, but I thought you might care to see this last part of _The Bridge_, oddly enough emergent first.[42] It is symphonic in including the convergence of all the strands separately detailed in antecedent sections of the poem--Columbus, conquests of water, land, etc., Pokahantus, subways, offices, etc., etc. I dare congratulate myself a little, I think, in having found some liberation for my condensed metaphorical habit in a form as symphonic (at least so attempted) as this.

The bridge in becoming a ship, a world, a woman, a tremendous harp (as it does finally) seems to really have a career. I have attempted to induce the same feelings of elation, etc.--like being carried forward and upward simultaneously--both in imagery, rhythm and repetition, that one experiences in walking across my beloved Brooklyn Bridge. I’m now busy on the Niña, Santa Maria, Pinta episode--Cathay being an attitude of spirit, rather than material conquest throughout, of course.

I know I can depend on you to mention the flaws and shortcomings. This section seems a little transcendental in tendency at present,--but I think that the pediments of the other sections will show it not to have been. --/--/

229: TO HIS MOTHER

_Patterson_ _Jan. 26_

Dear Grace: It _is_ a good thing I got your letter yesterday--or I _should_ have been sore. I was so tired last night I simply fell into bed at 10. We had spent most of the day shopping in town and I later built me some bookshelves which are very simple but extend to the ceiling--the kind I have always wanted. My study now is a picture to enjoy. When I was in New York I bought some beautiful and rare Congo wood carvings--and added to my Sommer paintings and your photograph they make a marvelous room.

My hands are so stiff from wood-cutting that my writing looks funny. It is very, very cold today, was yesterday and promises to continue. We all go about shivering most of the time and I’m sorry to say get too little freedom for our writing. Certainly the spring warmth will be unusually welcome to all of us.

--/--/ We do not correspond--except at considerable intervals as I hesitate to presume much on his [Otto Kahn] attention. There are so many others whom he is always helping that his time is largely taken up anyway. What with two personal secretaries and a whole corps of personal office help--_besides_ his huge financial machine (his interests occupy a building of about 22 stories) he must be a busy man. He wants to hear from “time to time” as he puts it--about how my poem is progressing. But, since writing him New Year’s I shan’t presume again until next March or so. My second thousand is not payable until along in May. At which time I shall probably personally talk to him again. Beyond this money I have no expectations of more assistance, but if my poem when completed seems good enough to him, it may be, of course, that he will be further interested. I’m thankful enough for what I already have, however!

Your news about Grandma is rather heartrending. I do hope she won’t have to suffer much longer--and if she does that she will be given enough sedatives to keep the pain dulled, no matter what the consequences. It would be best if she really gives up more--for the remainder of her existence--under any conditions--promises her only misery. --/--/

230: TO HIS GRANDMOTHER

_Patterson, New York_ _January 27th_

Dear Grandma: --/--/ I am hoping to hear from Grace tomorrow all about how you are. Much better, I hope.

We had a brief flurry of snow again today, but not enough yet to permit me to use my scrumptious snow shoes. I have been reading the _Journal of Christopher Columbus_ lately--of his first voyage to America, which is concerned mostly with his cruisings around the West Indies. It has reminded me many times of the few weeks I spent on the Island to hear him expatiate on the gorgeous palms, unexpected pines, balmy breezes, etc., which we associate with Cuba. -- -- -- --

231: TO GASTON LACHAISE

_Patterson, New York_ _Feb. 10th, 26_

Dear Lachaise: Constantly your seagull has floated in my mind--ever since I saw it, and it will mean much to me to have it. I can’t thank you enough. I am enclosing an amount which I hope will to some extent defray the cost of materials, and you must let me know if more is needed.

I envy you your occupation out here in the extreme cold of the last two weeks--wiggling a pen or tapping a typewriter is hardly as conducive to good circulation or warmth while every breath one takes comes out like a steaming snort from a dragon! At present the snow is so deep that we are obliged to use snow shoes or skis to get anywhere. Fortunately we are well supplied with wood and oil and provisions.

When I get to New York--probably not for six weeks or so--I hope to find you in. If the white bird is done before then you can express it out to Patterson, or I’ll be glad to carry it back when I come in. -- -- -- --

232: TO CHARLOTTE AND RICHARD RYCHTARIK

_Patterson, New York_ _March 2nd_

Dear Charlotte et Ricardo: --/--/ In spite of many inconveniences, however, I am glad of coming out here. Temperate living, good sleep and considerable outdoor exercise have had their usual effects. The cold has kept us hopping, though, and I’ll be glad to greet the first warm days that come. Then there will be both more time and more comfort for reading and _The Bridge_. The finale of which is just about completed--but the antecedent sections will take me at least a year yet. At times the project seems hopeless, horribly so; and then suddenly something happens inside one, and the theme and the substance of the conception seem brilliantly real, more so than ever! At least, _at worst_, the poem will be a _huge_ failure! If you get what I mean. When I am a little better satisfied with certain details of the part already finished I’ll send it on to you, although I really shouldn’t--as isolated from the rest of the poem it would probably not be interesting.

Mother wrote me that you called on her. She was extremely pleased, and remarked how beautiful and youthfully radiant my Charlotte was! --/--/

233: TO GORHAM MUNSON

_Patterson, N.Y._ _March 5th_

Dear Gorham: The long siege of snow--the mail delivery has been discontinued for six weeks, and isn’t resumed yet--despite occasional sportiveness with snow shoes and skis, has been a burden. Especially as I was swindled on a fifty-gal. drum of kerosene I bought for the stoves in my study, and have had to risk chapping hands every time I came near the typewriter to say nothing of tumbling through many a chilly night with chilblains from cold floors, damp, etc. It really would have been alright had I had pure kerosene, though. Nothing but the swindler is to blame.

None-the-less, I’ve read considerably--Aeschylus (especially the _Oresteia_) was a revelation of my ideal in the dynamics of metaphor--even through the rather prosy translations[43] one gleans the essential density of image, impact of substance matter so verbally quickened and delivered with such soul-shivering economy that one realizes there is none in the English language to compare him with.--Then Prescott’s _Ferdinand & Isabella_, _Journal of Columbus_, a book on Magellan by Hildebrand (this was rather inexcusable), Melville’s delightful _White Jacket_ as well as a marvelously illustrated book[44] on whaling and whaling ships, published by the Marine Research Society, Salem, Mass.... In the midst of my readings of _Science & the Modern World_, Whitehead,--along comes _Virgin Spain_. I’m about half way through this at present and feel like telegraphing Waldo my immediate uncontrolled and unstinted enthusiasm. As prose it certainly is his climax of excellence--and as a document of the epic one of the most lively testaments ever written. I had been dwelling with a good deal of surprise in a pleasant conviction that Lawrence’s _Plumed Serpent_ was a masterpiece of racial description. It certainly is vividly beautiful, its landscapes, theatrical vistas, etc.--but Waldo’s work is a world of true reality--his ritual is not a mere invention. Only my interest in Maya and Toltec archaeology led me to order Lawrence’s book. It was poor in this--at least regarding the details I had hoped for, but I was rather astonished at the calibre of much of the prose.

As Waldo may have mentioned, the finale of _The Bridge_ is written, the other five or six parts are in feverish embryo. They will require at least a year more for completion; however bad this work may be, it ought to be hugely and unforgivably, distinguishedly bad. In a way it’s a test of materials as much as a test of one’s imagination. _Is_ the last statement sentimentally made by Eliot,

“This is the way the world ends, This is the way the world ends,-- Not with a bang but a whimper.”

is this acceptable or not as the poetic determinism of our age?! I, of course, can say no, to myself, and believe it. But in the face of such a stern conviction of death on the part of the only group of people whose verbal sophistication is likely to take on interest in a style such as mine--what can I expect? However, I know my way by now, regardless. I shall at least continue to grip with the problem without relaxing into the easy acceptance (in the name of “elegance, nostalgia, wit, splenetic splendor”) of death which I see most of my friends doing. O the admired beauty of a casuistical mentality! It is finally content with twelve hours sleep a day and archaeology.

I am glad that you have switched over to the more profitable and leisurely programme which you describe. And that you’ve gone back to writing again with such vim. The social distractions of NY are so terrific that I hope to never live there again beyond six months at a period. I’m really just getting around to a working basis, the first real platform of my life--here. In many ways it proves to be a revelation of certain potentialities.

Do send me your comments on Crane. And may I be frank--without seeming to reflect on any personal relationships of the past--in stating my reactions? Not that I shall desire to exert any changes, but that there may possibly arise (between ourselves) certain questions of direction, aims, intentions, which I may feel are erroneously ascribed to me. At least my agreements or objections may interest you. -- -- -- --

234: TO GORHAM MUNSON

_Patterson, New York_ _March 17, ’26_

Dear Gorham: My rummy conversation last Monday offered, I fear, but a poor explanation of my several theoretical differences of opinion with you on the function of poetry, its particular province of activity, etc. Neither was I able to express to you my considerable appreciation of many accurate distinctions made in your essay which certainly prompt my gratitudes as well as applause. It would probably be uninteresting as well as a bit excessive for me to enumerate and dwell on these felicitations, however gratifying to myself I may feel them to be. Your essay is roughly divided in two, the second half including our present disagreement, and inasmuch as I have never really attempted to fulfill the functions therein attributed to the poet, your theories on that subject can be discussed from a relatively impersonal angle so far as I am concerned. Furthermore, it is _one_ aspect of a contemporary problem which has already enlisted the most detailed and intense speculation from a number of fields, science, philosophy, etc., as you, of course, know. I’m not saying that my few hasty notes which follow are conclusive evidence, but the logic of them (added to the organic convictions incident to the memorized experience of the creative “act,” let us say) is not yet sufficiently disproved for me by such arguments, at least, as you have used in your essay.

Poetry, in so far as the metaphysics of any absolute knowledge extends, is simply the concrete _evidence_ of the _experience_ of a recognition (_knowledge_ if you like). It can give you a _ratio_ of fact and experience, and in this sense it is both perception and thing perceived, according as it approaches a significant articulation or not. This is its reality, its fact, _being_. When you attempt to ask more of poetry,--the fact of man’s relationship to a hypothetical god, be it Osiris, Zeus or Indra, you will get as variant terms even from the abstract terminology of philosophy as you will from poetry; whereas poetry, without attempting to logically enunciate such a problem or its solution, may well give you the real connective experience, the very “sign manifest” on which rests the assumption of a godhead.

I’m perfectly aware of my wholesale lack of knowledge. But as Allen said, what exactly do you mean by “knowledge”? When you ask for exact factual data (a graphic map of eternity?), ethical morality or moral classifications, etc., from poetry--you not only limit its goal, you ask its subordination to science, philosophy. Is it not equally logical to expect Stravinsky to bring his fiddles into dissent with the gravitation theories of Sir Isaac Newton? They _are_ in dissent with this scientist, as a matter of fact, and organically so; for the group mind that Stravinsky appeals to has already been freed from certain of the limitations of experience and consciousness that dominated both the time and the mind of Newton. Science (ergo all exact knowledge and its instruments of operation) is in perfect antithesis to poetry. (Painting, architecture, music, as well). It operates from an exactly opposite polarity, and it may equate with poetry, but when it does so its statement of such is in an entirely different terminology. I hope you get this difference between _inimical_ and _antithetical_, intended here. It is not my interest to discredit science, it has been as inspired as poetry,--and if you could but recognize it, much more hypothetically motivated.

What you admire in Plato as “divine sanity” is the architecture of his logic. Plato doesn’t live today because of the intrinsic “truth” of his statements: their only living truth today consists in the “fact” of their harmonious relationship to each other in the context of his organization of them. This grace partakes of poetry. But Plato was primarily a philosopher, and you must admit that grace is a secondary motive in philosophical statement, at least until the hypothetical basis of an initial “truth” has been accepted--not in the name of beauty, form or experience, but in the name of rationality. No wonder Plato considered the banishment of poets;--their reorganizations of chaos on basis perhaps divergent from his own threatened the logic of _his_ system, itself founded on assumptions that demanded the very defense of poetic construction which he was fortunately able to provide.

The tragic quandary (or _agon_) of the modern world derives from the paradoxes that an inadequate system of rationality forces on the living consciousness. I am not opposing any new synthesis of reasonable laws which might provide a consistent philosophical and moral program for our epoch. Neither, on the other hand, am I attempting through poetry to delineate any such system. If this “knowledge,” as you call it, were so sufficiently organized as to dominate the limitations of my personal experience (consciousness) then I would probably find myself automatically writing under its “classic” power of dictation, and under that circumstance might be incidentally as philosophically “contained” as you might wish me to be. That would mean “serenity” to you because the abstract basis of my work would have been familiarized to you before you read a word of the poetry. But my poetry, even then,--in so far as it was truly poetic,--would avoid the employment of abstract tags, formulations of experience in factual terms, etc.,--it would necessarily express its concepts in the more direct terms of physical-psychic experience. If not, it must by so much lose its impact and become simply categorical.

I think it must be due to some such misapprehensions of my poetic purpose in writing that leads you to several rather contradictory judgments which in one sentence are laudatory and in other contexts which you give them,--put me to blush for mental attitudes implied on my part. For instance, after having granted me all the praise you do earlier in your essay for “storming heaven” as it were, how can you later refer to that same faculty of verbal synchronization as to picture me as “waiting for another ecstasy”--and then “slumping”--rather as a baker would refer to a loaf in his oven. Granted your admiration for the “yeastiness” of some of my effusions, you should (in simple justice to your reader and your argument) here also afford the physical evidence (actual quotation or logical proof) of the “slump,” the unleavened failure. There really are plenty of lines in this respect which could be used for illustration. What I’m objecting to is contained in my suspicion that you have allowed too many extra-literary impressions of me to enter your essay, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. The same is true of your reference to the “psychological _gaming_” (Verlaine) which puts the slur of superficiality and vulgarity on the very aspects of my work which you have previously been at pains to praise.--And all because you arbitrarily propose a goal for me which I have no idea of nor interest in following. Either you find my work poetic or not, but if you propose for it such ends as poetry organically escapes, it seems to me, as Allen said, that you as a critic of literature are working into a confusion of categories. Certainly this charge of alternate “gutter sniping” and “angel kissing” is no longer anything more than a meretricious substitute for psychological sincerity in defining the range of an artist’s subject matter and psychic explorations. Still less should it be brought forward unless there is enough physical evidence in the artist’s work to warrant curiosity in this respect on the part of the reader.

Your difficulties are extra, I realize, in writing about me at all. They are bound to be thus extra because of the (so far as the reader goes) “impurities” of our previous literary arguments, intimacies of statement, semi-statements, etc., which are not always reflected in a man’s work, after all. But your preoccupations on the one hand with a terminology which I have not attempted and your praise on the other hand of my actual (physical) representation of the incarnate _evidence_ of the very knowledge, the very _wisdom_ which you feel me to be only conjecturally sure of--makes me guilty of really wronging you, perhaps, but drives me to the platitude that “truth has no name.” Her latest one, of course, is “relativity.”

Apropos of all this the letter by Nichols in _The New Criterion_ will interest you when you read it; there are interesting quotations from Goethe, Santayana, Russell, etc. And I am enclosing a hasty bundle of notes written at O’Neill’s request for what angles they might suggest to him in writing a foreword for my book. (This, I hope, may be returned.)

Allen tells me that he has just mailed his note on me--for possible use in _The New Masses_. I told him to do this, not remembering definitely what you had told me about it before. It can do no harm anyway. I’m enclosing copies of the poems which Potamkin had intended using. It certainly was very kind of you to have suggested these matters to the _Masses_ editor. Do let me hear from you soon.

PS--Needless to say, the notes for O’Neill contain repetitious matter for you, and certain accents were especially made against biases and critical deficiencies which I felt [might] lead to unwarranted assumptions, misplaced praises, etc., on his part. But the definitions of the “logic of metaphor,” “dynamics of inferential mention,” etc., I think are quite exact.[45]

235: TO OTTO H. KAHN

_Patterson, New York_ _March 18, 1926_

Dear Mr. Kahn: You were so kind as to express a desire to know from time to time how _The Bridge_ was progressing, so I’m flashing in a signal from the foremast, as it were. Right now I’m supposed to be Don Cristobal Colon returning from “Cathay,” first voyage. For mid-ocean is where the poem begins.

It concludes at midnight--at the center of Brooklyn Bridge. Strangely enough that final section of the poem has been the first to be completed,--yet there’s a logic to it, after all; it is the mystic consummation toward which all the other sections of the poem converge. Their contents are implicit in its summary.

Naturally I am encountering many unexpected formal difficulties in satisfying my conception, especially as one’s original idea has a way of enlarging steadily under the spur of daily concentration on minute details of execution. I don’t wish to express my confidence too blatantly--but I am certain that, granted I’m able to find the suitable form for all details as I presently conceive them, _The Bridge_ will be a dynamic and eloquent document.

As I said, I have thus far completed only the final section,--about one hundred lines. I am now going straight through from the beginning. There has been much incidental reading to do, and more study is necessary as I go on. As I cannot think of my work in terms of time I cannot gauge when it will be completed, probably by next December, however.

There are so many interlocking elements and symbols at work throughout _The Bridge_ that it is next to impossible to describe it without resorting to the actual metaphors of the poem. Roughly, however, it is based on the conquest of space and knowledge. The theme of “Cathay” (its riches, etc.) ultimately is transmuted into a symbol of consciousness, knowledge, spiritual unity. A rather religious motivation, albeit not Presbyterian. The following notation is a very rough abbreviation of the subject matter of the several sections:

I Columbus--Conquest of space, chaos II Pokahantus--The natural body of America-fertility, etc. III Whitman--The Spiritual body of America (A dialogue between Whitman and a dying soldier in a Washington hospital; the infraction of physical death, disunity, on the concept of immortality) IV John Brown (Negro porter on Calgary Express making up berths and singing to himself (a jazz form for this) of his sweetheart and the death of John Brown, alternately) V Subway--The encroachment of machinery on humanity; a kind of purgatory in relation to the open sky of last section VI The Bridge--A sweeping dithyramb in which the Bridge becomes the symbol of consciousness spanning time and space

The first and last sections are composed of blank verse with occasional rhyme for accentuation. The verbal dynamics used and the spacious periodicity of the rhythm result in an unusually symphonic form. What forms I shall use for the other sections will have to be determined when I come to grips with their respective themes.

I would gladly send you the completed section for present reading, but unless you especially wish to see it now I should prefer your judgment on it later when a more synthetic reading will be possible.

I hope that this extended amount of particulars,--evidence, perhaps, of an excessive enthusiasm on my part, has not been tedious reading. Your interest and confidence have proved to be so great a spur to me that I must mention my gratitude again.

236: TO WALDO FRANK

_Mid-channel_ [_Patterson_] _March 20th, ’26_

Dear Waldo: Just a word to say I have finished my first reading of your _Spain_. It is a book I shall go back to many times. Its magnificence and integrity are so rare that they constitute an embarrassment to our times in some ways. “The Port of Columbus” is truly something of a prelude to my intentions for _The Bridge_--which I seem to have got back to today after a hideous experience in New York and in spite of a very bad cold I seem to have caught from overheated city buildings.

I can’t resist sending you the first verse[46] at this early time, along with the revised version of the finale. Your discipline and your confidence are so dear to me that in moods like this today (adrift a music that is almost a burden) I have to be a little uncontained and remind you of my love. Will send the Kahn article next week when a fresh copy arrives.... Temporarily--Don Cristobal--

237: TO MALCOLM COWLEY

[_Patterson_] _March 28_

Dear Malcolm: The news of your plans for the summer is good to hear! We’re all anticipating the first of May--though you _will_ be a little distant. Five miles walking says Mrs. Turner, coming out of her aunt’s part with the tea.

After a perfect spasm of sentiment and “inspection” I was released from the fond embrace of my relatives in Cleveland--only to fare into rather more than less spasmodic embraces in N.Y.--a one night spree--on my way back. Since which I have been reading the philosophies of the East until I actually dream in terms of the Vedanta scriptures. Also am finding Marco Polo pleasant to incorporate in the subconscious.

I’ve often wondered how you got home that night. After you left I was roused from my stupor by an amazing scandal at the next table. Benét, Wylie and some others discussing ---- who, it seems, doesn’t write at all. Her father does the trick--works off “suppressed desires” that way, etc., etc. I was very good after that and stormed over to the Albert, lectured the clerk for not admitting my friends, and went to bed, tout seul.

The next morning after the next I was discovering that my mother knows how to mix the best cocktails I ever drank.

Are you going ahead with the Boyd proposal? I think you should--a fine weapon against further attacks from that gent. again--and not, however, implying any concession whatever on your part. --/--/

238: TO HIS MOTHER

_Patterson_ [_March 29, 1926_]

Dearest Grace: Your letter came yesterday. And I was _immensely_ glad to hear from you. Altogether, the news seemed good, too, and I’m _so_ glad you and Charles [Curtis] have made a definite decision! By _all_ means make The Little Church the scene. Then I can be there and we can all take a bus ride afterward. Of _course_ you’ll be acceptable--who ever heard of such distinctions being made in any Protestant church against widows and widowers, grass or otherwise! Then maybe you could make my humble domicile one of the stops on your celebration.

I, too, think I made my visit at just the proper time. I’ll never forget how really eloquently Grandma looked, how intelligent and fresh. And _you_ looked so good to me, too. Remember, that suffering does, if borne without rancour, it does build something that only grows lovelier with time--and it is a kind of kingdom among those _initiated_, a kingdom that has the widest kind of communion. You and I can share our understanding of things more and more as time goes on. I loved you _so much_ for many of the things you said when I was with you.

Yes, I hope you never will turn your back on me, as you say. And this is not to say that there may come occasions for it--but there may, after all, be times of temporary misunderstandings as there have been before. I can be awfully proud of _you_, however less occasion I may [have] to feel similarly about myself. I do some awfully silly things sometimes--most of which you don’t know about, but which I sometimes (not always) regret. Don’t let this stir your apprehensions, any, however. I’m in no particular pickle at present.

We have had another snow and I’m just disgusted. I had counted on a modified weather on my return and instead it’s been just one snow flurry after another. Sore throat is some better, but I’m still threatened with tonsilitis. No chance to start gardens yet. -- -- -- --

239: TO GORHAM MUNSON

_Patterson_ _April 5_

Dear Gorham: It seems evident that I somewhat too egoistically argued what I intended as simply a defense of the position and province of poetry, as an art form, rather than any claims my work might or might not have to critical praise. This has been my attitude throughout our discussion, and though certain contentions are still unresolved, it doesn’t in the least conflict with what you say in your last letter. Indeed, I should say that your essay rather over-estimates my achievements in some particulars. Please don’t think me ungrateful or disgruntled, anyway.

Rorty was so swift in returning Allen’s NOTE that I have been wondering if he had actually taken some interest in the “Voyages” I sent you. I should have sent them direct to him had I known that he was subsequently to write me a request for something. Sheer inadvertency on my part not to have mentioned my intentions in sending them to you. Allen gave Untermeyer and Kreymborg such digs that it’s not surprising that Rorty summarily returned the mss. I shall be surprised if he fancies my work.

The Cowleys move up here May first. I hope to have a few “animations” with Malcolm before I, the climate, the solitude, or whatever it is, drives him into the kind of shell that Brown and Tate seem to have retired into lately. My mood being pre-eminently N. Labrador these days--I should like a little good company immensely. A life of perfect virtue, redundant health, etc., doesn’t seem in any way to encourage the Muse, after all. I almost feel like coming to town and seeking a job, at least that would make me part-time useful, meantime there wouldn’t be the suspense of weeks going by without a written line. I’m afraid I’ve so systematically objectivized my theme and its details that the necessary “subjective lymph and sinew” is frozen. Meanwhile I drone about, reading, eating and sleeping. It’s really quite agonizing. For in so many ways I know what I WANT to do.... The actual fleshing of a concept is so complex and difficult, however, as to be quite beyond the immediate avail of will or intellect. A fusion with other factors not so easily named is the condition of fulfilment. It is alright to call this “possession,” if you will, only it should not be insisted that its operation denies the simultaneous functioning of a strong critical faculty. It is simply a stronger focus than can be arbitrarily willed into operation by the ordinarily-employed perceptions. Do you find anything in my rough notes that’s interesting?

240: TO HIS MOTHER

_Patterson, New York_ _April 18th_

Dear Grace: It would be a relief to be able to talk with you an hour or so today. I’m in such an uncertain position in regard to a number of things that I feel as though it would be a fitting end to settle it with powder and bullet. The whole benefit of my patronage from Kahn, my year of leisure, my long fight with the winter, etc., out here is about to be sacrificed -- -- -- --. I refer to Mrs. Tate, and Allen. But primarily it has been Mrs. Tate who has influenced matters until they came to a head the other day, since which time I have had a note from each of them, respectively -- -- -- --.

I am accused of having victimized their time and their quarters by intruding without regard to their wishes, etc. This is in part justified,--justified, I say because the contingency of such a matter was bound to exist between two families which had agreed on sharing a common water pump. I had to have access to it as much as they did, and had to pass through their kitchen occasionally on my way. When Mrs. Tate--this occurred last week--instead of simply telling me that she wished I would avoid such passage in the future--when she began putting bolts on her doors, and all that--I could take the _hint_ without having to be knocked down by a hammer, and so removed my shaving utensils, etc., which had been beside the pump, into Mrs. Turner’s kitchen. Why this should make them mad, I don’t know, and why it should make them mad because I immediately began avoiding their parts of the house _completely_ (not being invited to do otherwise) I can’t see, either.

Of course when I encountered them outside, and saw how sulky they behaved, etc., I began to lose all respect for such behavior--made up my mind to ignore them as much as decency permitted, although I realized that with such an atmosphere about the place it would be very difficult to proceed with any creative work. Matters came to a climax day before yesterday, shortly after breakfast. I had been talking to Mrs. Turner around on “our” side of the house about some plans for cleaning up some rubbish, etc., when suddenly a door opens from the Tates’ kitchen and Allen shouts out, “If you’ve got a criticism of my work to make, I’d appreciate it if you would speak to me about it first!” Then the door savagely banged, and Mrs. Turner and I (who hadn’t mentioned him or anything that concerned him) were left staring at each other in perfect amazement. I can’t easily describe how angry I was. I felt myself losing all control--but I managed to address the Tates without breaking anything. Mrs. Turner came in with me and corroborated the facts of the matter, and it turned out that the Tates hadn’t heard actually a thing I was saying--their imaginations, they evidently felt, were perfectly justified in building up a perfect tower of Babel out of nothing.

Nothing was touched on at that fiery moment, but the immediate circumstances of what I had said and what I hadn’t, Tate finally admitting that he was all wrong. My feelings remained little cooled, however. The rest of the time since then has been simply hideous. The next morning (I, not sleeping, had heard the Tates getting out of bed during the night and pounding out something on the typewriter), I found a couple of the nastiest notes under my bedroom door that I ever hope to get from anyone. Mrs. Tate began by saying that they had arrived in the house first; that they had invited me to share quarters with them in the first place because I was penniless in New York at that time, and that as soon as they found out that I had been fortunate in acquiring funds they immediately had begun to doubt the advisability of inviting me out, but _of course_ hadn’t felt privileged to say anything about such matters before this. I’m not quoting _insinuations_ in any of this, I’m using practically their own words. Then she went on to say that they had allotted me one room only (this is an absolute lie; they assumed that I was to have a bedroom and my study besides) and that I had from the moment of arrival proceeded to spread myself and possessions all over the house, invading every corner; and so on,--finally ending up with the assertion that I had been busy ever since I arrived in trying to make them menial servants of my personal wants! The contents of Mr. Tate’s letter were about the same, a little more gracefully phrased, that’s all.

As a matter of fact, I have never, so long as I’ve been here, requested a single favor from either of them. You know the story about the cooking arrangements already--how I changed over to Mrs. Turner --/--/. Since then--even though I derived no benefit from the wood stove that the Tates use in their kitchen--I’ve been careful to go out and help Allen cut and saw, etc. And made it a point to mention--that while I couldn’t constantly keep after him with questions as to when he wanted to saw and when he didn’t--if he’d let me know about such occasions I’d be glad to join him whenever possible.

It’s all simply disgusting. I don’t know how much money they owe me exactly--but I have told them that I was always glad to advance them funds whenever needed, and while they haven’t been extravagant--they have nevertheless been momentarily relieved from sudden circumstances by frequent access to my funds. On top of all this I have practically given Allen the fare for two trips to New York (on one occasion I was so anxious for him to have the chance to hear a certain opera that I gave him ten dollars to get a good seat), I’ve had them in to dinner with Mrs. Turner and myself frequently, I gave Carolyn my old typewriter to work on her novel -- -- -- --. She didn’t have one herself and would otherwise have had to depend on such moments as her husband wasn’t using his to write at all, while I on the other hand, should certainly have been able to make a good discount on my new machine by turning in the old had I not purposely wished to be amiable about the matter. There have been lots of other amenities which I enjoyed extending. And you know me not to obviously hold such things over people’s heads. _Doesn’t_ it all look as though, _as Mr. Tate says_, I valued their friendship only for the purpose of exploiting their services to me.

Mrs. Turner has cried for two days and nights about the matter--she hates to have me leave so. She says there is another room in the upstairs which I can use and not be obliged to have anything to do with the Tates’ part of the house, their rent or their arrangements. I must say I’m stumped. How can I, on one hand, persist in staying here after such an insulting statement from the Tates to the effect that I was originally their guest and that I was invited on the grounds of charity rather from any other motives? This is one of the hardest matters I have ever had to decide. For I feel that I owe some sense of economy to Mr. Kahn, who didn’t give me money to keep moving about -- -- -- --. My money is very low now. The first thousand is gone--it cost me more than I ever would have guessed to have just got settled here with all my books and materials at hand as they are. I wrote Kahn recently that I needed more money, and he very speedily and kindly replied with a check for five hundred. At the same time the Rychtariks wrote from Cleveland that they needed the money they had loaned me for my land--that they required it for the summer trip to Europe, etc. And so two hundred will have to be taken out of the Kahn money at once.

It really is tragic. The whole fruit of the first opportunity of my life to write an extended poem is apparently about to be blighted -- -- -- --. As I say I don’t at this moment know which way to turn. If I remain here (spring is just coming on--and the best time for work, so long waited for, has come!) if I remain here under such unpleasant relations it is very doubtful whether or not I can overcome the hypnosis of evil and jealousy in the air enough to get back into my poem, really just started. But if I move away it means that so much of my slight funds will be wasted in just the cost of travel, etc., that in less than a month I’ll be back looking for a job again--and in the middle of the summer, the most devilish and exhausting time to work in the city. I don’t feel that I ought to let my indignation and pride affect me so far as the hasty and ill-founded remarks of the Tates are concerned. I would sacrifice all that to my work and remain here if I felt enough assurance of being _able_ to work under such circumstances.

If you feel at all sympathetic to this situation of mine I wish you _this time_ be generous enough to let me go to the Island and finish my poem there. At least I should not have to fear being put off the little land that is still ours in the world. I have ample money to get there and to live economically for some time. It may reasonably be expected that Mr. Kahn will come forward with the other five hundred which he promised within a certain time, meanwhile I can’t ask him for more before six months without risking the charge of extravagance. I think that I can re-sell the land I bought to Miss Flynn from whom I purchased it. Summer in the tropics isn’t of course the paradise of the winter months, but it is a thousand times better than a hall bedroom in New York without light or air, to say nothing of the fact that it might cost me a hundred or so of what I have left just spent in _looking_ for work. You know how long it is sometimes.

If I can’t somehow succeed in taking advantage of this one opportunity given me by Mr. Kahn, I don’t know how I’ll feel about life or any future efforts to live--and if you can’t see how it is reasonable for me to request under the circumstances some privileges from my family I shall be amazed. You’ve already said that you didn’t think I’d like Mrs. Simpson, etc. Well, do you think _that_ is half so important to me or to anyone else after all. I’m not able to reason why this issue should hang on the whimsical temper of an old woman. If I went to the island I should do my best to preserve the most pleasant relations with Mrs. Simpson, and I haven’t much doubt but what I should succeed. I ought to be able to live a few months in the house my grandfather built without being put off by a hired keeper of the place--especially when I am much better fitted naturally, by simply being a male, for keeping up the place than she is.

I’m asking you for this refuge. I’ve always been refused before. If you deny it now I’m not sure how much farther away I’ll go to accomplish my purposes. Perhaps to the orient, even if I have just enough to get there and no more.

I shall go into New York early in the week, perhaps tomorrow. Perhaps several days later. I’ll let you know where I settle and what plans are finally adopted. Meanwhile please write me here, as before; Mrs. Turner will be sure to send my mail to whatever address I have at the time.

I’m sorry to have such melancholy news, especially after such lovely letters as recently came from you and Grandma, but it can’t be helped. It all may be very much for the best in the end. I do hope you’ll be generous enough to give me your sanction on the Island matter--that’s all I’m requesting. I can always get money enough to get back (from at least 5 people) and go into an office again. But that isn’t the issue now. I’m writing a poem that is bound to be a magnificent thing _if_ I can escape the -- -- -- -- long enough to build it. Won’t you help?

241: TO CHARLOTTE AND RICHARD RYCHTARIK

_Patterson, New York_ _April 25th, 1926_

Dear Charlotte and Richard: I hope you won’t think me insincere anywhere in this letter. A complete picture of my feelings and present circumstances would be hard to give, simply impossible. I’m relying on you for more than friendship in asking such considerations. I’m asking your love. And, of course I realize that I’m in immediate danger of losing both. But the story has got to be sold somehow for you to understand why I’m asking what I do. The thing is--in my state of mind (and after three weeks of such torments) it is hard to know where to begin. But let me say that the picture is somewhat different than it was when I was so happy with you in Cleveland. And I must ask you to let me off for the time being on paying you the full sum I borrowed. I can only send you a hundred dollars now. I can send the rest within seven months. Or at least I don’t think you would want me to give up the entire _Bridge_ and go into an office at once. You see, I’m assuming a great deal of interest on your part which may not be there. I wanted to state this request first, before telling you why and wherefore. Otherwise my story would seem featured too theatrically. --/--/

Well, I got so morbid about the matter that I finally decided to go into New York for a few days and think as clearly as possible. What to do! I have finally decided to go to my grandmother’s place on the Isle of Pines in the West Indies. Getting there will be almost as cheap as moving my things anywhere else--and living will be very cheap for [me] there. I must tell you that Mr. Kahn sent me only $500 instead of the entire second $1,000. It is to be presumed that I’ll get the other half later on. But I can’t ask for more at present, and you can see that there is just about enough to keep me there (my transportation also has to come out of this) until more comes. Out of this I can send you the hundred I mentioned. Won’t it be just as easy for you to wait just a little longer for the rest? I never hated to ask a question so much in my life--but I am simply crushed if I can’t go on a little longer with my effort on _The Bridge_.

It’s the one opportunity I may ever have, and I feel I owe something to the faith that Mr. Kahn has put in me. I am not seeking any thrills or pleasure by going to the West Indies in the middle of the summer--I’m sure you can understand how it would be much _pleasanter_ for me to go to the seashore. But _that_ would eat up my little remaining money in two or three months. I need longer to work on _The Bridge_, and I’m willing to go into a furnace for awhile if I can only feel sure about the ground under my feet. On my parents’ property I won’t need to feel that I’ll be insulted again, or forced away. I can _at least_ be sure of that. And that means a lot when you are trying to keep your imagination free and creative. Also, I can live very cheaply there. I may not have enough money to get back when I want to, but I’m not worrying about that--or other hardships.

My mother has made a terrible fuss against my going, but is finally reconciled. I realize it’s hard for her to think of me as so far away--but I’ll be still farther away, I think, if my _Bridge_ breaks down entirely. I can’t allow it all to be the victim of malice, envy, jealousy and petty-mindedness.

I won’t indulge in any more raving and fury now. But I do hope that you believe me sincere. You very possibly have a right to be angry with me (certainly I have never done anything half so kind to you) but I’ll prove to you in the end that I am sincere in my regard for you. I don’t think I’m a dishonest person.

I am sailing for Havana next Saturday. When I get back to New York on Wednesday I’ll send you the hundred dollars. Will you write me a word or so before I go? Send it care of Gorham Munson -- -- -- --.

242: TO ---- AND ----

_Isle of Pines_ [_Cuba_] _May 7_

Dear ---- and ----: It is still one day less than a week since we sailed, our second on the Island. Frank got Ward Line accommodations, which cut a day off the sea; and we were rather sorry. Still, passing Pam Bitch, My ammy and other Coney islands at midnight wasn’t especially thrilling: that part of the trip was too close shore. But Havana was more and better than I had imagined. Architecture rather like Chirico--some Spanish plateresque and physically metaphysically suggestive. But mostly on the surface, there isn’t other evidence.

F.’s Spanish brought us off all beaten paths. We didn’t visit an American haunt except the steamship office. The rest was mostly bars, cafes and theatres--filled with blacks, reds, browns, greys and every permutation and combinations of southern bloods that you can imagine. Coronas-Coronas, of course, for 15¢, marvelous sherry, cognac, vermouth and “Tropical” (the beer that I was talking about). Am. boats seem to be easy, by the way: we had St. Julian and Sauterne all the way down at table. Then we went to the Alhambra, a kind of Cuban National Winter Garden Burlesque. Latin “broadness” was somewhat veiled from me as far as the dialogue went, but actions went farther than apparently even the East Side can stand.

Gratings and balconies and narrow streets with plenty of whores nodding. The day of our departure a great fleet of American destroyers landed. Streets immediately became torrents of uniforms--one sailor had exactly the Chinese mustache effect that I aspire to. But no J---- F----: his boat must have passed to Brooklyn--passed in the night. Taxis anywhere in town for only 20¢, but that’s about the only cheap feature. Great black-bushed buxom Jamaican senoritas roared laughter at us, old women hobbled up offering lottery tickets (I finally got one on a hunch). The whole town is hypersensual and mad--i.e. has no apparent direction, destiny, or purpose: Cummings’ paradise. I shall have to go up for a real spree sometime when cash is plentiful, meanwhile this isle is enough Eden.

Poor Mrs. Simpson hadn’t expected us for at least three days more--and F. of course, the extra party, almost bowled her over at first sight. She had a violent coughing fit, at which I thought the fragile frame of her would break and during which a parrot screamed from a corner somewhere, “Damned poor dinner!” She has recovered, and is really lovable and quite the contrary of all I had expected. I’ve had one pleasant shock after another. The house is much more spacious than I had remembered, the island much more beautiful.... The approach from the sea is like the Azores, F. says. To me, the mountains, strange greens, native thatched huts, perfume, etc. brought me straight to Melville. The heat _is_ different from northern summer heat and the parroty phrase does hold--“it’s always cool in the shade.” It was cool enough for F. to put a coat on at sundown today, “breezes prevail.” Oleanders and mimosas in full bloom now make the air almost too heavy with perfume, it’s another world--and a little like Rimbaud. I’m surprised that I didn’t carry away more definite impressions from my first visit 11 years ago.

We discovered a beach yesterday, very near our house. We bathed late in the day and the water was almost too warm. The rest of the time we’ve wandered over the grove, bought fish, played with a baby owl that suddenly appeared, drunk punch, picked coconuts (which are a meal by themselves). You ought to see that owlet (Pythagoras) make away with a chameleon! No bigger than a fat sparrow, it blinked and swallowed a lizard whole. I’ve nearly died laughing at the creature. We brought it to table and it turded in F.’s salad, it sits on your finger and squeaks like P---- does when she gets tipsy. I’ll probably be taking it to bed with me, like B----, when I first get tipsy (No I haven’t been tipsy since I left NY).

I spose Bina [Flynn] has already told you the details of the parental wedding in NY. Those last three days in town were mad ones for me. -- -- -- -- sister, gnawed at my hand for quite a while at the dinner with the Cowleys. I don’t remember what it was all about, but I think we fell in love with each other. I finally brought the bridal pair [Crane’s mother & her husband] to lunch with Lachaise and Mme. A good time was had by all. I insisted on my bringing the famous bird with me. All my fears about the trunks were wrong, they brought everything in fine shape, even china unbroken.

I feel like a gastric museum at present, a cross cut of Tahitian stomach coast--but not in especial distress--at least so far. Uric acid won’t have a whispering chance in a few days what with all the strange fruits and vegetables I’m trying. Casavas, guavas, bread fruit, limes, cumquats, kashew apples, coconuts, wild oranges, bananas, God I can’t remember any more of the damned names. O yes, mulberries and avacadas and papayas! And mangos! Maybe I don’t get enough of it yet! Tamarinds ... pomegranates ... grabanas ... O sacre Nom de.... --/--/

243: TO HIS MOTHER

[_Isle of Pines_] _May 14th_

Dear Grace and Grandma: We haven’t had altogether more than 3 hours of rainfall since arriving. Rather less than usual, Mrs. Simpson says, for the rainy season. Today the sky is overcast, making it much cooler than usual, and the rain of last night promises repetition at any moment. When there is a good wind, like today’s, it sweeps the bugs away somewhat--but otherwise they are terrific,--especially around Casas Villa [the Crane house], which so far as I have been able to judge by contrast with other places is become the buggiest place on the island. This is mostly due to the thick growth of trees and shrubbery surrounding the house--which hardly lets a zephyr through and which harbor and incubate millions of insects. It is, of course, a great mistake to have planted so many fruit trees so close to the house. They give practically no shade--and simply stifle every breeze that approaches.

Yesterday we rented a car from Herrin and I drove Mrs. S. and Waldo over to the Jones’s Jungle. Mrs. S. had prepared a wonderful picnic lunch which we finally shared with the Jones’s in their bungalow. Both Waldo and myself went quite wild about the beauties of the place, the marvelous work they have accomplished there is equalled, I’m sure, by nothing else in the West Indies or N. America. Waldo says he remembers visiting a place in the Azores, owned by a wealthy Portuguese prince, which was something like it, but I have never seen anything so amazing before.

The Jones’s are by far the pleasantest and most cultured people I have met on the island. The tragedy of their life here is pitiable to the point of tears. After twenty-three years of unremitting toil on their place, to have it all brought to naught--as it is now, since the treaty matter, makes them the saddest kind of jests of fate. Jones says that the Cuban bureaucrats may seize his place at any moment without offering more than five dollars an acre, and he can have no recourse whatever. Furthermore, they are both quite penniless, and live entirely on what he can gather as a taxi-driver and the little fee they charge for visiting the jungle. But Jones is no worse off than others--in many ways. He is only too old to ever hope to take hold anywhere else again. --/--/

244: TO WALDO FRANK

[_Isle of Pines_] _May 22nd_

Camerado: In the middle of the terrible little performance we left you to attend and below the crash of floods on the roof--I was astonished to hear the whistle of your boat, whooping, I hope, a really final salute: I had supposed the Cristobal Colon long since departed. After so long a wait I hope you at least had a private and quiet rest in your stateroom, or rather, cabin.

Today frequent downpours and your card from Havana. Also a letter from O’Neill--more mysterious than ever. I’ll quote exactly and all the words pertaining to the Liveright matter:

“There seems to be a misunderstanding about this Liveright matter somewhere. He isn’t waiting for any foreword from me _yet_--at least not according to what he said when I saw him last before I wrote you the last time. He was waiting for more stuff from you apparently. And he spoke of having talked about you with Otto Kahn and so forth.

“However, I expect to be back in New York within a month and I will see him then and get this matter straightened out.”

You will remember my descriptions of the situation up to this point with sufficient accuracy without further repetitions; I can only say with regard to it all that Gene has either misinformed me in his previous letters or else is suffering from a lapse of memory. At any event, I hope that the conversation with Kahn alluded to, hasn’t twitched Liveright into the decision to hold up my book until _The Bridge_ shall be completed. If he doesn’t really want the book of course nobody can force him to take it,--in which case I hope it won’t be too much trouble for you to return the mss. to the Boni Bros. There seem no end to the complications with L. The mysterious “yet” in Gene’s statement (my underlining) is simply inexplicable.

Mrs. Simpson is having some duplicates made for you of the beach pictures and wishes to be remembered to you. Attaboy frequently calls out “Waldo!” Mrs. Durham (whose name I remember always just in time by thinking of the Bull) has come to stay at least for the week-end. And I have just written a little unconscious calligramme on the mango tree which I enclose.[47] --/--/

245: TO ----

[_Isle of Pines_] _May 22nd_

Dear ----: The post-Crane period in Patterson seems to have been full of excitements. Your letter, with its news about the incomparable J---- was corroborated in the same mail by no less than a letter from the noble tar himself. Poor J---- spent no little time and trouble, coming clear up from Norfolk. Mrs. Turner had been forwarding warnings of the impending disaster, first a letter from Norfolk on the date of landing, then a letter on the Potomac boat bound for Washington; I began to feel as though the wireless would be necessary to save my honor. His people live at P---- and it was there, after his excursion north, that he finally got a card I had mailed from Havana explaining things. He’s back on the job now, but quits June 6th. I commend your control under the penetrating gazes of Mrs. T. J----’s letter contained a closing greeting from “me, J----’s sister, M----” written in a very elegant hand, so I guess I’m well introduced when I come to P----. Anyway, he made good company and I’m awfully sorry to have missed him.

Yesterday I got tight for the first time, on Bacardi. Cuban Independence day. Falling in with a flock of goats on my way home (I was trembling at what Mme. Sampsohn would say) I stubbed my toes and skinned my knee. Arrived home in a somewhat obvious condition, there was nothing to be done but have it out with Mme.... Waldo having left Tuesday night, we had it fair and square. It is now established that I can drink as much as I damned please. A couple of murdering desperadoes got loose from the penitentiary here recently--and I think she’s glad to have my company. But she’s been so damned pleasant and considerate that I haven’t any reason to think she doesn’t like me on less fearful grounds. I’m rather jealous of Mrs. T’s old love, the weather, however.

Yes, Marianne [Moore] took the little specialty I wrote for her, and even proof has been corrected and sent back. This time she didn’t even suggest running the last line backward. “Again” is in the May issue; I spose you’ve seen the happy mixture. I enclose an accidental calligramme committed this morning accidentally on my way to _The Bridge_. I’m convinced that the Mango tree was the original Eden apple tree, being the first fruit tree mentioned in history with any accuracy of denomination. I’ve been having a great time reading _Atlantis in America_, the last book out on the subject, and full of exciting suggestions. Putting it back for 40 or 50 thousand years, it’s easy to believe that a continent existed in mid-Atlantic waters and that the Antilles and West Indies are but salient peaks of its surface. Impossible forever to prove, however.

I’m glad that Malcolm [Cowley] has had such luck. It’s likely he’s made for life--once he enters the Lorimer field; and the articles ought to be interesting, certainly the material is. Because Poole’s book, _The Harbour_, was said to have been written while looking from the windows of 110 Col. Hts., I had the idea that it might contain something--and have just finished reading it, a thin-chested little affair if there ever was one! I wonder if McFee’s books are quite so ordinary. -- -- -- --

246: TO HIS MOTHER

[_Isle of Pines_] _June 1, 1926_

Dear Grace: --/--/ Mine own true self has been chewing its cud, mostly, i.e., trying to imagine itself on the waters with Cristobal Colon and trying to mend the sails so beautifully slit by the Patterson typhoon. The Island grows more attractive to me as I get more acclimated and we have had constant breezes and cool weather ever since Waldo left, just two weeks ago today. There are many things that need to be done about the place, but I am attacking them with some deliberation--one has to respect the ferocity of the sun and the insects not a little. I have succeeded in eradicating the carcasses of several dead and dying orange trees in the front yard, putting young royal palms in their places. How I wish you had thought of planting some of these perfect delights when the place was being built; they are the one perfect sort of tree to have round a house, their ornamentation, stateliness and open-airiness can’t be surpassed.

Mrs. Simpson is going to help me put up some new gate posts of rocks and cement. The entire fencing directly in front of the house is ready to collapse and there are so many breaches in the line down by the grove which we need repair at once (pigs can’t be kept out, but some of the cattle can be) that something should be done about it as soon as possible. Of course I’m constantly at a loss to know what attitude to take about these and other highly necessary repairs,--not knowing what you really intend doing about the place. Most important of all, of course, is an entirely new roof for the house. I don’t think you’ll ever get pin money for the sale of the place until this, at least, is done, for it’s the first and outstanding fault to be noticed even from the road.

Moreover, the inside of the house--its whole structure, in fact--will soon begin to deteriorate so rapidly for the want of dry sheltering that whatever value the place has now will be sacrificed. If I were you, and relished the tropics during the winter as much as you do, I’d economize in some way or other so as to afford a new roof as soon as possible. The house is really so comfortable and so very well built that it’s a shame to let it run down. A few shingles and patches here and there won’t meet the situation at all. The whole roof is rotted, loosely assembled and full of perforations. And, as I said, it looks it. Patches would only make it look a little worse.

Mrs. S. and I think that tile roofing, while costing a little more than the cheap shingles that we put on first, is the proper thing for the climate, exigencies of grass fires, etc. Asbestos shingling would be good, but not so permanent--and although I don’t know for certain as yet, I think it would be about as expensive as tile. Tile would also look better. Now we are going to ask Mr. Jones, whose honesty and disinterestedness is unquestionable, to make an estimate on what tile roofing would cost, also what he would charge for his services in undertaking the job. As soon as possible I’ll write you about the figures, or Mrs. S. will. It can do no harm to go this far, anyway. And as the Island is so infinitely superior to Florida, California or any other place you might go for the winters--_and so much cheaper a place to live when you get here_--I think you will agree with me that investments in repairs on the place here are ultimately cheaper than hotel rooms at ten to fifteen dollars a day with nothing to keep when you leave. A new roof, some new screening and a fresh coat of paint are all this house needs for years to come if someone like Mrs. Simpson or myself stays here. I don’t forget the water tank, but that isn’t so crucial; water can, after all, be pumped by hand. Let me know a little more of your present attitude about the property here, then I can better judge whether or not you want my reports, advice, etc.

Thursday (June 3rd) I’m sailing on the schooner for Grand Cayman. There are two days on the water each way, and I may spend a week on the island if the boat stays that long. I’m looking forward with great glee to my first real sail--and they tell me that Cayman is lovelier than anything around. Bread, cheese and cookies are to be packed by Mrs. Simpson and I’m hoping not to feed the fishes. If I do,--well then I’ll have at least found out that I’m a good-for-nothing landlubber. The trip will be worth while from any standpoint.

247: TO WALDO FRANK

[_Isle of Pines_] _June 19th ’26_

Dear Waldo: Late amends for your last three letters, the first of which I got just as I was taking the schooner for Cayman! the last two yesterday when I returned. The trip was strenuous, four days instead of the expected two--each way, on account of head winds and calms. And let me tell you that to be “as idle as a painted,” etc., under this tropical sun with thirty-five cackling, puking, farting Negroes (women and children first) for a whole day or so (the water like a blinding glassy gridiron) is a novel experience. The first moral of the sea with the white man is clean decks; it’s the last considered with the Indian black. Vile water to drink, etc., etc., there’s no use recommending the facts further. And the much bruited Grand Cayman was some torment, I can survive to tell you. Flat and steaming under black clouds of mosquitoes, and not a square inch of screening on the island. I had to keep smudge fires burning incessantly in my room while I lunged back and forth, smiting myself all over like one in rigor mortis and smoke gouging salt penance from my eyes. The insects were enormous; Isle of Pines species can’t compare in size or number. After nine days and nights of that I staggered onto the schooner--and here I am--with a sunburn positively Ethiopian.

I have pleasantly proved to myself, however, that under more sociably agreeable circumstances there is nothing to compare with a sail boat. The motion made me anything but sea-sick, with a good wind the rhythm is incomparable. More gorgeous skies than even you saw, acres of man-sized leaping porpoises (the “Huzza Porpoises” so aptly named in _Moby Dick_) that greet you in tandems (much like M. & Mme. Lachaise if you have ever seen them out walking together) and truly “arch and bend the horizons.” One enormous shark, a White Fin, lounged alongside for awhile. Had there been a place to sit or stand a few moments in the shade and fewer basins and chamber pots under the nose the trips would have been far from onerous.

In spite of all, I find myself rather toughened and well. The exasperations and torments of such a siege make one grateful for modest amenities. Mrs. Simpson yesterday for the first time appeared to me as the Goddess of Liberty.

I am not writing to O’Neill about _White Buildings_--and do not expect to write him until I hear directly from him. He is supposed to be back in NY by this time, and in his last letter he said that he expected to see Liveright on his return and talk things over. He knows that I have prepared in mss. all the poems which are to be included in the book and that all that can now hold it back is the lack of his foreword. It was hard for me to ask him to write such a thing for my book, and it has been harder and more embarrassing still for me to have kept trailing him with letters of urgence.... It’s impossible for me [to] address him again on the subject. I’m sorry that what-ever-it-was made him feel constrained to promise the favor initially. It will be just as well for me to forget publishers for awhile, I think, though I can’t forget how steadfastly you have persevered in helping me--whatever the results have amounted to. And don’t think too much about me; my judgments are too unsettled these days to make me feel that I deserve much attention, much less the faith that you assure me of. The situation is really unique with me; it is absurd to say that one is battling indifference; but neither does one build out of an emptied vision. Mere word-painting and juggling, however fastidious,--a prospect of this doesn’t excite one very much. At times it seems demonstrable that Spengler is quite right. At present--I’m writing nothing--would that I were an efficient factory of some kind! It was unfortunate in a way to have been helped by our friend, the banker,--with my nose to the grindstone of the office I could still fancy that freedom would yield me a more sustained vision; now I know that much has been lacking all along. This is less personal than it sounds. I think that the artist more and more licks his own vomit, mistaking it for the common diet. He amuses himself that way in a culture without faith and convictions--but he might as well be in elfin land with a hop pipe in his mouth.... No, _The Bridge_ isn’t very flamboyant these days.

I’m glad that the Mango poem meant something to you. I’m cooking up a couple of other short poems to go with it (“Kidd’s Cove,” & “The Tampa Schooner”) under the common title of “Grand Cayman.” Maybe I can sell them to Marianne M[oore]. Word was just forwarded from Patterson that Edgell Rickword, who edits _The Calendar_ (London), has taken three poems I sent him about eight weeks ago, “At Melville’s Tomb,” “Passage” and “Praise for an Urn.” _The Calendar_ is a very decent quarterly, and I’m glad to get the “Melville” in print--not one magazine in America would take it. You ought to send them something of yours--(1 Featherstone Buildings, London, W.C.1.)

So far no zonite, but gratitude none the less. The only people who can get records to me securely are the Victor headquarters, I’ll order direct from them. There’s a duty of about 90% on all records! But I do wish you would have _The New Republic_ send me the Gide article.... As much of your work as is printed there and elsewhere. I read _Moby Dick_ between gasps down in Cayman--my third time--and found it more superb than ever. How much that man makes you love him! --/--/

248: TO WALDO FRANK

[_Isle of Pines_] _June 20th_

Dear Waldo: Recollection of certain statements made in yesterday’s letter to you prompt me to a little better account of myself--not that I committed any insincerities (though the letter might seem to solicit sympathy or encouragement) but that I feel guilty of an injustice to you in some sort of way. You certainly do not deserve to have such fare set before you....

So I apologize for my crudity, with the foreknowledge of your understanding that there are times when it is a torture to write anyone sincerely--as I must always write to you. My statements may appear in a less insane light after you have read what has principally spurred them--the Spengler thesis. This man is certainly fallible in plenty of ways but much of his evidence is convincing--and is there any good evidence forthcoming from the world in general that the artist isn’t completely out of a job? Well, I may not care about such considerations 2 hours from now, but at present and for the last two months I have been confronted with a ghostliness that is new.

The validity of a work of art is situated in contemporary reality to the extent that the artist must honestly anticipate the realization of his vision in “action” (as an actively operating principle of communal works and faith), and I don’t mean by this that his procedure requires any bona fide evidences directly and personally signalled, nor even any physical signs or portents. The darkness is part of his business. It has always been taken for granted, however, that his intuitions were salutary and that his vision either sowed or epitomized “experience” (in the Blakeian sense). Even the rapturous and explosive destructivism of Rimbaud presupposes this, even his lonely hauteur demands it for any estimation or appreciation. (The romantic attitude must at least have the background of an age of faith, whether approved or disproved no matter).

All this is inconsecutive and indeterminate because I am trying to write shorthand about an endless subject--and moreover am unresolved as to any ultimate conviction. I am not fancying I am “enlightening” you about anything,--nor, if I thought I were merely exposing personal sores, would I continue to be so monotonous. Emotionally I should like to write _The Bridge_; intellectually judged the whole theme and project seems more and more absurd. A fear of personal impotence in this matter wouldn’t affect me half so much as the convictions that arise from other sources.... I had what I thought were authentic materials that would have been a pleasurable-agony of wrestling, eventuating or not in perfection--at least being worthy of the most supreme efforts I could muster.

These “materials” were valid to me to the extent that I presumed them to be (articulate or not) at least organic and active factors in the experience and perceptions of our common race, time and belief. The very idea of a bridge, of course, is a form peculiarly dependent on such spiritual convictions. It is an act of faith besides being a communication. The symbols of reality necessary to articulate the span--may not exist where you expected them, however. By which I mean that however great their subjective significance to me is concerned--these forms, materials, dynamics are simply non-existent in the world. I may amuse and delight and flatter myself as much as I please--but I am only evading a recognition and playing Don Quixote in an immorally conscious way.

The form of my poem rises out of a past that so overwhelms the present with its worth and vision that I’m at a loss to explain my delusion that there exist any real links between that past and a future destiny worthy of it. The “destiny” is long since completed, perhaps the little last section of my poem is a hangover echo of it--but it hangs suspended somewhere in ether like an Absalom by his hair. The bridge as a symbol today has no significance beyond an economical approach to shorter hours, quicker lunches, behaviorism and toothpicks. And inasmuch as the bridge is a symbol of all such poetry as I am interested in writing it is my present fancy that a year from now I’ll be more contented working in an office than before. Rimbaud was the last great poet that our civilization will see--he let off all the great cannon crackers in Valhalla’s parapets, the sun has set theatrically several times since while Laforgue, Eliot and others of that kidney have whimpered fastidiously. _Everybody_ writes poetry now--and “poets” for the first time are about to receive official social and economic recognition in America. It’s really all the fashion, but a dead bore to anticipate. If only America were half as worthy today to be spoken of as Whitman spoke of it fifty years ago there might be something for me to say--not that Whitman received or required any tangible proof of his intimations, but that time has shown how increasingly lonely and ineffectual his confidence stands.

There always remains the cult of “words,” elegancies, elaborations, to exhibit with a certain amount of pride to an “inner circle” of literary initiates. But this is, to me, rivalled by numerous other forms of social accomplishment which might, if attained, provide as mild and seductive recognitions. You probably think me completely insane, talking as obvious hysterics as [a] drunken chorus-girl. Well, perhaps I need a little more skepticism to put me right on _The Bridge_ again.... I am certainly in a totally undignified mind and undress--and I hope to appear more solidly determined soon.

Please don’t think that the O’Neill foreword has precipitated anything, nor that I [am] burning manuscripts or plotting oriental travels.... Desolately I confess that I _may_ be writing stanzas again tomorrow. That’s the worst of it. Mrs. S asks to be remembered to you.

--All this does not mean that I have resigned myself to inactivity.... A bridge will be written in some kind of style and form, at worst it will be something as good as advertising copy. After which I will have at least done my best to discharge my debt to Kahn’s kindness.

249: TO WALDO FRANK

[_Isle of Pines_] _July 3rd, ’26_

Dear Waldo: I must thank you immediately for your wireless. The news is most welcome--and your affectionate haste in notifying me is not without results in piercing the miasmas of these tropics.

Also comes a letter from Sue [Jenkins]. It seems the news has reached Patterson via Jimmy Light. I copy Sue’s account of the circumstances given her by Jimmy, as having been so active an agent in the matter you probably will be interested. “The way it came about is not without interest. About a month ago Liveright, Jimmy and others were at Otto Kahn’s for a week-end. L. had the mss. with him at that time and on the boat coming back he said he had decided not to publish it--that he didn’t care for the poems and so far as he could see, nobody understood them. Then, a little over a week ago, Jimmy and O’Neill were in L.’s office on business and your mss. was on the table. Jimmy asked him if he had stuck to his decision and he said ‘Yes.’ Then Jimmy and Gene both told him they thought he would eventually be ‘proud’ of having published your first volume, so that even if he himself did not care for the poems, as a publisher he was failing to take advantage of an opportunity. So finally L. came around to his old position of saying that he would publish them if Gene would write a preface. (Previously L. had said that he did not want to publish the poems at all--preface or no preface.) Gene protested some, saying that while he liked the poems he wasn’t at all sure he could tell why he liked them, that he was by no means a critic of poetry, and that L. was preparing a fine opportunity for him (O’Neill) to make a fool of himself. But finally it was decided that the preface would be written, L. phoned immediately to the printer and dictated the announcement. And I understand that the preface is already written and in L.’s hands.”

Probably I’ll hear something direct from Liveright within the next week; nothing so far has reached me. If the book is really scheduled for fall it will relieve me of numerous embarrassments, especially with the family, who, I think have already ceased to believe any statements from me about my work, publications, etc.

Last Sunday I was obliged to go to Havana to consult with a doctor. For the last two weeks I have been suffering intensely from two abscesses, one in each ear, added to which apparently alarming symptoms of fever, and lung trouble had seemed to develop. Of these latter the doctor says there is no need to worry, but the abscesses have not healed yet, and are distracting to say the least. I shall be glad sometime to get a good night’s sleep. Doctor says they were caused by sun-exposure on my boat trip.

I have been reading _Quixote_ and _Swann’s Way_. My money is practically exhausted, but I think I can get a hundred by writing to Patterson and having my property there sold. The final 500 from Kahn can’t be solicited until August or later--if at all, for I shan’t ask for it unless I am writing again by that time. Mrs. Simpson has been so kind and altogether gracious that I couldn’t ask for better care.

When I’m feeling better I hope to write you a decent letter--the last two have been so haphazard, violent and vulgar. I hope these days of sea and sunshine and breezes are resting you and improving Tom.[48] In Havana I bought a _New Yorker_ and read your van Loon snapshot--marvelling again at your flexibility and dash. Otherwise I was sipping the glorious limonades most of the time! couldn’t get my mouth open wide enough to receive much other nourishment! Took long walks around the harbour and along the Malacon. A lovely city, albeit insipid; full of white and gold and azure buildings. Even plaster has something to say.

250: TO ----

_Isle of Pines, Cuba_ [_July?_]

Dear ----: --/--/ I have not been able to write one line since I came here--the mind is completely befogged by the heat and besides there is a strange challenge and combat in the air--offered by “Nature” so monstrously alive in the tropics which drains the psychic energies.--And my poem was progressing so beautifully until -- -- -- -- took it into her head to be so destructive! How silly all this sounds! Howsoever--it’s a cruel jest of Fate--and I doubt if I shall continue to write for another year. For I’ve lost all faith in my material--“human nature” or what you will--and any true expression must rest on some faith in something.

It has been so disgusting to note the sudden turns and antics of my “friends” since I had the one little bit help I ever had toward my work in the money from Kahn. Everytime I came into N.Y. from the country I’d hear new monstrosities of fables going about town as to how I was squandering money on pate de foi gras, etc. And worse whisperings. It’s all been very tiresome--and I’d rather lose such elite for the old society of vagabonds and sailors--who don’t enjoy chit-chat.

Two of the latter, by the way, are keeping up a regular flow of letters and cards to me here. One, F----, came clear up to Patterson to see me during May--but found me gone, of course.

I was very touched to hear that he had journeyed all the way from Norfolk--in memory of two evenings in Brooklyn last January. Immortally choice and funny and pathetic are some of my recollections in such connection. I treasure them--I always can--against many disillusionments made bitter by the fact that faith was given and expected--whereas, with the sailor no faith or such is properly _expected_ and how jolly and cordial and warm the tonsiling _is_ sometimes, after all. Let my lusts be my ruin, then, since all else is a fake and mockery. --/--/

251: TO HIS MOTHER

[_Isle of Pines_] _July 8th, 1926_

Dear Grace: Well,--after two months of absolute silence I’m glad to hear from you--and sorry to know that you are so disturbed and worried as you are, and sick in bed. --/--/

The trip to Cayman I’m still trying to get over. Everyone (I don’t know why native Americans here should tell such stories) had been telling me how charming the little island was. More than that, the sea-sailing to and fro had interested me. Being in a very dull mood (the intense and sudden heat here had made me torpid and inactive) I thought the trip would spur me, stimulate me a little toward continuing my writing on the _Bridge_ poem, not a line of which I had been able to add since I came down here.

Instead of a two days trip over, it took four. Headwinds all the way. It was not until the island was cleared that I realized how many were on that sixty-foot schooner. Thirty-five! and all of them niggers who proved to have no idea of ordinary decent cleanliness, and the crowd made it almost impossible to find a place to stand, lie or sit for ten minutes at a time--not to mention the fact that there was no shade from the intense blaze of the sun unless one could brave the stinks and fumes of a dozen odd sick and wailing nigger females below decks. Most of these never emerged from their hole there during the entire voyage, but pots, bowls, basins, fruit peelings and a thousand shrieks and wails were raised up every hour of the day and night to be emptied on the deck, my nose and ears being kept busy, I can tell you!

When we at last were in sight of the island we were greeted (even three miles out) with such droves of savage mosquitoes as I had never imagined outside of Bon Echo, Canada. And when I was landed I found them to be far, far worse. There was only one place on the island (no hotel) where I could be accommodated. A sort of boarding house kept by a woman who used to cook over at Santa Fe. Whether they were hers or not, I don’t know, but the house was packed with infants and children who kept up a constant racket and screaming. All the Negroes on the island were very pious, and about the time the children would quiet down a whole band of them in the house next door would raise their voices to God in hymns that would scrape the varnish off the woodwork. Worst of all, there was not an inch of screening on the house. I spent literally dollars buying insect powders and keeping a constant smudge going in my room so that my eyes were in a constant stream of tears from the smoke and my lungs nearly burst with suffocation.

Even then, one side of my face and neck were so badly poisoned from the constant bites that they were quite swollen. The beautiful beaches that I had heard about on the island I never saw. To walk more than half a mile from your doorstep was almost to court madness, St. Vitus dance, or death. The very arm with which you were attempting to beat off the regiments of insects would become so covered with them (even while in violent action) that you gave up any hope of relieving yourself of their company.

You can picture me, then, pacing back and forth in my room, very much in the mood of old Mrs. Johnson, in our kitchen at 1709 [Cleveland home of Crane family]--with a hand pressed on the top of my head, whispering to myself that I would soon be quite insane and relieved of my torments.

Someday I’ll tell you more about this famous “vacation” and “holiday” in the picturesque West Indies. I had _ten_ days and long nights of it before the boat captain finally pulled anchor and started back to Gerona again. The load this time was as heavy as before and equally dirty. The trip was equally long. We lay for two whole days in midocean and a dead calm, the water so still that you could see yourself in it like a mirror. The sun was terrific and the decks scorched your feet. Not a bit of shade, and I couldn’t go below decks without nausea. Our island seemed like Paradise and Mrs. Simpson like the goddess of Liberty when I finally got home. Two days later I was taken with abscesses in both ears, and I am still suffering night and day, though they seem to be on the mend.

Added to this, during the first week home, I had such difficulty in breathing, especially at night--with pains in the chest and terrific sweats--that I became seriously alarmed. Mrs. S. and I both agreed that I had better go at once to Havana and consult with an able physician. Which I finally did. Doctor A. Agramonte, Velado--a grad. of Columbia University, etc.

He pronounced me alright except [for] a slight infection of the throat, which may have been contracted from the common water supply on the boat, so musty and contaminated that at the time I almost parched my system by attempting to avoid all drinking. The ear trouble he said was probably due to sun exposure. I was given some prescriptions and returned on the next boat. Mrs. Simpson has been goodness itself in douching my ears and in giving me whatever other attentions I have needed. The last three days it has almost disappeared and then come again, by turns. I am hoping that nothing chronic ensues. The pain has been nerve wracking and my whole system is at present functioning “below par”.... So much for the Cayman trip. --/--/

252: TO WILLIAM WRIGHT

_Isle of Pines_ _July 16, 1926_

Dear Bill: --/--/ I liked the poem from _The Bookman_--even, if as you say, you don’t attempt more than a play of words. Convictions of any sort are hard to maintain these days--and maybe Spengler is right. Have you read his _Untergang des Abendlandes_--now translated (Knopf)? I envy people like Wheeler Lovell--who have intensive work to do without having to wrestle with either angels or devils to continue with it. I get awfully exhausted sometimes, trying to achieve some kind of consistent vision of things. But I don’t seem to be able to relax--and knowing quite well all the time that most of my energy is wasted in a kind of inward combustion that is sheer nonsense. All else seems boresome, however,--so I must continue to kill myself in my own way. --/--/

253: TO WALDO FRANK

[_Isle of Pines_] _July 24, 1926_

Hail Brother! I feel an absolute music in the air again, and some tremendous rondure floating somewhere--perhaps my little dedication [“To Brooklyn Bridge”] is going to swing me back to San Cristobal again.... That little prelude, by the way, I think to be almost the best thing I’ve ever written, something steady and uncompromising about it. Do you notice how its construction parallels the peculiar technique of _space and detail division_ used by El Greco in several canvasses--notably the _Christus am Olberg_? I’ve just been struck by that while casually returning to my little monograph as I often do.

And obscure as that heaven of the Jews Thy guerdon ... Accolade thou dost bestow Of anonymity time cannot raise; Vibrant reprieve and pardon thou dost show.

Read the above between the 6th & 7th stanzas of the last I sent--and you have the poem complete. It’s done, and I won’t bother you with any more scraps....

The news of Allen Tate’s generosity refreshed me a great deal; truly beautiful of him. You must know by now, how little I credited the Light gossip; I simply thought you’d be interested in hearing the sort of thing that goes around. I don’t mean to say I sensed the ultimate facts as your enclosure establish them--but I have always known that your efforts were the _sine qua non_ in this situation ... your devotion and courage the sustaining factor.

I shall not write Kahn for awhile, or if I do it will be in a different mood than you need to fear of. I sent Spengler to you registered, two weeks ago. Don’t know any exact date for the appearance of _White B’s_, the contract specifies only in “the fall of 1926”; November, perhaps. --/--/

254: TO WALDO FRANK

[_Isle of Pines_] _July 26th, ’26_

Dear Waldo: Dear repository of my faith, will you also serve as sanctum of some [of] my “works”? By which I mean that, though I shouldn’t bother you now while you are busy with inner work of your own, I still must ask you to keep the enclosed somewhere.[49] One never knows what may happen, fires burn the house here, etc., and mss. be burnt or otherwise lost--and in the case of this _Bridge_ I feel enough honor-bound to desire preserved whatever evidence of my industry and effort is forthcoming.

I don’t presume to ask you for comments. Read it if you like and fold it away somewhere. You have the last section (“Atlantis,” as I have decided to call it) haven’t you? I have discovered that it IS the real Atlantis, even of geology!

My plans are soaring again, the conception swells. Furthermore, this Columbus is REAL. In case you read it--(I _can’t_ be serious)--observe the water-swell rhythm that persists until the Palos reference. Then the more absolute and marked intimation of the great _Te Deum_ of the court, later held,--here in the terms of C.’s own cosmography.

Mrs. S. is the god’s own gift. This were a perfect place for work but for the prostrating heat. I think of next winter! Last night a wonderful breeze came up--and you can walk singing through the grove with a great moon simply bending down.

255: TO MALCOLM COWLEY AND PEGGY BAIRD

_Isle of Pines, Cuba_ _July 29th_

Dear Malcolm and Peggy: I’ve been wanting to tell you how glad I’ve been to know about your good luck with the _Post_ business, etc.--but you probably know by this time what I’ve been going through with.... There’s really no news except that I’m better and have begun to write--for a period until prostrated by the heat--like mad. Columbus has been cleared up--and a lot of other things started within ten days.

In the middle of _The Bridge_ the old man of the sea (page Herr Freud) suddenly comes up. I enclose this section,[50] hoping you’ll like it. Please mention or display it to no one but Allen and les Browns for the time: it makes me nervous to have parts of an unfinished drama going about much before the curtain goes up.

It happens that all the clippers mentioned were real beings, had extensive histories in the Tea trade--and the last two mentioned were life-long rivals. Rather touching....

256: TO HIS MOTHER

[_Isle of Pines_] _July 30th_

Dearest Grace: --/--/ Everything new sent down here now incurs terrific customs duty, so don’t send me any luxuries--or necessities either until I ask for them. Waldo sent me some ointment for bug bites after he went north--and the duty came to over the original price in NY; I was so angry I threw it back into the post office and refused to have anything more to do with it (by which please understand I _didn’t_ pay the duty).

You already have most of the news from Grandma’s letter, and Mrs. Simpson’s letter also must have arrived explaining the cable matter. I wasn’t worried about it because I was certain that you had received my letter almost immediately afterward--couldn’t have _before_ or else how could my _whereabouts_ have been questioned in the cable. I’m feeling quite well now--all but sleep, and whether that’s due to the heat, chronic insomnia or my present ferment of creative work, I don’t quite know. Certainly the hayhennies and crowing roosters (at all times of nights) and the breathlessness of the “air” don’t encourage one to slumbers. In a number of ways, however, I’m better acclimated, and I don’t need to memorize your advice to know enough to keep out of the sun and physical work! My spasm of hay fever seems to have gone--at about the same time it leaves in the north, that is, the spring session.

In all other ways this is the most ideal place and “situation” I’ve ever had for work. Mrs. S---- lets me completely alone when I’m busy; let’s me drum on the piano interminably if I want to--says she likes it--and has assumed a tremendous interest in my poem.... She reads and sews a great deal and just talks enough to keep on splendid and equable terms with me. She’s a perfect peach, in other words. The result is--that now that my health’s better I’m simply immersed in work to my neck, eating, “sleeping,” and breathing it. In the last ten days I’ve written over ten pages of _The Bridge_--highly concentrated stuff, as you know it is with me--and more than I ever crammed into that period of time before. I can foresee that everything will be brightly finished by next May when I come north, and I can make a magnificent bow to that magnificent structure, The Brooklyn Bridge, when I steam (almost under it) into dock! For the poem will be magnificent.

Meanwhile my other book, _White Buildings_, will have been published. It comes out sometime this fall. I have my contract and the $100. advance royalties mentioned in Grandma’s letter. O’Neill finally backed out on the foreword, as I thought he would. He’s enthusiastic about my work, I’ve never doubted that, but he didn’t have the necessary nerve to write what his honesty demanded--a thorough and accurate appraisal of my work. He can’t write criticism, never has tried even, and I foresaw the panic that this proposal on the part of our mutual publisher would precipitate in his bosom.... None other than Allen Tate!, it seems, is to write the foreword. I was informed by my publisher of all this--along with the acceptance. Has written it, in fact.... And (mum’s the word on this!) I was very much touched to hear from Waldo, who knows all the inner workings on this, that Allen offered his foreword under O’Neill’s signature when he heard that O’Neill had backed out. Of course I wouldn’t think of anything like that--so the foreword goes back to its own name. I’m very glad things have turned out this way. My umbrage toward Allen is erased by the fidelity of his action, and I’m glad to have so discriminating an estimate as he will write of me. --/--/

257: TO WALDO FRANK

[_Isle of Pines_] _Aug 3_

Dear Waldo: Enclosed is “Atlantis”;[51] there have been variances since your copy whether you have it now or not.--So will you kindly humor my present little neurosis, and take care of this. I feel as though I were dancing on dynamite these days--so absolute and elaborated has become the conception. All sections moving forward now at once! I didn’t realize that a bridge is begun from the two ends at once.... Don’t bother to read what I send you; ye Gods I hope to preserve at least the credit of not presuming on you to the point of total vulgarity. It’s all right to be elegant--if you are rebellious like Rimbaud; however, I have to admit grosser preoccupations; so I’m sloppy.

Gorham sent me Allen’s Preface, which I also enclose (you’re quite sure to want to read this, if you haven’t already). I think it clever, valiant, concise and beautiful. I’m more fortunate than I might have been had things gone as they were supposed to have gone. Gorham said he’d been up to see you. I’m trying to let down completely for awhile and “recuperate.” “Powhatan’s Daughter” must be that basic center and antecedent of all motion--“power in repose.”

Mrs. S-- has been following me in some of my recent reading, with the result that she has named one of her roosters “Ferdinand, Count Fathom”! It’s a good thing you aren’t near to hear our piano going it these days!

I’ve just sent Kahn the Dedication and “Ave Maria.” Please return me A.’s preface. Don’t know whether I’ll use the enclosed “Notes” or not. A reaction to Eliot’s _Waste Land_ notes put them in my head. However, the angle chart from _The Scientific Am[erican]_ embodies a complete symbolism of both Bridge and Star, even including the motif of the “holy tooth.” And I should like to use it on the cover. If the notes amuse you at the moment--as I wrote them--

Have you read how handy our _Orizaba_ recently proved in the cyclone off Florida--when Cutty Sark was bobbing up?

258: TO ISABEL AND GASTON LACHAISE

(Postcard)

[_Isle of Pines_] [_ca. August_]

This quarry is in the mountains, near our place. There’s plenty to work on anytime you come! Your bird (the gull) is divine, produces sea music, even winks at times!

259: TO WALDO FRANK

[_Isle of Pines_] _August 12th_

Dear Waldo: Your _Menorah_ [_Journal_] scolding is good and proper.... When all America, not only the Jew, takes that to heart it will be well for all of us. I know a number of prosperous Jew families in Cleveland, among my best friends there, but they’re mostly alike, sadly similar to your categorical disposals.... And, has the Gide essay appeared yet? Remember your promise.

I want to meet Ornstein someday. But I never seem to hear or read of any of these concert tours he is supposed to have to make for bread, etc. Mrs. Simpson was enormously pleased at your postcard; and I with your praise of the Dedication. You generally do pick the weakest link; that verse has bothered me, and will undoubtedly be somewhat amended before the book. I’ve sent it to _The Dial_ and _The Criterion_ (London); the little money may help, IF they take it. Probably won’t let anything else out of the bag on this side of the water, though, for sometime yet. It keeps too many question marks in my head, albeit a little change in the purse. I play the lottery, though, and like it. I’m going to win a thousand before spring; you see. “_I knew I’d see a WHALE!_”

I’m reading [Sandburg’s] _The Prairie Years_ now. More of “Powhatan’s Daughter” later. It ends up with the prodigal son from the ‘49. There’s to be a grand Indian pow-wow before that. Two of three songs have just popped out (enclosed) which come after “Cutty Sark” and before “The Mango Tree.” The last, “Virginia” (virgin in process of “being built”) may come along any time. I skip from one section to another now like a sky-gack or girder-jack. Even the subway and “Calgary Express” are largely finished. Though novel experiments in form and metre here will demand much ardor later on.

I’m happy, quite well, and living as never before. The accumulation of impressions and concepts gathered the last several years and constantly repressed by immediate circumstances are having a chance to function, I believe. And nothing but this large form would hold them without the violences that mar so much of my previous, more casual work. _The Bridge_ is already longer than _The Wasteland_,--and it’s only about half done.

But enough of this shop talk. I’ll exhaust your patience with it someday. You know I don’t expect comments of any sort, except when they’re easy and spontaneous. --/--/

260: TO WALDO FRANK

[_Isle of Pines_] _August 19th ’26_

Dear Waldo: Here, too, is that bird with a note that Rimbaud speaks of as “making you blush.” We are in the midst of the equatorial storm season; everyday, often at night, torrents engulf us, and the thunder rods jab and prospect in the caverns deep below that chain of mountains across. You can hear the very snakes rejoice,--the long, shaken-out convulsions of rock and roots.

It is very pleasant to lie awake--just half awake--and listen. I have the most speechless and glorious dreams meanwhile. Sometimes words come and go, presented like a rose that yields only its light, never its composite form. Then the cocks begin to crow. I hear Mrs. S-- begin to stir. She is the very elf of music, little wrinkled burnous wisp that can do anything and remembers so much! She reads Dante and falls to sleep, her cough has become so admirably imitated by the parrot that I often think her [in] two places at once.

I have made up a kind of friendship with that idiot boy, who is always on the road when I come into town for mail. He has gone so far as to answer my salutations. I was unexpected witness one day of the most astonishing spectacle; not that I was surprised.--A group of screaming children were shrieking about in a circle. I looked toward the house and saw the boy standing mostly hid behind the wooden shutters behind the grating; his huge limp phallus waved out at them from some opening; the only other part visible was his head, in a most gleeful grin, swaying above the lower division of the blinds.

When I saw him next he was talking to a blue little kite high in the afternoon. He is rendingly beautiful at times: I have encountered him in the road, talking again tout seul and examining pebbles and cinders and marble chips through the telescope of a twice-opened tomato can. He is very shy, hilarious,--and undoubtedly idiot. I have been surprised to notice how much the other children like him. --/--/

I’m glad to know that _The Bridge_ is fulfilling your utmost intuitions; for an intuition it undoubtedly was. You didn’t need to tell me that [you] had “seen” something that memorable evening, although I was never so sure just what it was you saw, until now. But I have always carried that peculiar look that was in your eyes for a moment there in your room, it has often recurred in my thoughts. What I should have done without your love and most distinguished understanding is hard to say, but there is no earthly benefit for which I would exchange it. It is a harmony always with the absolute direction [I] always seek, often miss, but sometimes gain.

Your answer to G[orham Munson] on his essay was much more adept than any of my critical armament. It was complete. My greatest complaint against G-- is (apparently) an incorrigible streak of vulgarity, arising no doubt from some distrust in experience. Sometimes it makes him personally dangerous when he doesn’t intend such. Not especially par example, BUT: when I last dined with G-- much happened to be said about my “extravagances”--how I spent K[ahn]’s money, etc. Snowshoes, African sculpture, etc. I happened to mention how useful the snowshoes had been during the storms at Patterson, etc. G-- recently visited the Tates and went up to my room, accompanied by Mrs. Turner, who writes me, most unwittingly of the circumstances, that the main thing G-- quizzed her about was whether I used my snow shoes or not! Really, it [is] all so ridiculously small. You may think I’m wasting paper on such a silly story. But in any kind of friendship I like to have my honesty sometimes granted on my oath of it, and this is only one of many such little evidences of a real lack of perspective and innate taste on G.’s part. It does leak into his work, the vision of his world. He’d better memorize the last stanza of Baudelaire’s famous Epilogue to the _Petits Poèmes en Prose_; as, indeed, I may sometimes tell him to do. His definition of “knowledge” in that essay incorporates the savour of just such a mind as is preoccupied with such details as I’ve mentioned.

Yes, I read the whole of Spengler’s book. It is stupendous,--and it was perhaps a very good experience for ripening some of _The Bridge_, after all. I can laugh now; but you know, alas, how little I could at the time. That book seems to have been just one more of many “things” and circumstances that seem to have uniformly conspired in a strangely symbolical way toward the present speed of my work. Isn’t it true--hasn’t it been true in your experience, that beyond the acceptance of fate as a tragic action--immediately every circumstance and incident in one’s life flocks toward a positive center of action, control and beauty? I need not ask this, since there is the metaphor of the “rotted seed of personal will,” or some such phrase, in your _Spain_.

I have never been able to live _completely_ in my work before. Now it is to learn a great deal. To handle the beautiful skeins of this myth of America--to realize suddenly, as I seem to, how much of the past is living under only slightly altered forms, even in machinery and such-like, is extremely exciting. So I’m having the time of my life, just now, anyway.

261: TO WALDO FRANK

[_Isle of Pines_] _Aug. 23_

Dear Waldo: I feel rather apologetic about sending you so many photographs--but the last seemed to be more what I wanted you to think of me--than any others heretofore.

Work continues. “The Tunnel” now. I shall have it done very shortly. It’s rather ghastly, almost surgery--and, oddly almost all from the notes and stitches I have written while swinging on the strap at late midnights going home.

Are you noticing how throughout the poem motives and situations recur--under modifications of environment, etc? The organic substances of the poem are holding a great many surprises for me.... Greatest joys of creation.

Forgive me for telling that anecdote about G--. I don’t want to seem stubborn or prejudiced, but you, on the other hand, are one who ought to know more or less _why_ it is hard for me to maintain a steady sort of whole-hearted confidence and enthusiasm with such constantly recurring “obscurations,” if you will. I’m not saying that these ultimately or “aesthetically” matter, but they enter the moral picture of the personality.

Did I tell you that M. Moore has taken the Dedication?--needless to say, without alterations.

262: TO WALDO FRANK

[_Havana, Cuba_] _Sept. 3 ’26_

Dear Waldo: I’m having my last bottle of “Diamante” before leaving for la Isla tonight. A pestulant[52] Abbe is gulping olives at the next table, and my waiter is all out of patience with him. But I cannot conceal my mirth--cheeks bulge and eyes strain at suppressions. “F---- la Cubana!” says the waiter who is Spanish. Well I never had such a fiesta of perfect food and nectar in my life. Furthermore, if you were St. Valentine--well, maybe you are! So here goes--even if you call my little story stale.

Perhaps you have also experienced the singular charm of long conversations with senoritas with only about 12 words in common understanding between you. I allude to A----, a young Cuban sailor (most of them are terrible but A---- is Spanish parentage, and maybe that explains it) whom I met one evening after the Alhambra in Park Central. Immaculate, ardent and delicately restrained--I have learned much about love which I did not think existed. What delicate revelations may bloom from the humble--it is hard to exaggerate.

So there have been three long and devoted evenings--long walks, drives on the Malacon, dos copas mas--and a change from my original American hotel to La Isle de Cuba, sine commotion, however.

I’m going back much relaxed. I got on a terrible tension--not a tennis court on the island! Just day after day in the heat and the house. Now I shall get a fresh view of what I have written and have still to write--and with an internal glow which is hard to describe. Silly of me to say so--but life can be gorgeously kindly at times. -- -- -- --

263: TO WALDO FRANK

[_Isle of Pines_] _Sept. 5th_

Caro Hermano: Estoy en casa ayer de madrugada. No dormaba la noche a bordo mar. Mucha calor, y pensaba en el carinoso A---- y los calles blancas Habaneros, de consigniente dulces con Mi Bien. Encontreremos de nuevo en Deciembre.... Busco en diccionario y gramatica, sudo, raspo pelo de suerte que el tierno Cubano-Canario (Parentela los Canarios) mi carta apprendera.

Tell me if any of it is sensible. I am now, more than ever anxious to learn the most beautiful language in the world. And I suddenly conceive it as a necessary preparation for my next piece of work just apprehended in the form of a blank verse tragedy of Aztec mythology--for which I shall have to study the obscure calendars of dead kings. If I have the leisure for this study I shall certainly go to Spain sometime in the next five years.... In fact I must manage this anyhow.

Your letter, awaiting my return, conveyed much goodness, the sense of “wholiness”--of a complete return to yourself, from which I hope much; in fact, I’m _sure_ of much therefrom. I am so glad that my progress has meant so much to you. --/--/

264: TO CHARLOTTE RYCHTARIK

_New York_ _Nov. 1_

Dear Charlotte: --/--/ I have no idea of just what the situation is at present with my mother, but I have been terribly worried about it for many, many weeks. The result has been that there was only about four weeks on the Isle of Pines that I managed to accomplish any work at all; my mother’s unrestrained letters, the terrific heat and bugs, etc., nearly killed me.

But I’ve managed to come through, at least with my skin. What has been done of _The Bridge_ is superb, according to what those few who have seen it say. The rest I hope to finish up here or in the country. I haven’t decided exactly where I am going to stay as yet.

I don’t want to do anything to hurt _anyone’s_ feelings, but I think that unless I isolate myself somewhat (and pretty soon) from the avalanche of bitterness and wailing that has flooded me ever since I was seven years old, there won’t be enough left of me to even breathe, not to mention writing. If I could really do anything to help the situation it would be different. But it’s a personal problem, after all. I’m doing my best--and I’m grateful to you for appreciating it. I’ll write you more later.

I’ve wondered why I didn’t hear from you, but I discover that I’ve only got about half my letters in Cuba; the Havana post office is in the dirty habit of opening American mail to extract money, when it thinks there is any currency inside. Maybe you didn’t get what I sent you. _White Buildings_ will be out in Dec. I’m having Laukhuff send you a copy.

265: TO WALDO FRANK

_Patterson_ _Nov. 21st_

Caro hermano: I am hoping that your country retreat is as pleasant to you as mine is to me.... It seems marvelous to sleep again, buried under the sound of an autumn wind--and to wake with the sense of the faculties being on the mend. Now I can look back and enjoy “every moment” of the summer Carib days,--so gracious is the memory in preserving most carefully the record of our pleasures, _their_ real savor, _only_.

When are you coming back to town? Will you for a moment consider coming out here for a week-end (or longer) sometime before you leave for Europe? It would be pleasant and quiet, and the country is still interesting if one doesn’t demand too much tropical splendor. We could have the good deliberate talk that we couldn’t get in NY, of course.

Haven’t got my book yet, but expect it next week. Nor am I at work yet on _The Bridge_ again.... But I’m not worried. I know too well what I want to do now, even if it doesn’t spill over for months and months. It must “spill,” you know. The little thing above I did yesterday.[53] Write me when you have time. Aunt Sally sends you her best (sometimes “love”!) in her every letter.

Williams’ _American Grain_ is an achievement that I’d be proud of. A most important and _sincere_ book. I’m very enthusiastic--I put off reading it, you know, until I felt my own way cleared beyond chance of confusions incident to reading a book so intimate to my theme. I was so interested to note that he puts Poe and his “character” in the same position as I had _symbolized_ for him in “The Tunnel” section.

266: TO MRS. T. W. SIMPSON

_Patterson, N.Y._ _December 5th, 1926_

Dear Aunt Sally: From hurricane to Blizzards--all in six weeks! The fates sure do give me immoderate changes. It’s “two below naught” outside, as they say in Hicksville; snowdrifts on the hills and windows, and my room isn’t so warm but what tickling the typewriter keys is a stiff proposition. My nose got so cold last night it kept me awake, besides I could hear the congealing water click into ice in the pitcher on the washstand, ticking, ticking--every few moments. But my kerosene stoves are doing better than last winter--better oil, and I think with considerable economy I’ll be able to finish the winter here, if I’m not called back to Cleveland.

Utter silence, by the way, from that quarter. It will make it a month since I heard from mother, who evidently is displeased. It certainly is too bad that she doesn’t write you; I guess she is in a pretty disorganized state of mind.

I should have known when they said that my book would be out “in two weeks” that it meant a month; but it’s promised for certain late this week. I’ll be glad when it’s over--for though it, or rather the prospect of its appearance doesn’t give me such a thrill after all, yet it does keep me a little distracted. I’m sure I shall be better able to work on the new stuff once this first book is really launched and off my mind. Work is going very slowly on _The Bridge_, but I’m not worried. Eventually it’s going to be done, and in the style that my conception of it demands. Winters continues to write me most stimulating criticism; his wide scholarship not only in English literature but in Latin, Greek, French and Spanish and Portugese--gives his statements a gratifying weight. I have heard nothing whatever from Waldo since I reached Patterson (a month now), but he was going away to some country retreat himself for awhile. Is very busy writing a play of some kind.

Got a letter from A---- (you remember the Havanese sailor?) yesterday. The second since I got back. I have a great time translating his Spanish--without a dictionary of any size. Once he got his niece to write me a letter in (broken) English. One of the statements ran, “Maximo Gomez, my ship--him sink in ciclon. All my clothes drowned.” When I was going through Havana I asked another “Gomez” mariner if he knew anything about the fate of A---- in the storm. I gathered from his signs and contortions that A---- was badly laid up with a broken arm and a smashed shoulder. But later learn that he escaped at least as whole as the Adonis Crane referred to in your last letter. I’m still bent on learning Spanish as soon as my fortune or inheritance permits. With enough Spanish and enough reputation as a poet,--someday I might be appointed to sell tires or toothpaste in Rio de Janeiro!

I was amused to hear about the drunken outbreak of the very red, butter-faced hurricane friend of “ours”--who was looking for an Isle of Pines retreat for his mother--among the ruins. Certain of the actors in the melodramatic episode of wind, rain, lightnin’, plaster, shingles, curses, desperation and sailors--never will leave my mind. Especially our little one-step together the morning after, to the tune of “Valencia”! And pillows wobbling on our heads!

I’m glad you have got under a good roof again. You’re such a good brick, you ought to get dried before some of the rest. I hope you got my letters, especially the one _containing_ the check. The other was self-explanatory, of course, in case anything circumvented the registered letter. I mailed it a day later on purpose. One has to be sly with the Havana post office.

I’m eating like a horse, losing my becoming tan, and getting fat, I fear. How I would like--at the present moment--to step into a grove of royal palms, doff these woolens--and have a good glass of Cerveza with you! The storm is increasing, howling loudly. It looks as though we were to be snowed in for the rest of the winter. Really!--And I may be a good time getting this letter to the PO if mail delivery is delayed, as usual under such circumstances. Don’t work too hard! --/--/

267: TO ----

_Patterson, N.Y._ _Dec. 16 [1926]_

Dear ----: I’m laid up with tonsilitis--but must somehow thank you for your pleasant N.Y. letter and wish you as amusing a New Year as possible. As for myself--I don’t expect much.

Nothing but illness and mental disorder in my family--and I am expected by all the middle-class ethics and dogmas to rush myself to Cleveland and devote myself interminably to nursing, sympathizing with woes which I have no sympathy for because they are all unnecessary, and bolstering up the faith in others toward concepts which I long ago discarded as crass and cheap.

Whether I can do it or not is the question. It means tortures and immolations which are hard to conceive, impossible to describe. There seems to be no place left in the world for love or the innocence of a single spontaneous act. Write me here.

P.S.--have you read Norman Douglas’ _South Wind_? It almost makes one jolly--

268: TO HIS MOTHER

_Patterson, N.Y._ _Dec. 22 ’26_

Dear Grace: -- -- -- -- Yes--it is a very melancholy Christmas for all of us.... I am certainly anything but joyful.

Insomnia seems now to have settled on me permanently--and when I do “sleep” my mind is plagued by an endless reel of pictures, startling and unhappy--like some endless cinematograph.

Am making as much effort as possible to free my imagination and work the little time that is now left me on my _Bridge_ poem. So much is expected of me via that poem--that if I fail on it I shall become a laughing stock and my career closed.

I take it that you would not wish this to happen. Yet it may be too late, already, for me to complete the conception. My mind is about as clear as dirty dishwater--and such a state of things is scarcely conducive to successful creative endeavor. If it were like adding up columns of figures--or more usual labors--it would be different.... Well, I’m trying my best--both to feel the proper sentiments to your situation and keep on with my task. _The Bridge_ is an important task--and nobody else can ever do it.

My _White Buildings_ is out. A beautiful book. Laukhuff has been instructed to send you out a copy as soon as he receives his order. --/--/

I’m glad you have taken up C[hristian] S[cience] again. You never should have dropped it. But it seems to me you will have to make a real effort this time--with no half-way measures. It isn’t anything you can play with. It’s either true--or totally false. And for heaven’s sake--don’t go to it merely as a _cure_. If it isn’t a complete philosophy of life for you it isn’t anything at all. It is sheer hypocrisy to take it up when you get scared and then forsake it as soon as you feel angry about something. Anger is a costly luxury to you--and resentment and constant self-pity. I have to fight these demons myself. I know they are demons--they never do me anything but harm. Why look at yourself as a martyr all the time! It simply drives people away from you. The only real martyrs the world ever worships are those devoted exclusively to the worship of God, poverty and suffering--you have, as yet, never been in exactly that position. Not that I want you to be a martyr. I see no reason for it--and am out of sympathy with anyone who thinks he is--for the _real_ ones don’t think about themselves that way--they are too happy in their faith to ever want to be otherwise. --/--/

1927

269: TO ALLEN TATE

_Patterson_ _Friday [ca. January 7_]

Dear Allen: I’m tremendously obliged to you for all this British business.... I really hope it will go through. I’ve written Rickword today immediately on receipt of your letter. I also wrote Liveright yesterday, where to write and who; he forgets things said in conversations very quickly sometimes. Let me know the cost of the cable and I’ll send you a check at once.

The company that R. is lined up with [is] called Wishart & Co., address same as _Calendar_, which is continuing, by the way, as a quarterly. A new publisher just starting business in the Spring. You ought to send them something. Garman has gone to Russia for a period, but Wishart is bringing out a book of his poems. As for the preface--your foreword is entirely good enough both here _and_ there. Besides, it would destroy all the economic advantage in buying sheets from L. if they had much extra printing to add over there. I therefore made no mention of the idea in my letter. Hope to God, though, that Schneider had sent the copy of _W[hite] B[uildings]_ to them that I put on my review list. As I understood from you all review copies were sent out some time ago. A detention of the book much longer is going to ruin all chance of sales from Waldo’s article. Lord! is there anything else that can happen to that book! How long _will_ it take them to put in those new title pages, I wonder. All of my friends have got tired of asking for the book in Cleveland and I expect there will be a record of less than the famous Stevens-35 to my credit.

Your comments on Gorham’s shrine and gland-totemism convince me that Orage talked as vaguely and arbitrarily in your presence as he did in mine on a similar occasion. Some great boob ought to be hired as a kind of heckler and suddenly burst out in one of those meetings held each year to attract converts,--“Come on now, do your stuff--there’s millions waiting!” Or some such democratic phrase.

As I seem to be going through an extremely distrustful mood in regard to most of my own work lately, perhaps some of my present temper may unduly limit my perspective in regard to your _Ode_.[54] I have a kind of perpetual dull cold in the head, however, which may better account for my reaction. But if you can bear to listen awhile to Aunt Harriet then here goes....

The obscurities bother me. Stanza I, OK; and I get along very well until I come to “ambitious” Novembers in II. Why this special epithet--this

## particular designation for the whole season in relation to the

headstones, in fact? As it is stressed so much one chafes against the stubborn dullness that blocks one’s apprehension of your precise intention. The last 6 lines are particularly fine and The _last_--!

There is no doubt that you make the theme of the poem a living continuity with the exception of the several places where, I admit, I find it difficult to follow you. The theme of chivalry--a tradition of excess (not literally excess, rather, active faith) which cannot be perpetuated in the fragmentary cosmos of today--“those desires which _should_ be yours tomorrow” but which, you know, will not persist nor find way into action.... Your statement of this is beautiful, and the poem is a POEM with splendidly controlled rhythms and eloquence. But when you come to such lines as “From the orient of the sublime economy/Remember the setting sun” I suddenly feel the thread cut. _Sublime economy_ misses its aim with me, I suddenly seem to see a little of Laforgue’s mannerism too wittily on the scene. What _is_ meant here?

I fancy that you could go much better directly from Bull Run to “You hear the shout,” etc. The next verse is superb. The last 7 lines are the climax of the poem. The intensity of this “meditation” gives the lie, of course, to all previous factual statements regarding the impermanency of your grief.... But you are, of course, speaking throughout less from a personal angle than a social viewpoint. Or are you? Both, of course. It was fatuous to have raised this point....

Then you go back to speculation in the next stanza. You go _too_ far in the succeeding, I think. And it, again, is rather obscure--exactly what you mean. The capitalization of sentiment, I take it. A good dig at certain people, but I think the sarcasm is over-bitter, marring the beauty of the poem as a whole. The fierce resignation at the last is beautiful, that irony _will_ sell, if you get what I mean.

Carolyn [Gordon] said you sent it to _The Nation_. I hope they have sense enough to reward you; on the other hand, though, how can they take such a chance with their average reader? Hang crepe on your door and wait.... The sonnet makes me merry, though it’s the lovely last four lines that I like best. They’re almost too good for the rest. The rest is too complicated. I’d chop it apart and put the lovely windows in another room. --/--/

Further readings may reveal to me the folly of some of my objections.... Take issue with me meanwhile wherever you feel justified.

270: TO EDGELL RICKWORD

_Patterson, New York_ _January 7th, 1927_

Dear Mr. Rickword: --/--/ I enclose three poems: “O Carib Isle,” “Cutty Sark” and “The Harbor Dawn.” There is a general emphasis on the _marine_ in all of them, and if you should care to use them all I suggest that the sequence in which I have named them above would chart an interesting curve of the underlying element. I must risk a presumption on your interest in the poems in order to emphasize the necessity of printing “Cutty Sark” as closely as possible to the form as typed herewith, especially in regard to the third page, which is a “cartogram,” if one may so designate a special use of the calligramme. The “ships” should meet and pass in line and type--as well as in wind and memory, if you get my rather unique formal intentions in this phantom regatta seen from Brooklyn Bridge.

Probably no one should be “thanked” for taking an interest in poetry, but your kindness and interest in what little I’ve so far accomplished are much appreciated. It is re-assuring to me--especially from the fact that a couple of years ago I found so much in your Rimbaud volume which was sympathetic and critically stimulating. -- -- -- --

271: TO HIS MOTHER

_Patterson, NY_ _Jan. 23, ’27_

Dear Grace: --/--/ I had heard nothing about the death of Frances [Crane] until Grandmother’s letter reached me, last Friday, I think. CA [Crane] did not trouble to answer the letter I wrote him in November, and though I shall probably not hear from him, even now, until God knows when--I wrote him a short note of condolence as soon as I heard.

I liked the pictures, especially the one with the hat, and the frame is beautiful. I shall take them with me into NY when I get the job (whatever it shall turn out to be) that I’m at present fishing for. I am trying to get a line on something before going in, as I have scarcely any money left, and I would like to avoid any charities from my friends on this occasion if possible.

Meanwhile I am doing what writing I can, and studying Spanish.

I’m very much amused at what you say about the interest in my book among relatives and friends out there in Cleveland. Wait until they see it, and try to read it! I may be wrong, but I think they will eventually express considerable consternation; for the poetry I write, as you have noticed already, is farther from their grasp than the farthest planets. But I don’t care how mad they get--_after_ they have bought the book! --/--/

Yvor Winters, who is a professor of French and Spanish at the Moscow University, Idaho, writes me the following: “Your book arrived this evening, and I have read it through a couple of times. It will need many more readings, but so far I am simply dumbfounded. Most of it is new to me, and what I had seen is clarified by its setting. I withdraw all minor objections I have ever made to your work--I have never read anything greater and have read very little as great.” Etc. So you see what kind of a review he is apt to write.

Waldo Frank ends his article in _The New Republic_ by saying: “At present Hart Crane is engaged in a long poem that provides him with a subject adequate for his method: the subject indeed which Mr. Tate prophesies in his introduction. Yet already _White Buildings_ gives us enough to justify the assertion, that not since Whitman has so original, so profound and--above all, so important a poetic promise come to the American scene.”

In a way it’s a pity that none of the Crane family are readers of anything more important than such magazines as _The Saturday Evening Post_ and _Success_. --/--/

The delay in the divorce proceedings may mean that Charles [Curtis] is reconsidering--and it might be just as well all around if he did. I have the idea that you both care for each other more than you thought you did. Such thoughts are neither here nor there, however, and I’m in no position to form judgments or advise. I’ve never been able to figure out what the quarrel was “all about”--i.e., the issue involved. I think you had probably better keep your mind off the subject as much as possible, assuming the issue as closed. But you must get something to do as soon as you are physically able.... I mean--that without some kind of

## activity you’ll remain in a morbid condition--and your viewpoint will

become more warped all the time. People just have to have some kind of

## activity to remain healthy-minded.

But you seem to [be] already much better; and I’m enormously glad. Don’t think I don’t care for you,--I can’t help it, no matter how I feel about some things. --/--/

272: TO WALDO FRANK

_Patterson, NY_ _January 28th_

Querido hermano Waldo: Just a little note to say hello. It’s sixteen below and the sun brightly shining. I’m living in practically one room--the kitchen--with the old lady these days--to keep warm. Writing a little again on _The Bridge_ and studying Spanish.

Thank you so much for having _The Menorah_ [_Journal_] people send me out your review of Spengler. It’s a magnificent rebuttal of the man’s psychology. I don’t need to know your philosophical references well enough to check up on them to feel that. I’ve sent the paper on to Tate who was somewhat bowled over by Spengler--as wasn’t I?--thinking it will prick him a bit.

_WB’s_ is getting--or is going to get--wonderful reviews. Not to mention yours, there’s a great explosion coming from Yvor Winters in _The Dial_; another from Mark Van Doren (of all the unexpected!) in _The Nation_ this week. Seligmann has written a sincere and just estimate in the _Sun_; Josephson in the _Herald-Tribune_; MacLeish in _Poetry_; etc. I don’t know any further, but there may be other surprises. I certainly feel myself very fortunate, considering the type of stuff in _WB_.

--/--/ But I’ll be glad when all reviews and arrangements are over--so I can put the book definitely behind me. Present preoccupations tend to “exteriorize” one entirely too much. Winters has a lovely book of poems coming out this spring, by the way,--and Ford Madox Ford has recommended Allen’s poems highly to Duckworth, his London publishers. I hope they take it; Allen needs some encouragement very much.

Remember me in your mugs--though I guess you never get in far enough to become as sentimental as I do. Mrs. Simpson isn’t very well, has overworked since the hurricane. Will you drop her a postcard from some hofbrau? It would tickle her to death. I’ve an amusing story to tell you sometime about one instance of the “mysticism of money”--it refers to Kahn and the “gift.” It seems I have to pay $60 odd the rest of my mortal term on life insurance to the Kahn estate, which, of course I was dumb bell enough not to understand when he proposed it. Not that I especially mind nor that I’m at all embittered, but I think I have discovered a new way to avoid income taxes and become heroic--both at once, if you get what I mean. -- -- -- --

273: TO ---- AND ----

_Patterson,_ _Feb. 16th_

Dear ---- and ----: I left town last Sunday--so there was no time to see you again--and (already) scarce enough cash left to tip the conductor. The last two nights in town were mainly spent on the Hoboken waterfront, where you want to go (though it’s for men only) if you want the good old beer, the old free-lunch counter and everything thrown in--for 15¢ a glass. Whiskey and gin are also much superior to the other side of the River and cheaper. Take the Christopher St. ferry. Walk up _past_ Front St. There are three in a row. Begin with McKelly’s--or some such name.

The last night went flying back to Brooklyn with a wild Irish red-headed sailor of the Coast Guard, who introduced me to a lot of coffee dens and cousys on Sand Street, and then took me to some kind of opium den way off, God knows where. Whereat I got angry and left him, or rather Mike Drayton did. Returning here to the home roost I found six cards from J---- the Incomparable with much more than the usual brief greetings, so Caramba!

Mrs. Turner was laid up all day Monday from an excess of oatmeal eaten at breakfast in celebration of my return. Went up to Tory Hill yesterday and found everything just as I left it. Encountered Mrs. Powitzki at the Jennings and think she is marvelous. Did you ever talk to her? I never heard such locutions. I should love to tickle her. Since which I’ve been reading the Cock also Rises (sent me by a Cleveland friend) and have developed a perfect case of acidosis. No wonder the book sold; there isn’t a sentence without a highball or a martini in it to satisfy all the suppressed desires of the public. It’s a brilliant and a terrible book. The fiesta and bullfight best. No warmth, no charm in it whatever, but of course Hemingway doesn’t want such.

274: TO ISIDOR SCHNEIDER

_Patterson, NY_ _Feb 19th, ’27_

Dear Isidor: I like your _Anthony_ very much. The theme is as basic as the best of Anderson, by which I don’t mean that it’s derivative in any sense whatever,--only that Anderson has thrusts toward a similar hygiene of the local soul, though never with such control and comprehensiveness. Forgive me too, for bringing in Jeffers, whom it seems to me you’ve got beat on a number of counts. He has poignance, but little of the sustained intensity and still less of the metrical ingenuity that I marvel at--the way you interweave action and emotion with precepts and generalities, and manage to make what is, after all, a simple plot,--a glowing canvas alive with irony and illumination.

The rugged-smooth drive of your lines is quite novel. I venture to say that your previous struggles with prose in _Dr. Transit_ have helped you here, for many of the best passages have all the weight and definition of fine prose with the additional sharp, leaping movement of the liveliest hexameters in Chapman’s _Homer_.

Here and there I think you are too didactic. Your “saint” is sometimes a little _too_ consistent--though this latter reaction is so personal merely to me, probably, that it’s valueless as comment. The beautifully measured opening lines create a fine abstraction of time and space: out of the clouds the sudden and dramatic introduction of the theme, the earthly conflict. Will you forgive me for echoing something you recently wrote me? I think this beats any and all of what previous verse of yours I’ve seen. I suppose that it’s a case--with all of us--of having to find the right theme. Much of your earlier poetry (and please don’t unconsciously include _Doc Transit_ here) seemed diffuse to me, and sometimes obscure. This long poem has the amplitude and self-contained movement that I can’t seem to find in any recent narrative poetry. I wish I had the facility for mingling fact and inference so neatly--into so organic a rhythm. I’m so hugged and restricted by a single-track, iambic metronometer these days!

Somebody sent me Hemingway’s _Sun Also Rises_ to read. It certainly does what he evidently intends it doing--I’ve had a case of acidosis just reading the list of drinks that clutter every page. He certainly knows what dry-throated Americans want; no wonder the book sells. To me it seems brilliant enough (the fiesta and the bullfight are splendid) but horribly cold. A novel to read if you want a slant at one aspect of the age, but without any of the engraciating qualities that makes _Ulysses_, even that bitter book, a thing to keep and enjoy many times.

I’m still on the watch for a job, so let me know if you hear of anything. -- -- -- --

275: TO ALLEN TATE

_Patterson_ _Thursday Feb 24_

Dear Allen: I wish I could keep up with Winters. I already owe him several letters, besides comment on the ms. of his “Fire Sequence,” which awaited me when I returned from town. All his work is so genuine that it takes close attention, meditation and blood and bone to answer.... At present it’s too much for me, so I’ve sent the manifesto on with a brief note to the effect that I agree with most of your marginalia, i.e., where I differ with him. Though I go further than you do in qualification of the Loeb-physics-etc. recipe.... Pure hocus-pocus for the poet. Just one out [of] a five-thousand other scientific similes, equally good to go by (regardless of their veracity)--and I venture to say that Winters’ work suffers already from such arbitrary torturings--all for the sake of a neat little point of reference. What good will it do him to go on repeating in the background of every poem, that “life is some slight disturbance of the balance,” etc., etc?! But we all must have some kind of incantation, I suppose. Though I’d rather adopt some of Blake’s aphorisms. They’re abstract enough. And a lot truer than the latest combination of scientific terms.

Glad you liked the Joyce lyrics. I make the following choice from my own work. If they seem to fit your requirements let me know, and I’ll send you copies:

“Passage” “The Springs of Guilty Song” (F & H, II) “Voyages (V)” “Powhatan’s Daughter: The Dance” “To Emily Dickinson” “Repose of Rivers”

“The Dance” has been expanded to 104 lines, and is now the best thing I’ve done. I shall send it soon to you--regardless of the Anthology, as I want you to see and adjudge it. I’ve had to submit it to Marianne Moore recently, as my only present hope of a little cash. But she probably will object to the word “breasts,” or some other such detail. It’s really ghastly. I wonder how much longer our market will be in the grip of two such hysterical virgins as _The Dial_ and _Poetry_!

We have been without mail service all week. They may get the roads cleared out before Easter, I don’t know. To have the sun again and a little warmth again! My present quandaries, that extend to every detail of my life, personal and artistic, have brought me near lunacy. I couldn’t go on much longer on such a strain as the last year. Can you send me a few stamps? About a dozen--to last until Andy [the mail carrier] gets back on the road.

276: TO ALLEN TATE

_Patterson_ _March 10th_

Dear Allen: I abducted a copy of your _Sewanee Review_ essay from the envelope before sending it on; I hope you don’t mind. As you had already promised me one I thought it would save you the trouble of mailing it back. Winters is sure to be interested, and I’m glad you’re sending him one.

I’m too addled these days to have any ideas. And I may have a better perspective later--on Ransom. Just now, though, he doesn’t impress me very much, at least this last book. But I haven’t read nearly so much of him as you have. He, oddly, partakes somewhat of both Hardy and Wallace Stevens. Not that he imitates ... but that in my “reading” he seems to share certain aspects of both. And though I grant him a distinct personality I can’t feel that either his technique or his attitude come half way up to the importance of either of them. He exploits his “manners” a great deal. But his viewpoints don’t seem to me very profound, nor does he possess any overwhelming graces. He never has succeeded--and probably never will--in writing anything that compares with your “Idiot” in respect to these qualities. He can satirize well at times, very well.

Hardy is a marvel in skill. If it weren’t for my indifference to his never-absent “message” I think I’d regard him as next to Shakespeare in sheer dexterity. I’ve been reading him rather thoroughly lately, instigated by Winters’ frequent mention of him, I suppose.

Hope Torrence treats us well.... I haven’t heard anything yet. Nor from Marianne. What strange people these -- -- -- --- are. Always in a flutter for fear bowels will be mentioned, forever carrying on a tradition that both Poe and Whitman spent half their lives railing against--and calling themselves “liberals.” --/--/

277: TO ALLEN TATE

_Patterson_ _14th March ’27_

Dear Allen: Miss -- -- -- -- won’t even take tea, you know, because she finds it too “stimulating.” I’ve been to her house, so I know. AND so, what can we expect! I got my verses [“Van Winkle” and “The Harbor Dawn”] back also. They seemed to be too spacious for _The New Republic_.... Your letter was of course a piece of folly, but justified. It won’t do Miss T. any good, but it’s an admirable relief to me, and probably to you. I envy buckandwing dancers and the Al Jolsons of the world sometimes. They don’t have to encounter all these milksops ... and they do _please_. They’re able to do some “good” to somebody and when they laugh people don’t think they are crying. Out here one reads the paper--one sees evidence mounting all the time--that there is no place left for _our_ kinds of minds or emotions. Unless we can pursue our futilities with some sort of constant pleasure there is little use in going on--and we must apprehend some element of truth in our mock ceremonies or even our follies aren’t amusing. I’m looking around for some new sort of “avocation,” but having gone half-blind with conjunctivitis (better known as “pink-eye”) I [am] waiting for the cornea to clear before taking any leap.

Phallus-es have been known to slyly leap out of some of Mr. Gilmore’s poems published in _The Little Review_, so -- -- -- -- had better watch out. But she probably doesn’t know one when she does encounter it! His poems, about as long as a cicada’s whir, might make an amusing booklet. His plays are even briefer, I’m told.

Thanks for the _NR_ copies. Miss T. had informed me of the matter, saying “you must look out for it” (sic), so that I felt I might be standing in the middle of Seventh Avenue with a huge truck bearing down suddenly. Having bothered you so much lately I tho[ugh]t I’d worry Bill [Brown] for awhile, so I asked him to send me copies. I’ll certainly have plentEE now! I note that the one quotable paragraph (from the publisher’s standpoint) has been lopped off: the last, with the allusion to Whitman. The rest will be a sufficient warning to most readers not to read the book, for it’s one long dissertation on the subject of OBSCURITY.

The genial tactics of the editorial proofreader have even helped Frank on a little by falsifying his ms.--at least the copy I hold. For instance, “the obscure poet he is likely _for long_ to remain” has been changed to read “_ever_ to remain.” This not only alters the time-limit before my possible admission to the panting bosom of the generous reader, but changes the emphasis of the context in such a way that the reader infers the reviewer’s prophecy to be that I shall probably _never_ write anything that is comprehensible! With the world all flying into trillions of tabloids I probably shall not!

Your review of Laura [Riding] was just according to my estimates. If I’m as obscure to others as she is to me--then I won’t even rail any more at Miss T----.

GOLDEN TEXT:

Wondrous the gods, more wondrous are the men,

More wondrous, wondrous still, the cock and hen!--BLAKE

278: TO HIS MOTHER

_Patterson, NY_ _19th March 1927_

Dear Grace: My eyes are so much better today that I’m able to type a little without straining. I had to order a pair of glasses--and that seems to have done more good than medicine. I lost my old pair down on the Island, but really have not worn them for more than a few days at a time for years. Nervous crises always affect my eyes, however, and it may be that this present case of conjunctivitis was caused as much by that as by wind and sunglare on snow. At any rate there’s no snow left around here now, and the air is as balmy as you could wish. I do hope that the season has definitely arrived--and no more snow! My spirits react entirely too much to the endless gloomy days we’ve had for so long.

--/--/ I am so glad that you enjoyed the Columbus part. It is coming out next September in _The American Caravan_, a yearbook of American letters, just started by Paul Rosenfeld, Alfred Kreymborg and Van Wyck Brooks, and published by the Macauley Co. When I was last in NY the owners of the Macauley Co. gave a large party to all the contributors up in a huge but unbelievably vulgarly furnished and expensive apartment on West End Avenue. There seemed to be everybody there I’d ever heard of. Enormous quantities of wine, cocktails and highballs were served. I had just landed in town after three months with the bossy cows--and I had my share. It would take me ages to tell all the amusing things that happen at such parties. But to come back to the poem: Rosenfeld was so excited about it that he called me up long distance and urged me to let them have it. I had thought to have to deny it to them on account of some complications on the copyright, conflicting possibly with my terms with Liveright (he has first option on my next two books), but after some concessions were made I was glad to have them take it.

_The Dial_ has just informed me today that they have taken the main section of Part II, “Powhatan’s Daughter.” This is an Indian “Dance”--and will run about 4 _Dial_ pages. I’ll be glad to have the cash to pay my arrears with Mrs. Turner and the doctor.... I have for some strange reason, heard nothing yet from London regarding the projected British edition of _White Buildings_. What you say about the reactions to it on Cornell Road are both amusing and touching. And when I read about Mrs. Jackson taking a copy to read to the Garrettsville Federated Women’s Clubs I rocked with laughter! The poor dears will never, NEVER know what in hell to make of it all! --/--/

I took enough veronal powders on the Island during those mad last days to convince me that there’s nothing worse. And they didn’t even give me sound sleep! The feelings next day were weird in the extreme. I hope that CA won’t keep them up very long. His attitude and emotions toward life would probably make one gasp if one could get a cross section of them. For a long time he has seemed to me as thorough a specimen of abnormality as I have ever heard of. I’ve given up even trying to imagine how he sees or thinks. I probably shall continue to not write him until he answers some of my former letters--or gives me some sign that he wants to hear from me. I sent him a copy of the recent _New Republic_, but without any note or comment. He probably likes to build up the picture that he’s creeping around in utter disgrace on account of the public “disgrace” his son has made of himself. Well, the thirty thousand people that read _The New Republic_ probably wouldn’t give him much sympathy--regardless of their estimate of my particular value.

That was a happy thought--sending me the picture of the Kinsman house. It is particularly beautiful. -- -- -- -- Every once in awhile I have a dream with Warren scenes in it. Hall Kirkham, Donald Clarke, Katherine Miller, Leonard Bullus, Mrs. P---- with her great heart-shaped bosom--and Mrs. G---- gasping with her goitre--what has become of them all? I wonder. I once wrote a poem with Mrs. P---- as the subject--but it didn’t turn out to be much of anything but a sentimentality, and I guess I threw it away. You are right; I should write some prose. But to date I’ve never been able to think of things with plots to them. Somehow just can’t. When I do, there won’t be any particular difficulty in expressing myself. We’ll see what happens when I get through with this long _Bridge_ poem. Right now I’m too occupied with _it_ to think of other themes. --/--/

The enclosed letter may interest you. I am also enclosing the poem referred to--“O Carib Isle!”--which is one of three of mine which Jolas has translated into French to appear in a French anthology of American poems coming out this Fall. “O Carib Isle!” was written one hellish hot day on the Island--but the _scene_ of the poem and its inspiration was _Cayman_! It is coming out soon in _Poetry_ in this country. It’s not a bad poem. I’m crazy about those Caribbean waters and skies--even if they _are_ hot! There’s a lot of the feeling they give you in the Columbus poem--don’t you think? _Please return the letter._

279: TO ALLEN TATE

_Patterson_ _March 21, 1927_

Dear Allen: --/--/ The B---- casques are 150 gallons full of successful and highly combustible nectar.--I celebrated to the full--returning to my boudoir late Saturday night--and knocking Senora Turner down besides hurling my Corona from the window in a high dudgeon because it wouldn’t write to President Calles automatically in Spanish and express my “untold” admiration for his platform. Bill has taken it to the hospital for long and I fear expensive treatment. --/--/

280: TO ALLEN TATE

_Patterson_ _March 26_

Dear Allen: I hope my letter of yesterday hasn’t involved you in any great efforts so far! Written (and suddenly conceived) in the mood of waiting for the post--it reflected a too sudden flare of enthusiasm. There probably is no chance left to write Roebling’s life--but I would like the initials of the _right_ Furman to address at Macauley’s--and sometime when you are up at the Library you might look in the file index and see if any life of Roebling has yet been written. The man was a genius--and his accomplishment stupendous at “that time.” There might be only slight public interest in his work. Nevertheless, he was a true Spenglerian hero--and his efforts brought tremendous wealth to his family. _They_ might be interested--anyway tho they’d probably want some engineer friend of the family to do it. My “ideas” always have some unlikely catch to them! --/--/

281: TO ALLEN TATE

[_Patterson_] _Sunday, March 27_

Dear Allen: --/--/ As to the _briefer_,[55] I think that you give good reasons for assuming that Aiken wrote it. It might be more satisfying to ascertain this more definitely--but I do not feel that beyond that there is any particular justification for attacking him. He has a perfect right to claim that many of the poems are specious, and call them intellectual fakes, etc. He may quite well believe that he is right on the score. For years, remember, perfectly honest people have seen nothing but insanity in such things as [Blake’s] “The Tiger”--The only pity is what can be done about it. You have Aiken’s sentimentality beautifully defined. Personally the man is rather likeable, but I think he is full of poison. Let people like Hemingway have every convert they want. When he writes something vulnerable and signs it--we can backfire--and publicly--and that’s the only worthwhile way to spend--“we have so little breath to lose.” Thanks for the Davidson review. I certainly appreciate its tone of honesty and sincerity. A copy of _transition_ #1 has reached me--and I’m enthusiastic about it. By all means send Jolas some poems--and why not your article on Marianne Moore? It doesn’t spoil re-sale of ms. over here, you know. _transition_ has some weak contribs, of course, but the majority is respectable. Joyce, Gertrude Stein, Williams, Winters, Laura [Riding], Larbaud, Gide, MacLeish, Soupault, etc. It’s a wedge that ought to be used. Malcolm [Cowley] also ought to send things--and it seems to have a proof-reader!

Aunt Harriet [Monroe] has taken “Cutty Sark”--of all things--and I feel more cheerful. Have you sent her anything recently? Now seems to be the time. --/--/

282: TO ALLEN TATE

_Patterson_ _March 30_,

Dear Allen: Thanks for the _Times_ review. I am looking for _Poetry_ review today--and by the way, Carolyn [Gordon] forgot to enclose the Fletcher letter to _The New Rep._ I’m anxious to know what it was about.

It’s damned interesting to notice how evident it is that your Foreword set the key--at least to a large extent--for most of Gorman’s comments on all six poets reviewed. I consider his comments on _W.B._ quite unexpectedly favorable. What they would have been without your preface is hard to imagine.... I see we have come to the same conclusions about the Aiken debate--and shall leave him in his achin’ void! I enclose a remarkable little surprise from the _London Times_ [Feb. 24, 1927]. Altogether it’s the most satisfying newspaper mention we have had. One wonders who wrote the notice. As for space--they seldom give more to foreign _editions_. Please don’t lose this, as I may want it for quotations--Liveright, I mean.

Altogether, I think this is the last time in our lives to be badly discouraged. The ice is breaking--for both of us, as near as I can see--in several different quarters--and I’m beginning to detect many salutary signals. Apparently our ideas and idiom evokes some response--however slow. And what we do win in the way of intellectual territory is _solid_--it can’t be knocked over by every wave that comes along--as could Masters, Bodenheim, Lindsay, etc. We wouldn’t believe the developments of the next five years if they could be detailed now!

I’m _so_ unhappy without a machine [typewriter]. Hope I get my new one soon. Let us know as much beforehand as possible if (and when) you intend coming. We’re down to the last crust in the pantry--and no conveyance in sight to get any marketing done. --/--/

283: TO HIS FATHER

_Patterson, NY_ _May 7th, 1927_

Dear Father: Your good letter of the third came yesterday, and I have been thinking over your kindness in offering me so pleasant a domicile in the Ohio hills as the tavern plan would seem to present. There is one big bugbear, in my case a permanent one, which you probably didn’t think of; and this in addition to a rather temporary but nevertheless important consideration makes me feel that it would be inadvisable to adopt the role of Ohio innkeeper, especially now.

I am referring to such divers matters as hay fever and “bridges.” I’m sure I’ve mentioned more than once that this particular valley out here--for God knows what reason--does, however, as a proven fact furnish me almost complete immunity from that nightmare affliction. It has so happened that for a number of years you haven’t seen me under the benign influence of Ohioan pollens during the months of June, July, Sept. & October,--so you probably don’t so sharply recollect what a miserable looking critter I become during those twelve or so weeks every year. Cleveland is severe enough, but what those months would mean out in the hayfields--I dread to contemplate. And, wouldn’t those be the most active months of all the year for a hostelry? I’m sure you will see my point and realize as well that I wouldn’t be much good to you, either, at such periods. I used to be asked to remain away from the office--often for several days--during my hayfever period with Corday & Gross. The fact is that I’m unusually susceptible. The altitude and extreme woodedness of these parts are probably what make the difference here.

The other drawback is the urgency of getting my _Bridge_ poem completed by next fall. It will take all the concentration I can give it to accomplish this. And if I came out behind-hand on it I would disappoint Boni & Liveright, my publisher, very much: he wants it to appear by next spring. So you see how things stand.... It would be folly for me to add complications, however fine it would be to live in such a lovely place as you describe and be with you. Get the farm though, I think it’s a fine idea, and you will get a great deal of pleasure and relaxation out of it. One doesn’t lose money often on that kind of real estate, and as for someone good to run it--the range of your acquaintance will probably suggest a number of capable people. --/--/

--/--/ I looked for the May check in today’s letter. Hope you won’t forget it before plunging into the Canadian wilds as I have obligated myself somewhat for oil and other supplies on the pleasant prospect of being solvent. The Tates are definitely decided against coming out here this summer, so that makes it possible for you to comfortably visit me here whenever you feel like it. I wish you would consider it and come!

284: TO HIS MOTHER

_Patterson_ _May 27th, 1927_

Dear Grace: We’ve had four days of continued downpour with such disastrous effects on my garden, newly planted, that I guess I’ll have to put new seeds in. There are several brooks and lakes floating around over the bean and corn rows, and I can almost swear there’s a geyser or so! --/--/

I’m in a considerable stew about money myself. CA’s fine promises have already shown their vacancy. The worst was--that on the strength of his word (I certainly thought he wouldn’t fail the very first month!) I went ahead and put in a wholesale supply of a number of commodities necessary here, and have been worrying ever since how I was going to pay for them. Meanwhile he has kept me so busy writing him successive excuses first for not going with him here, or managing some new tavern of his there, or what-not--ever since, that I’ve had no time to settle down to work or anything! DAMN it all!

This next month _must_ see something accomplished on _The Bridge_ or I shall be completely discouraged. I have done nothing but insignificant parts since last July, no _major_ work has been done since then. And I must have it ready to hand over to my publisher this fall. I’ve got to clear my head of a lot of things, pleasant and unpleasant, and dig.

I don’t know what to tell you about your leg or work or anything. For so much depends on your alimony. If there were something you could work at for awhile, like library work, where you would not have to remain standing for long I should recommend it. But you said you didn’t care for that. I want you to come here and visit me later on in the summer when it gets hot and when there are some nice green things to be had from the garden. Meanwhile, can’t you make ends meet? While you are here your expenses won’t amount to more than ten dollars a week. Please understand me right; you are certainly welcome here at any time. I have the whole house to myself and shall continue to have it--there is a bedroom for you, etc. And the country around here is simply gorgeous. I never saw such profusion of wildflowers. And it is cool here at night throughout the whole year. The best thing in the world for you would be to spend long days of comparative solitude here--away from all the hubbub of life in the city, and in a totally new environment. I think that your nervous feelings are mainly responsible for your swelled leg--disordered nerves generate all kinds of poisons--and you must plan to come here awhile at least some time during the summer. --/--/

If this letter sounds kinda crabby please don’t mind. I’m feeling in fine shape--all too well--but you can’t blame me for having a conscience and getting a little upset at times at the slow progress my work seems to be making! And if I don’t always answer as promptly as you like, you’ll realize, I know, that a letter generally means losing a whole day’s work--I don’t care how slight it is, or to whom, it demands a completely different adjustment and takes one completely out of one’s creative subject matter. --/--/

285: TO YVOR WINTERS

_Patterson, New York_ _May 29th, 1927_

Dear Winters: You need a good drubbing for all your recent easy talk about “the complete man,” the poet and his ethical place in society, etc. I’m afraid I lack the time right now to attempt what I might call a relatively complete excuse for committing myself to the above sentiments--and I am also encumbered by a good deal of sympathy with your viewpoint in general. Wilson’s article was just half-baked enough to make one warm around the collar. It is so damned easy for such as he, born into easy means, graduated from a fashionable university into a critical chair overlooking Washington Square, etc., to sit tight and hatch little squibs of advice to poets not to be so “professional” as he claims they are, as though all the names he has just mentioned had been as suavely nourished as he--as though 4 out of 5 of them hadn’t been damned well forced the major part of their lives to grub at _any_ kind of work they could manage by hook or crook and the fear of hell to secure! Yes, why not step into the State Dept. and join the diplomatic corps for a change! indeed, or some other courtly occupation which would bring you into wide and active contact with world affairs! As a matter of fact I’m all too ready to concede that there are several other careers more engaging to follow than that of poetry. But the circumstances of one’s birth, the conduct of one’s parents, the current economic structure of society and a thousand other local factors have as much or more to say about successions to such occupations, the naive volitions of the poet to the contrary. I agree with you, of course, that the poet should in as large a measure as possible adjust himself to society. But the question always will remain as to how far the conscience is justified in compromising with the age’s demands.

The image of “the complete man” is a good idealistic antidote for the hysteria for specialization that inhabits the modern world. And I strongly second your wish for some definite ethical order. Munson, however, and a number of my other friends, not so long ago, being stricken with the same urge, and feeling that something must be done about it--rushed into the portals of the famous Gurdjieff Institute and have since put themselves through all sorts of Hindu antics, songs, dances, incantations, psychic sessions, etc., so that now, presumably the left lobes of their brains and their right lobes respectively function (M’s favorite word) in perfect unison. I spent hours at the typewriter trying to explain to certain of these urgent people why I could not enthuse about their methods; it was all to no avail, as I was told that the “complete man” had a different logic than mine, and further that there was no way of gaining or understanding this logic without first submitting yourself to the necessary training. I was finally left to roll in the gutter of my ancient predispositions, and suffered to receive a good deal of unnecessary pity for my obstinacy. Some of them, having found a good substitute for their former interest in writing by means of more complete formulas of expression have ceased writing altogether, which is probably just as well. At any rate they have become hermetically sealed souls to my eyesight, and I am really not able to offer judgment.

I am not identifying your advice in any particular way with theirs, for you are certainly logical, so much so that I am inclined to doubt the success of your program even with yourself. Neither do you propose such paradoxical inducements as tea-dansants on Mt. Everest! I am only begging the question, after all, and asking you not to judge me too summarily by the shorthand statements that one has to use as the makeshift for the necessary chapters required for more explicit and final explanations. I am suspect, I fear, for equivocating. But I cannot flatter myself into quite as definite recipes for efficiency as you seem to, one reason being, I suppose, that I’m not so ardent an aspirant toward the rather classical characteristics that you cite as desirable. This is not to say that I don’t “envy” the man who attains them, but rather that I have long since abandoned _that_ field--and I doubt if I was born to achieve (with the particular vision) those richer syntheses of consciousness which we both agree in classing as supreme, at least the attitude of a Shakespeare or a Chaucer is not mine by organic rights, and why try to fool myself that I possess that type of vision when I obviously do not!

I have a certain code of ethics. I have not as yet attempted to reduce it to any exact formula, and if I did I should probably embark on an endless tome with monthly additions and digressions every year. It seems obvious that a certain decent carriage and action is a paramount requirement in any poet, deacon or carpenter. And though I reserve myself the pleasant right to define these standards in a somewhat individual way, and to shout and complain when circumstances against me seem to warrant it, on the other hand I believe myself to be speaking honestly when I say that I have never been able to regret--for long--whatever has happened to me, more especially those decisions which at times have been permitted a free will. (Don’t blame me entirely for bringing down all this simplicity on your head--your letter almost solicits it!) And I am as completely out of sympathy with the familiar whimpering caricature of the artist and his “divine rights” as you seem to be. I am not a Stoic, though I think I could lean more in that direction if I came to (as I may sometime) appreciate more highly the imaginative profits of such a course.

You put me in altogether too good company, you compliment me much too highly for me to offer the least resistance to your judgments on the structure of my work. I think I am quite unworthy of such associates as Marlowe or Valéry--except in some degree, perhaps, “by kind.” If I can avoid the pearly gates long enough I may do better. Your fumigation of the Leonardo legend is a healthy enough reaction, but I don’t think your reasons for doubting his intelligence and scope very potent. I’ve never closely studied the man’s attainments or biography, but your argument is certainly weakly enough sustained on the sole prop of his sex--or lack of such. One doesn’t have to turn to homosexuals to find instances of missing sensibilities. Of course I’m sick of all this talk about b--s and c--s in criticism. It’s obvious that b--s are needed, and that Leonardo had ‘em--at least the records of the Florentine prisons, I’m told, say so. You don’t seem to realize that the whole topic is something of a myth anyway, and is consequently modified in the characteristics of the image by each age in each civilization. Tom Jones, a character for whom I have the utmost affection, represented the model in 18th Century England, at least so far as the stated requirements in your letter would suggest, and for an Anglo-Saxon model he is still pretty good aside from calculus, the Darwinian theory, and a few other mental additions. Incidentally I think Tom Jones (Fielding himself, of course) represents a much more “balanced” attitude toward society and life in general than our friend, Thomas Hardy. Hardy’s profundity is real, but it is voiced in pretty much one monotonous key. I think him perhaps the greatest technician in English verse since Shakespeare. He’s a great poet and a mighty man. But you must be fanatic to feel that he fulfills the necessary “balanced ration” for modern consumption. Not one of his characters is for one moment allowed to express a single joyous passion without a forenote of Hardian doom entering the immediate description. Could Hardy create anything like Falstaff? I think that Yeats would be just as likely--more so.

That’s what I’m getting at.... I don’t care to be credited with too wholesale ambitions, for as I said, I realize my limitations, and have already partially furled my flag. The structural weaknesses which you find in my work are probably quite real, for I could not ask for a more meticulous and sensitive reader. It is my hope, of course, not only to improve my statement but to extend scope and viewpoint as much as possible. But I cannot trust to so methodical and predetermined a method of development, not by any means, as you recommend. Nor can I willingly permit you to preserve the assumption that I am seeking any “shortcuts across the circle,” nor wilfully excluding any experience that seems to me significant. You seem to think that experience is some commodity--that can be sought! One can respond only to certain circumstances; just what the barriers are, and where the boundaries cross can never be completely known. And the surest way to frustrate the possibility of any free realization is, it seems to me, to wilfully direct it. I can’t help it if you think me aimless and irresponsible. But try and see if you get such logical answers always from Nature as you seem to think you will! My “alert blindness” was a stupid ambiguity to use in any definition--but it seems to me you go in for just about as much “blind alertness” with some of your expectations.

If you knew how little of a metaphysician I am in the scholastic sense of the term, you would scarcely attribute such a conscious method to my poems (with regard to that element) as you do. I am an utter ignoramus in that whole subject, have never read Kant, Descartes or other doctors. It’s all an accident so far as my style goes. It happens that the first poem I ever wrote was too dense to be understood, and I now find that I can trust most critics to tell me that all my subsequent efforts have been equally futile. Having heard that one writes in a metaphysical vein the usual critic will immediately close his eyes or stare with utter complacency at the page--assuming that black is black no more and that the poet means anything but what he says. It’s as plain as day that I’m talking about war and aeroplanes in the passage from “F & H” (“corymbulous formations of mechanics,” etc.) quoted by Wilson in _The New Republic_, yet by isolating these lines from the context and combining them suddenly with lines from a totally different poem he has the chance (and uses it) to make me sound like a perfect ninny. If I’d said that they were Fokker planes then maybe the critic would have had to notice the vitality of the metaphor and its pertinence. All this ranting seems somehow necessary.... If I am metaphysical I’m content to continue so. Since I have been “located” in this category by a number of people, I may as well go on alluding to certain (what are also called) metaphysical passages in Donne, Blake, Vaughan, etc., as being of

## particular appeal to me on a basis of common characteristics with what I

like to do in my own poems, however little scientific knowledge of the subject I may have.

I write damned little because I am interested in recording certain sensations, very rigidly chosen, with an eye for what according to my taste and sum of prejudices seems suitable to--or intense enough--for verse. If I were writing in prose, as I sometime shall probably do, I should probably include a much thicker slice of myself--and though it is the height of conceit for me to suggest it, I venture to say that you may have received a somewhat limited idea of my interests and responses by judging me from my poems alone. I suppose that in regard to this limitation of poetic focus one should consult the current position of poetry in relation to other intellectual and political characteristics of the time, including a host of psychological factors which may or may not promote the fullest flowering of a particular medium such as verse. I am not apologizing. Nor am I trying to penetrate beyond a certain point into such labyrinths of conjecture and analysis. It seems unprofitable. One should be somewhat satisfied if one’s work comes to approximate a true record of such moments of “illumination” as are occasionally possible. A sharpening of reality accessible to the poet, to no such degree possible through other mediums. That is one reason above all others--why I shall never expect (or indeed desire) _complete_ sympathy from any writer of such originality as yourself. I may have neglected to say that I admire your general attitude, including your distrust of metaphysical or other patent methods. Watch out, though, that you don’t strangulate yourself with some countermethod of your own!

286: TO HIS FATHER

_Patterson, New York_ _June 9th, 1927_

Dear Father: Your good letter with check came yesterday. I’m certainly relieved to know that I can now meet my obligations and continue _The Bridge_ with a free mind and imagination. You certainly have my enthusiastic gratitude for your loyalty and the general attitude you have toward my work. I venture to predict that you will not be disappointed in the final results. --/--/

287: TO MRS. T. W. SIMPSON

_Patterson, N.Y._ _July 4th, 1927_

Dear Aunt Sally: Sunshine and a certain amount of heat seem to stimulate me to writing, that is, judging by the intensive work I did on the Island with you last summer, and by the returned activity I’ve been having lately. We haven’t had any particularly hot weather, but it’s been warm enough to sweat a little, and that seems to be good for me. As a little evidence of my activities I’m enclosing a new section of _The Bridge_ called “The River.” It comes between “Van Winkle” which I sent you in the last letter and the Indian “Dance” which you are familiar with.

I’m trying in this part of the poem to chart the pioneer experience of our forefathers--and to tell the story backwards, as it were, on the “backs” of hobos. These hobos are simply “psychological ponies” to carry the reader across the country and back to the Mississippi, which you will notice is described as a great River of Time. I also unlatch the door to the pure Indian world which opens out in “The Dance” section, so the reader is gradually led back in time to the pure savage world, while existing at the same time in the present. It has been a very complicated thing to do, and I think I have worked harder and longer on this section of _The Bridge_ than any other.

You’ll find your name in it. I kind of wanted you in this section of the book, and if you don’t have any objections, you’ll stay in the book. For you are my idea of the salt of all pioneers, and our little talks about New Orleans, etc., led me to think of you with the smile of Louisiana. I continue in a kind of “heat”--and I may have another section or so finished up before August. I sure want to get it _all_ done by December.

Well, here it is the Fourth again. I keep thinking of last year at this time. I guess my ears were about healed by that time, but I was still in a blue funk, and I remember how I went to town and after four or five Tropicals came home again and read. We aren’t having much of any celebration up here this year. The Browns are rather broke, and so am I--neither of us able to indulge in either firecrackers or firewater to any extent. Eleanor Fitzgerald is going to give a little levee down at her place, however, and maybe there will be some cider.

I got a card from NY the other day saying that my old jack tar friend, J---- F----, was back from his long trip in European waters, so I just piked in and saw him! He was standing up on the forward deck when I saw him from the pier head, and after taking me all over the ship (a destroyer) we had a very pleasant evening, taking in a movie on hunting in a jungle, full of marvelous tiger close-ups and elephant stampedes. --/--/

I get very little news from Cleveland. But from all I have heard mother and grandma are both fairly well. They have moved into a new apartment, but I guess I mentioned that change as well as the address in my last. I have stopped writing anything whatever to mother about the Island and the Island property, because I don’t get any more return comment from her on that subject than you seem to get. She doesn’t seem to be able to get her mind settled on any matters relating to that problem. I don’t understand why, but I’m sure of this, and I hope you will believe me--she hasn’t anything but gratitude to you for all you have done, and certainly entertains the most friendly sort of sentiments toward you constantly. --/--/

I can’t get over thinking how sweet it was of you to sell the four copies of _White Bldgs_. Did they arrive alright from the publisher? If they didn’t I will see to it that they do. I somehow think of you as being out on the Golfo de Batabano today in a sailboat. Am I right? How I should like to be on the water! The sea’s the only place for me, with my _nose_. I’m just getting a little over my spring attack of hayfever now. And the next session begins before September. --/--/

Wish I could read “The River” out loud to you as I used to do last summer! Too damned bad the hurricane came--I liked my little study room there so much, with the mango tree to look at through the back window.... I achieved some triumphs in that little room.

288: TO HIS FATHER

_Patterson, N.Y._ _August 12th, 1927_

Dear Father: --/--/ Life goes on here pretty evenly and monotonously. I have managed to do a good deal of writing, but not as much of it is on _The Bridge_ as I would have liked to have finished by this time. Difficult is no word to describe the sort of things I’m trying to “put across” in that poem, and I’ve been rather too much on a tension of worry lately about a number of things to give it the requisite concentration. Grace and her present pathetic circumstances is one cause and my own arrangements for the coming fall and winter is another. It’s obvious that I must get a job in town, and I’m casting out lines now even--for it generally takes ages to get anything definite worked up. I’m not asking for reassurances, but I do hope that I can count on your assistance to the extent of the monthly amount until I can get something on my hook--for otherwise I may not have the necessary carfare to ride in when the time comes for the preliminary interview! --/--/

289: TO OTTO H. KAHN

_Patterson, New York_ _September 12th, 1927_

Dear Mr. Kahn: I am taking for granted your continued interest in the progress of _The Bridge_, in which I am still absorbed, and which has reached a stage where its general outline is clearly evident. The Dedication (recently published in _The Dial_) and Part I (now in _The American Caravan_) you have already seen, but as you may not have them presently at hand I am including them in a ms. of the whole, to date, which I am sending you under separate cover.

At the risk of complicating your appreciation of Part II (“Powhatan’s Daughter”), I nevertheless feel impelled to mention a few of my deliberate intentions in this part of the poem, and to give some description of my general method of construction. Powhatan’s daughter, or Pocahontas, is the mythological nature-symbol chosen to represent the physical body of the continent, or the soil. She here takes on much the same role as the traditional Hertha of ancient Teutonic mythology. The five sub-sections of Part II are mainly concerned with a gradual exploration of this “body” whose first possessor was the Indian. It seemed altogether ineffective from the poetic standpoint to approach this material from the purely chronological angle--beginning with, say, the landing of “The Mayflower,” continuing with a résumé of the Revolution through the conquest of the West, etc. One can get that viewpoint in any history primer. What I am after is an assimilation of this experience, a more organic panorama, showing the continuous and living evidence of the past in the inmost vital substance of the present.

Consequently I jump from the monologue of Columbus in “Ave Maria”--right across the four intervening centuries--into the harbor of 20th-century Manhattan. And from that point in time and place I begin to work backward through the pioneer period, always in terms of the present--finally to the very core of the nature-world of the Indian. What I am really handling, you see, is the Myth of America. Thousands of strands have had to be searched for, sorted and interwoven. In a sense I have had to do a great deal of pioneering myself. It has taken a great deal of energy--which has not been so difficult to summon as the necessary patience to wait, simply wait much of the time--until my instincts assured me that I had assembled my materials in proper order for a final welding into their natural form. For each section of the entire poem has presented its own unique problem of form, not alone in relation to the materials embodied within its separate confines, but also in relation to the other parts, _in series_, of the major design of the entire poem. Each is a separate canvas, as it were, yet none yields its entire significance when seen apart from the others. One might take the Sistine Chapel as an analogy. It might be better to read the following notes _after_ rather than _before_ your reading of the ms. They are not necessary for an understanding of the poem, but I think they may prove interesting to you as a commentary on my architectural method.

1. “The Harbor Dawn”:

Here the movement of the verse is in considerable contrast to that of the “Ave Maria,” with its sea-swell crescendo and the climacteric vision of Columbus. This legato, in which images blur as objects only half apprehended on the border of sleep and consciousness, makes an admirable transition between the intervening centuries.

The love-motif (in italics) carries along a symbolism of the life and ages of man (here the sowing of the seed) which is further developed in each of the subsequent sections of “Powhatan’s Daughter,” though it is never particularly stressed. In 2 (“Van Winkle”) it is Childhood; in 3 it is Youth; in 4, Manhood; in 5 it is Age. This motif is interwoven and tends to be implicit in the imagery rather than anywhere stressed.

2. “Van Winkle”:

The protagonist has left the room with its harbor sounds, and is walking to the subway. The rhythm is quickened; it is a transition between sleep and the immanent tasks of the day. Space is filled with the music of a hand organ and fresh sunlight, and one has the impression of the whole continent--from Atlantic to Pacific--freshly arisen and moving. The walk to the subway arouses reminiscences of childhood, also the “childhood” of the continental conquest, viz., the conquistadores, Priscilla, Capt. John Smith, etc. These parallelisms unite in the figure of Rip Van Winkle who finally becomes identified with the protagonist, as you will notice, and who really boards the subway with the reader. He becomes the “guardian angel” of the journey into the past.

3. “The River”:

The subway is simply a figurative, psychological “vehicle” for transporting the reader to the Middle West. He lands on the railroad tracks in the company of several tramps in the twilight. The extravagance of the first twenty-three lines of this section is an intentional burlesque on the cultural confusion of the present--a great conglomeration of noises analogous to the strident impression of a fast express rushing by. The rhythm is jazz.

Thenceforward the rhythm settles down to a steady pedestrian gait, like that of wanderers plodding along. My tramps are psychological vehicles, also. Their wanderings as you will notice, carry the reader into interior after interior, finally to the great River. They are the left-overs of the pioneers in at least this respect--that their wanderings carry the reader through an experience parallel to that of Boone and others. I think [I] have caught some of the essential spirit of the Great Valley here, and in the process have approached the primal world of the Indian, which emerges with a full orchestra in the succeeding dance.

5.[4] “The Dance”:

Here one is on the pure mythical and smoky soil at last! Not only do I describe the conflict between the two races in this dance--I also become identified with the Indian and his world before it is over, which is the only method possible of every really possessing the Indian and his world as a cultural factor. I think I really succeed in getting under the skin of this glorious and dying animal, in terms of expression, in symbols, which he himself would comprehend. Pocahontas (the continent) is the common basis of our meeting, she survives the extinction of the Indian, who finally, after being assumed into the elements of nature (as he understood them), persists only as a kind of “eye” in the sky, or as a star that hangs between day and night--“the twilight’s dim perpetual throne.”

6.[5] “Indiana”:

I regret that this section is not completed as yet. It will be the monologue of an Indiana farmer; time, about 1860. He has failed in the gold-rush and is returned to till the soil. His monologue is a farewell to his son, who is leaving for a life on the sea. It is a lyrical summary of the period of conquest, and his wife, the mother who died on the way back from the gold-rush, is alluded to in a way which implies her succession to the nature-symbolism of Pocahontas. I have this section well-nigh done, but there is no use including [it] in the present ms. without the final words.

The next section, “Cutty Sark,” is a phantasy on the period of the whalers and clipper ships. It also starts in the present and “progresses backwards.” The form of the poem may seem erratic, but it is meant to present the hallucinations incident to rum-drinking in a South Street dive, as well as the lurch of a boat in heavy seas, etc. So I allow myself something of the same freedom which E. E. Cummings often uses.

“Cutty Sark” is built on the plan of a _fugue_. Two “voices”--that of the world of Time, and that of the world of Eternity--are interwoven in the action. The Atlantis theme (that of Eternity) is the transmuted voice of the nickel-slot pianola, and this voice alternates with that of the derelict sailor and the description of the action. The airy regatta of phantom clipper ships seen from Brooklyn Bridge on the way home is quite effective, I think. It was a pleasure to use historical names for these lovely ghosts. Music still haunts their names long after the wind has left their sails.

“Cape Hatteras,” which follows, is unfinished. It will be a kind of ode to Whitman. I am working as much as possible on it now. It presents very formidable problems, as, indeed, all the sections have. I am really writing an epic of the modern consciousness, and indescribably complicated factors have to be resolved and blended.... I don’t wish to tire you [with] too extended an analysis of my work, and so shall leave the other completed sections to explain themselves. In the ms., where the remaining incompleted sections occur, I am including a rough synopsis of their respective themes, however.

The range of _The Bridge_ has been called colossal by more than one critic who has seen the ms. And though I have found the subject to be vaster than I had at first realized, I am still highly confident of its final articulation into a continuous and eloquent span. Already there are evident signs of recognition: the following magazines have taken various sections:

“Dedication: To Brooklyn Bridge” _The Dial_ “Ave Maria” _The American Caravan_ “The Harbor Dawn” _transition_ (Paris) “Van Winkle” “ “The River” _The Virginia Quarterly_ “The Dance” _The Dial_ “Cutty Sark” _Poetry_ (Chicago) “Three Songs” _The Calendar_ (London) “The Tunnel” _The Criterion_ (London)

(I have been especially gratified by the reception accorded me by _The Criterion_, whose director, Mr. T. S. Eliot, is representative of the most exacting literary standards of our times.)

For some time past I have been seeking employment in New York, but without success so far. It’s the usual problem of mechanical prejudices that I’ve already grown grey in trying to deal with. But all the more difficult now, since the only references I can give for the last two years are my own typewriter and a collection of poems. I am, as you will probably recall, at least avowedly--a perfectly good advertising writer. I am wondering if you would possibly give me some recommendation to the publicity department of The Metropolitan Opera Company, where I am certain of making myself useful. I was in New York two days last week, trying to secure employment as a waiter on one of the American lines. I found that I needed something like a diploma from Annapolis before hoping for an interview. A few years ago I registered with the Munson Line with reference to my qualifications for a particular position which every ship includes--that of “ship’s writer,” or “deck yeoman”; but I always found that such jobs were dispensed to acquaintances of the captain or to office workers, and that my references were never taken from the file. I am not particular what I do, however, so long as there is reasonable chance of my doing it well, and any recommendation you might care to offer in any practical direction whatever will be most welcome. My present worried state of mind practically forbids any progress on _The Bridge_, the chances for which are considerably better under even greatly limited time conditions.

I am still assured of a definite inheritance, previously mentioned in my first letter to you; and if you care to consider advancing me, say 800 or 1,000 dollars, on the same basis of insurance security as your previous assistance I should be glad to come into New York and talk it over. There is no monetary standard of evaluation for works of art, I know, but I cannot help feeling that a great poem may well be worth at least the expenditure necessary for merely the scenery and costumes of many a flashy and ephemeral play, or for a motor car. _The Aeneid_ was not written in two years--nor in four, and in more than one sense I feel justified in comparing the historic and cultural scope of _The Bridge_ to this great work. It is at least a symphony with an epic theme, and a work of considerable profundity and inspiration. Even with the torturing heat of my sojourn in Cuba I was able to work faster than before or since then, in America. The “foreign-ness” of my surroundings stimulated me to the realization of natively American materials and viewpoints in myself not hitherto suspected, and in one month I was able to do more work than I had done in the three previous years. If I could work in Mexico or Mallorca this winter I could have _The Bridge_ finished by next spring. But that is a speculation which depends entirely on your interest.

Please pardon the inordinate length of this letter. I shall, of course, hope to hear from you regarding your impressions of the poem as it now stands. Along with the ms., I am enclosing three critical articles which may interest you somewhat.

290: TO SAMUEL LOVEMAN

_Patterson, N.Y._ _Sept. 18th, ’27_

Dear Sam: I was glad to hear from you. I had been totally at a loss to explain the basis of your resentment, and still am not quite clear on the subject--but as you say that it is now removed perhaps nothing is gained by probing old wounds and asking you what exactly it was all about. Certainly, if I borrowed some money from you and have forgotten to return it I shall have deserved the full measure of disapproval. Memory plays tricks with all of us at times, and mine is no more faithful to me than it ought to be. --/--/

291: TO HIS FATHER

_Brooklyn, N.Y._ _October 11th, 1927_

Dear Father: I have just had an interview with Otto Kahn, following his reading of the manuscript of _The Bridge_. Kahn is very enthusiastic about what I have accomplished and is most anxious that I keep on with the composition without interruption until it is finished. I told him about your willingness to extend me the assistance of the monthly allowance of $50 and he has come forward with an additional $300 which will provide me with necessary boat fare to Martinique for the winter. That is a much pleasanter island than the Isle of Pines and I will also be able to learn French and Spanish there, which will make it possible for me to earn my living up here later by translation work.

I know enough about Martinique from people who have recently been there to be sure that the allowance you have been giving me will cover my living costs there. The winter season will insure me against any of the excessive heat that I experienced on the Isle of Pines and I shall be able to get much more accomplished.

I shall probably sail on the 20th (Furness-Bermuda Line) and arrive about 8 days later. Am busy now seeing about my passport. Please let me hear from you soon.

292: TO ---- AND ----

[_Brooklyn_] _Nov. 16, 27_

Dear ---- and ----: Traintime approaches, but I hope life does not continue to grow accordingly more hectic, as has been the rule so far! Several times I have all but lost my ticket, presented several days ago. Notably Tues. night in jail....

After a riotous competition with Cummings and Anne [Cummings] in which (I don’t _know_ but I’m sure) I won the cocktail contest I found myself in the Clark St. station along about 3 o’clock playing with somebody’s lost airedale. The cop who rushed at me, asking me what I was doing is reported to have been answered by “why the hell do you want to know?!!!” in a loud tone of voice, whereat I was yanked into a taxi and was sped to the station (slyly and en route tossing all evidence such as billets doux, dangerous addresses, etc., out the window) and the next I knew the door crashed shut and I found myself behind the bars. I imitated Chaliapin fairly well until dawn leaked in, or rather such limited evidences of same as six o’clock whistles and the postulated press of dirty feet to early coffee stands.

I was good and mad. Made an impassioned speech to a crowded court room, and was released at 10 o’clock without even a fine. Beer with Cummings in the afternoon which was almost better than evening before, as C’s hyperbole is even more amusing than one’s conduct, especially when he undertakes a description of what you don’t remember. Anyhow, I never had so much fun jounced into 24 hours before, and if I had my way would take both C’gs and Anne along with me to heaven when I go. --/--/

293: TO CHARLOTTE AND RICHARD RYCHTARIK

_Altadena, Cal[ifornia]_ _Nov. 29th, ’27_

Dear Charlotte & Ricardo: --/--/ I have just been here a week and a day, having left NY on the 17th in company with my new “boss,” his valet, chauffeur and 3 dogs. I am more-or-less his secretary and companion, but I’m treated more as a guest and have practically all of my time to myself. Boss is a semi-invalid, a wealthy Wall Street broker who travels most of the time, and who has been sent out here for six months rest by his doctors. Lord! I never lived in _this_ style before! It’s almost oppressive! But maybe I’ll get used to it in time....

As I said, about all I have to do is to be agreeable, talk about Aristotle, Einstein, T. S. Eliot, Gertrude Stein, etc., etc., (in other words, my boss is really a very cultured man and didn’t want to take too much of a chance on running into a vacuum as regards companionship out here). He is also interested in my writing, and it is with some regard to helping me with my work that he has taken me out here. We’re living in an amazing house, rented for the season from the president of the American Express Company. It is all bath rooms and bad furniture--but such bath rooms! And there is a huge patio in the center, on which all the rooms open--very much the Spanish style of course.

It all came about as a sudden surprise to me. I was in Patterson only about two weeks after I left Cleveland. Came into New York and found a job in a little book shop almost immediately. I thought I was lucky until the bad lighting of the store (it was a black little hole!) got to working on my eyes. But I’d been there less than two weeks when Miss Fitzgerald of the Provincetown Theatre told me about this opportunity. As she is a very good friend of my boss her recommendation was seriously considered, and after a few preliminary “try-outs” dining, riding in the park, etc., I was formally invited. So here I am! --/--/

My boss has a curiosity about meeting some of the movie people--and later on, when he gets to feeling better, expects to do some entertaining. I’m hoping that Charlie Chaplin will remember my evening with him and Frank in NY and possibly be friendly. Then there’s an old “flame” of mine from Cleveland, Alice Calhoun, who has since become a movie queen who lives out here. My boss is only 34, a bachelor, and has a furious love of excitement, so there may be some amusing developments. But at present, it’s part of my “task” to keep him quiet on a more-or-less intellectual and sedentary diet. Well, well--not at all! Where will I be next? Tahiti? It’s not so far from here! -- -- -- --

294: TO SLATER BROWN

_Santa Monica, California_ _Monday--Dec. 19_

Dear Bill: Yes, one can hear the sea seven flights below--and I’ve been walking on the beach most of the day. The boss, finding that I didn’t get along too well with some of his Hollywood week-end guests, advised my taking a vacation, and with means happily provided here I am until tomorrow night. Wall Street seems to carry a slight oppression and madness with it wherever it “extends.” It has been good to come over here where places are rather deserted of crowds and hear the gulls cry overhead and watch the solemn pelicans eye you awhile--and then haul up their legs and sprawl into the air.

Viennese cooking with caviar and port every night for dinner is playing hell with my waistline--and I sleep as never before, excepting the cradle. One can’t seem to wake up out here without the spur of scotch or gin. There has been plenty of that--in fact last Saturday night I danced the “Gotzottski” right on Main St. Los Angeles, while -- -- -- --, an aviator from Riverside and a Kentuckian--danced the Highland Fling--or as good an imitation of it as he could manage. This after having invaded the Biltmore ballroom and dancing with fair ladies of the haute mondaine. Albeit--and having got our waiter drunk and having left in high dudgeon--I don’t think I’ll dare attend that[?] supper club again.

After a good deal of fair “sailing” since arriving here--I am now convinced that “flying” is even better. Right now however--and until next weekend--I am “all fives” on the ground and life can run as high as it wants to over in our villa without my batting an eye. -/-/

God! you never know who you’re meeting out here.... First there was a snappy collegiate hanging around the studios, who turned out to know Allen [Tate]--and then today on the beach a mile below here, at Venice, I found myself talking literature, Spengler, Kant, Descartes and Aquinas--to say nothing of Charles Maurras and Henri Massis--to a Bostonian of French descent who knows Stewart Mitchell, and especially his Aunt, very well! He turned out to be one of the best scholars I’ve ever met--a great reactionary toward the same kind classicism that Eliot and Lewis are fostering in England. I had him spotted as a Romanist in less than five minutes--but he wouldn’t admit until we parted. The dialectic we had was more rousing than the aforesaid tonic combustions of alcohol, I admit....

Winters and wife will be here visiting relatives during Christmas week--and I look forward to that as a real event. Really, it’s terribly dulling having so many servants around, so much food, so much tiptoeing, and ceremony. --/--/ The present “star” was once “Ariel” in _The Tempest_--and though she still makes the welkin ring I fear her voice will never do it again. She has adopted the pronoun “we” to signalize her slightest thought, whim or act--and her conceit was so wounded on spying my “Chaplinesque” during the course of her drunken and exclamatory rampage through _Edificios Blancos_--that she nearly passed out--and insisted on the spot that I make instant amends by composing a sonnet to her superb P.A. (Hollywood shorthand for physical attraction) as displayed in her erstwhile success in _Peter Pan_. Hence here I am by the sea--and mightily pleased--until the storm subsides....

My Spanish quotation from Slater Brown reminds me that I now have Joyce’s _Arista Adoloscente_--a translation sent me by Marichalar who wrote a very interesting introduction.[56] He was greatly interested in _The [American] Caravan_ and is going to review it in the _Revista de Occidente_. I must get started at my Spanish again. Richards’ _Principles of Literary Criticism_ is a _great_ book. One of the few--perhaps the only one in English excepting stray remarks by Coleridge--that get to bed rock. Weston’s book, _From Ritual to Romance_, was quite fascinating--but Winters claims that scholars regard half her data and deductions as imaginative bunk. Did I rave[?] to you about Elizabeth Madox Roberts’ new book--_My Heart and Flesh_--before! Anyway, I hope you’ll read it. I think it a great performance. --/--/

I’m glad you liked the Breughel book. Its humor really belonged to you, if you get what I mean, and you therefore were more capable of “owning” it than anyone I ever knew. If you were dead and gone I think it would have been a better commemoration than flowers--so take good care of it--and hand it on to your grandchildren--for you never can tell--you may have them, you know!

1928

295: TO PEGGY BAIRD AND MALCOLM COWLEY

[_California_] _Jan. 31, ’28_

Dear Peggy & Mal: Writing is next to impossible--what with the purling of fountains, the drawling of mockingbirds, the roaring of surf, the blazing of movie stars, the barking of dogs, the midnight shakings of geraniums, the cruising of warships, etc., etc., not to mention the dictates of the Censor, whose absence will be welcome sometime, I hope, when we get together again at the Dutchman’s or some rehabilitated Punch Palace where I’ll at least be able to offer some new words to the (albeit) ancient tunes! My philosophic moments are few, but when they do occur it is almost always possible to turn on the radio and immediately expose my soul to the rasping persuasions of Aimee McPherson, eternally ranting and evangelizing to packed houses at the great palm-flanked arena of Angelus Temple. She broadcasts the news that people are frequently carried out in pieces, arms broken, heads smashed in the stampede for salvation which she almost nightly stages, thereby emphasizing the need of arriving early (so as to save one’s body as well) and thereupon lifts her voice into a perfectly convulsing chant, coaxing and cuddlingly coy about “Come, all ye--” (You can catch her in it on the Victor) the chorus of which would make a deacon’s bishopric leap crimson and triumphant from the grave.... I haven’t seen her, but they say she has beautiful long, red, wavy tresses....

The peculiar mixtures of piety and utter abandon in this welter of cults, ages, occupations, etc., out here make it a good deal like Bedlam. Retired schoolmarms from Iowa, Kansas and all the corn-and-wheat belt along with millions of hobbling Methuselahs, alfalfa-fringed and querulous, side by side with crowds of ambitious but none-too-successful strumpets of moviedom, quite good to look at, and then hordes of rather nondescript people who seem just bound from nowhere into nothing--one can’t explain either the motives nor means of their existence. One can generally “place” people to some extent; but out here it’s mostly nix. One begins to feel a little unreal as a consequence of this--and so much more, like the perfect labyrinth of “villas”--some pseudo-Spanish, some a la Maya (the colour of stale mayonnaise), others Egyptian with a simply irresistible amphora perched on the terrace, and some vaguely Chink. Our house, a large _U_ with patio and fountain, rambles all over the place, and is almost vertical to the observatory on Mt. Wilson. Plenty of roses, camellias, oleanders, acacias, etc., as well as a good wine-cellar. I’ve just been interrupted by the butler bringing in a makeshift for champagne, composed of cardbonated apple-juice with a sling of gin; so all attempts at epistolary consecutivety are hereby and henceforth abandoned! No, I’d better give up--I was just about to say something about the pool rooms down at San Pedro where the battle fleet rides close at anchor. Gradually I’m becoming acquainted with all the brands of bootleg that the Westcoast offers. I haven’t been blinded by anything yet but beauty and sunshine, however; but I did have to get glasses to shield me from the violet rays, which are terribly strong out here. I’d better stop, I guess.

296: TO WALDO FRANK

_Altadena, Cal._ _February 1, 1928_

Dear Waldo: I thought the enclosed poems might interest you as souvenirs of our tropical sojourn together. The quarry and the road leading to it, the idiot boy, etc., and the “Overheard”[57] which mocks the manner of the typical American settler’s comments on the natives.... There is another poem, “The Air Plant,” properly belonging to this series, which ought to be out soon in _The Dial_. And there was another,“O Carib Isle!,” published earlier in _transition_, which also belongs. In “The Hour”[58] I attempted to secure the ground-rhythm of the hurricane.

You have been silent for so long that I cannot but doubt your interest in hearing from me. Yet I so often think of you that I have risked an intrusion regardless. --/--/

297: TO SAMUEL LOVEMAN

_Altadena, Cal._ _5th Feb., 28_

Dear Sam: --/--/ First of all: my “boss” has never once failed to play the admirable host, and what is more, I continue to find him at all times most agreeable and entertaining. --/--/

I see my mother on the average of twice a week. She is located so far away that it takes a good two hours to reach her, so it nearly always means devoting practically a whole day to the occasion. My grandmother is better off than at any time for the last three years--the climate has done wonders. They have a small cottage and would be quite comfortable were they more satisfied with the general temper of the woman they brought out here to live with them. I’m not capable of judging the situation very accurately, but there’s been a good deal of fretting and umbrage, very discouraging indeed to me at times. Wise has practically asked me to accompany him to Europe in the Spring, but their situation may deny me that opportunity. Mother asked immediately about you. She would rejoice at any word from you whatever.

We have met some movie actors, attended some studio screenings, etc. And I have had a fair amount of swimming and tennis. (The beaches--Long Beach, Venice, Santa Monica--are really a delight, and I have spent whole days watching the gulls, sandpipers, pelicans in their manoeuvres). But I am especially enjoying the wealth of reading and music around the house. Wise is buying all the albums of symphonies, quintettes, concertos and what-not on the Victor list. So I’m living on intimate terms for the first time with Brahms and Beethoven--the two most exciting of all to me.

_The Grandmothers_, I agree with you, is damned fine, although I think it weakens towards the last; Wescott seems to lose his grip. Then I’ve immensely enjoyed the trans. of Proust’s _Sodome et Gomorrhe_, as well as Gide’s _The Counterfeiters_. I also am now introduced to Heathcliff (whom I have put beside Ahab) thanks to your mention of _Wuthering Hts_. And by the way, I’m terribly excited about the poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Winters loaned me his copy recently (I had never read any of Hopkins before) and I have discovered that I am not as original in some of my stylisms as I had thought I was. Winters tells me that the book (Oxford edition, edited by Robert Bridges) is now out of print. I’m simply wild to secure a copy--and am wondering if you could locate me anything around New York. I’m willing to pay anything up to $10.00. Failing this, I think I shall go to work and type out the whole volume, for I’ve never been quite so enthusiastic about any modern before. --/--/

298: TO SLATER BROWN

[_California_] _2/22/28_

Dear Bill: --/--/ A paean from Venusberg! Oy-oy-oy! I have just had my ninth snifter of Scotch. O shades of Bert Savoy! They say he had a glass eye as the result of some midnight with a mariner. But I have had no such dire results as yet. Oh BOY! Try to imagine the streets constantly as they were during that famous aggregation last May in Manhattan! And more, for they are at home here, these western argosies, at roadstead far and near--and such a throng of pulchritude and friendliness as would make your “hair” stand on end. That’s been the way of all flesh with me.... And wine and music and such nights--WHOOPS!!!!!!!

Besides which I have met the Circe of them all--a movie actor who has them dancing naked, twenty at a time, around the banquet table. O André Gide! no Paris ever yielded such as this--away with all your counterfeiters! Just walk down Hollywood Boulevard some day--if you must have something _out_ of uniform. Here are little fairies who can quote Rimbaud before they are 18--and here are women who must have the tiniest fay to tickle them the one and only way! You ought to see B---- C---- shake her tits--and cry _apples_ for a bite!

What can I write about? Yes, I am reading Wyndham Lewis’ _Time and Western Man_, Fernandez’ insufferable _Messages_ and all the other stuff. But I would rather do as I did yesterday--after a night of wine--wake up at dawn and dip into _The Tempest_, that crown of all the Western World. What have I to say after that event. I wonder.??? --/--/ [Act V, scene I, lines 64-68] Maybe with me someday, as good Prospero says. Perhaps--as Ceres says in the same play----/--/ [Act IV, scene I, lines 114-17] But you will tear this up--and keep me true, Bill. And if I come back to you and to the dear hills of Connecticut again, as I hope to, I shall have a cargo for your ears. --/--/

299: TO WALDO FRANK

_Hollywood, Calif._ _4th March 1928_

Dear Waldo: The date on your generous and welcome letter is an accusation. It is true that I haven’t lacked time to answer it, long since,--but the desire to give you something more than a muddled confusion of cross purposes--and my confidence in your preference for reason and order--have detained me, though I am still by no means settled in my present environment nor do I seem any too happily disposed. But at least I have decided on a few details, for better or worse....

My association with Mr. Wise, who brought me out here as private secretary, terminated about two weeks ago. Although it was unsatisfactory (my duties were extremely vague and I was neither servant nor guest) I might have stuck it out until May (when Wise returns to NY) had I felt justified in leaving my mother and grandmother alone out here in their present predicament. However, the experience of the last two years has taught me the futility of any retreat from what I, after all, must regard as my immediate responsibilities. The further I might go from the actual “scene” of operations the more obsessed I tend to become by the inert idea. So I am remaining here with the hope of securing some “literary” connection with the movies which will net me enough to be of some substantial help. When all this is over--someday--I may be able to regain the indispensable detachment from immediate concerns that such a work as my _Bridge_ demands. Needless to say, I find Hollywood far from tempting in any way--but my people had moved here before I arrived, and as my grandmother is unable to move more than a few steps from her bed she is hardly in the tourist class.

Your letter was as usual--bracing! You probably don’t realize it, but it had been a year since I had heard anything from you excepting a postcard. I was beginning to fear that something spurious had been repeated to you as an emanation of mine, for NY is so full of fabrications of all kinds--so, to know better was a welcome relief, also! I can well appreciate the many preoccupations which beset and hindered you. The marvel to me is the glamor and precision of your new work; I refer to the installments of it in _The N.R._ Some of my copies were lost when I was moving--and my readings were frequently interrupted and only partially realized--but the luminous impulse and essential direction I think I have apprehended. It is something more than mere analysis. Like most of your work it postulates a “Way.” I have tried reading Fernandez’ _Messages_ and Lewis’ _Time and Western Man_ without being able to wholly approve a single page of either, though Fernandez is more profound. But his style (or the translator’s) is abominable as compared to L.’s direct though misdirected thrusts. But L. just goes round in a desolate circle of elaborations--I can’t see anything creative in his offering. Beginning with Spengler and Wells, this age seems too typically encyclopaedic. This may assist the artist in time--by erecting some kind of logos, or system of contact between the insulated departments of highly specialized knowledge and enquiry which characterize the times--God knows, some kind of substantial synthesis of opinion is needed before I can feel confident in writing about anything but my shoestrings.... These Godless days! I wonder if you suffer as much as I do. At least you have the education and training to hold the scalpel.

If I can’t send you a new poem of my own I can at least send you a better new-old one [“Pied Beauty”] (for I don’t think you have yet read him) by Gerard Manley Hopkins (Oxford) now out of print--a Victorian, posthumously printed, whose work has been a revelation to me. --/--/

300: TO ---- AND ----

_Hollywood, Calif_ _March 27th ’28_

Dear ---- and ----: As I don’t seem to get anything more out of you by means of postcards, telegrams, and such-like shorthand signals I guess it’s up to me to get busy on the typewriter and pay you your due torture--though I’ll try and not inflict such piercing shrieks on you again, such as my last epistle! When I get to feeling like that again I’ll begin on Pres. Calles first--and that will probably save you a good deal of amazement and conjecture.

This time the news is more diverse.... Life is nothing if not exciting wherever ---- happens to land, if only for a few hours. It took him (or his presence) to arrange the most harrowing weekend yet, and I’m only praying that he’s still alive, for when I left him in his berth in the “glory-hole” of the “California” last Sat. night he looked as though he were nearing the Pearly Gates. We were held up and beaten by a gang in San Pedro.... The story is complicated and lengthy--and ---- will probably give you the full version or as much as he can remember when he sees you.

I left Wise’s ménage a week ago today. However, as ---- somehow failed to get my ship letter announcing same and the hour at which I would meet him--he flew right up to Altadena, leaving me to wait a _full 8 hours_ by the gangway before I saw my dear “Goldy-locks.” By that time I had about finished a half pint of alcohol which I had brought for our mutual edification, and he had completely emptied a quart of Bacardi, also originally intended as a mutual benison.

_Scene Two._ Speakeasy joint with booths. Many bottles of dubious gin and whiskey--with much “skoling”--and ---- flashing a fat pay roll--and treating three or four still more dubious “merry andrews” who had invited themselves to our noisy nook. It being midnight, all ordered out.

_Scene Three._ A street, or rather, several streets. Our “guests” very insistent on taking a hotel room in which to finish the fire water. ---- & I both reeling but refractory. I finally noticed ---- being spirited away by three of them, while it was evident that I, who had been more emphatic in my wishes, was being guarded by two others. I broke away--and had just caught up to ---- who was being put around a dark corner--when all five started slugging us. I put up quite a fight, but neither of us were in much condition. They all beat it as a car turned on a nearby corner. Both of us robbed of everything, and ---- practically unconscious. After reporting at police headquarters I don’t know how I would have got ---- back to his ship without the help of a sailor friend of mine whom I had run into earlier in the evening while waiting for ----. We roused several of his shipmates--and I’m only hoping that his bumps and bruises haven’t been any more fatal than mine. I finally had to finish the night in a ward of the Salvation Army Hotel, and it was five o’clock Sunday before I got enough money to get back to Hollywood. On his way back from Frisco I’m hoping to see ---- again--but not in Pedro! Probably nothing of this had better be mentioned to the ----’s.... I don’t mind my losses, but I feel terribly about ----’s luck. He always seems to get the hardest end of things.

As you can see, we didn’t get much time for any gossip. But he did say that you had the most beautiful baby in the world! Wish I could see him! Besides which I get terribly homesick out here, but might as well not indulge myself in that emotion. My resignation from the Wise entourage was encouraged by a number of dissatisfactions, but as much as anything by the recognition of the fact that I must settle here for a while at least, and do whatever I can to help my mother during her attendance on grandmother. The two of them being completely alone out here, and none too well provided for, I couldn’t get a good night’s sleep in Conn. So I might as well relinquish my own wishes for awhile and try and earn some cash. Maybe scenario writing eventually. Meanwhile there are mechanical jobs such as title-writing, gag-writing, “continuity” writing, etc. I just had an interview with “Papa” Kahn this morning who is out here for a couple of weeks. He promises to help me connect with Lasky, Paramount, Wm. Fox, etc. At least I have “broken in” the movies in one way, for Pathe Newsreel or some such torture swooped down on us while we were talking in the patio of The Ambassador, and for all I know we may be thrown upon the screen together all the way from Danbury to Hong-Kong and Mozambique! I’m wearing hornrims now--so don’t be shocked.

As for my late employer--the situation became too strained to be continued. --/--/ Such circumstances don’t promote a very lively morale--and it’s probably better for me to lose a little of the attendant avoirdupois in favor of a more exhilarating outlook. But we are still friends so far as I know.

Every week I scour the pages of _The New Rep._, _Nation_, and _Herald-Tribune_ for the names of our “rising generation.” Have seen nothing by Malcolm for some time. Does this corroborate the news I got from Mrs. T[urner] some weeks ago that Malcolm has been laid up? Much by Robert Penn Warren, but little by his friend Tate, excepting a recent review of Winters which I thought excellent. Slater Brown, I long since neglected to mention, scored keenly in tussle with the milksop critic of Estlin C’gs in the Canby Crap Can. “The point was well taken,” as my grandmother would say. And how is C’gs? for I think you told me he was pretty hard up. Mitchell seems to be bursting with new energy by the evidence in recent numbers of _The Dial_. And last, but not least in this litry column, how goes it with your translations--and how is ----? No, you’re not the last, either! I must say that I haven’t yet been able to decipher that defense of me by Laura [Riding], published in _Transition_ along with Kay Boyle’s explosive boil. I wrote her promptly, thanking her for her sentiments, but questioning her style. Her latest book announced by Jonathan Cape, is _Anarchy Is Not Enough_--and so she seems to be maintaining her consistency. Judging by the time she has already taken before answering me, I judge that I’m off her correspondence list. I shouldn’t have been so rude had I thought her tender-hearted. But I can’t believe that anarchy is enough--or Gertrude Stein, either. --/--/

301: TO ISIDOR SCHNEIDER

_Hollywood, Calif_ _March 28th, 1928_

Dear Isidor: --/--/ I often wish I had the scientific and metaphysical training to appreciate and judge all these Whiteheads, Bradleys, Fernandez, Wyndham Lewis-es, etc., who keep drumming up new encyclopedias of the Future, Fate, etc. And now Waldo has written another, especially devoted to America. I read them, puzzle and ponder as best I’m able, but Spengler was about the only one who flattered my capacities to the least extent. They are all so formidable, bristling with allusions, statistics, threats and tremors, trumpets and outcries on the least splitting of a hair which I can’t locate through the labyrinth of abstractions. I’m afraid I’d better give up trying to make any headway in their directions--or else relinquish all attempts to do any writing myself. For about all they really net me is a constant paralysis and distraction. I think that this unmitigated concern with the Future is one of the most discouraging symptoms of the chaos of our age, however worthy the ethical concerns may be. It seems as though the imagination had ceased all attempts at any creative activity--and had become simply a great bulging eye ogling the foetus of the next century.... I find nothing in Blake that seems outdated, and for him the present was always eternity. This is putting it crudely; but when I get some of these points a little more definitely arranged then maybe I’ll have more nerve to continue my efforts on _The Bridge_. The struggle on paper is hard enough, but certain recent antecedent deliberations are proving even more stubborn.

I enjoyed your historical notes and orientalia. You ought to hear Aimee [McPherson] carry on over the radio to get the full blast of her personality. D. Parker’s review of her autobiography (_N. Yorker_) was amusing I thought. She’s a great pious Dame Quickly--and they almost caught her with her shoes off in that “kidnapping” episode. Coming from the ridiculous to the sublime--let me thank you for the Isadora! That book has a certain dignity, despite many lapses, which I expected from her; a very sad but beautiful book. Her career would be impossible now since the War. Other reading has included the cold glitter of Gide’s _Counterfeiters_ and the tremendous mosaic of Proust’s _Cities of the Plain_. I never got one-third through all the books that Wise continually ordered. But then, I’m always taking two steps backward to Queen Bess’s alleys for every one step ahead. --/--/

302: TO GORHAM MUNSON

_Hollywood, Calif._ _April 17th ’28_

Dear Gorham: I certainly feel guilty--and the evidence of your cordiality in sending me your _Destinations_ has not made me feel any more exemplary--for not having written you before. However you are exacting in the level of response which you expect from your friends, and in as much as I have been involved in a general state of doldrums so far as any creative progress has been concerned for well nigh every moment since I left NY, I haven’t felt like burdening you with the mere minutiae of personal trifles in lieu of more “decisive developments” if I could help it. But here goes--anyway--if only to signal to you my pleasure in receiving your opus and to assure you that at any rate my affections are not defunct.

With the general exhortation of your book (as a whole) towards more definite spiritual knowledge and direction I find myself in close sympathy. The spiritual disintegration of our period becomes more painful to me every day, so much so that I now find myself baulked by doubt at the validity of practically every metaphor I coin. In every quarter (Lewis, Eliot, Fernandez, etc.) a thousand issues are raised for one that is settled and where this method is reversed--as with the neo-Thomists--one has nothing as substitute but an arbitrary dogmatism which seems to be too artificial [to] have any permanence or hold on the future. This “future” is, of course, the name for the entire disease, but I doubt if any remedy will be forthcoming from so nostalgic an attitude as the Thomists betray, and moreover a strictly European system of values, at that. Waldo’s acute analyses now running in _The NR_ strike me as wonderfully promising. He hasn’t come to the constructive part of his program yet--but his ideas are promising; in a way they come to closer grips with American bogeys and vampires than any European is probably capable of seeing.

I think that _Destinations_ is a transitional book with you. It contains a lot of splendid analysis, especially your discussions of technical procedures and the historical positions and relationships of various writers. Above and beyond (or enclosing) these considerations I think your demand for more order, clearer direction, etc., well justified, but on the other hand, too vaguely articulated to offer any definite system in contrast to the distraction, indifference to major issues, mere intuitiveness, etc., which you complain of in a number of writers whose work you otherwise admire. This was almost inevitable, I am forced to acknowledge, especially as I have already admitted my own quandaries in the face of such problems--but the challenge still rings for all of us. You have certainly done this much: if you have not definitely (or even begun to) articulate the concrete values of the ideal _100_ per cent you have at least done some wiping on the slate and postulated _000_, or the position of the questionable ciphers. Skepticism may stop there and still claim gratitude and respect, but I am not exactly satisfied by that, and I doubt if you are. I still stake some claims on the pertinence of the intuitions; indeed some of Blake’s poems and Emily Dickinson’s seem more incontrovertible than ever since Relativity and a host of other ideologies, since evolved, have come into recognition.

As close and accurate scrutinies I like the Moore and Williams studies best. I don’t know Dreiser well enough to judge your opinions. As for Hart Crane, I know him too well to disagree on as many points as I once did, two years ago when I first read the essay. I am certainly grateful for such expert attention, and especially on the technical side I think you express my intentions with a very persuasive gusto that has recently revived in me some conviction of “reality” here and there in my scrap heap. --/--/

303: TO SLATER BROWN

[_California_] _April 27_

Dear Bill: Your salute to the comments of the ny critics cracks at _him_ displayed more life than I have seen around here since I arrived. Although I am still holding my sides, I’m a little sad; for I would like to have been there. Especially with Anne [Cummings] drinking gin and ---- sporting his shiners and shirt front and all the tumult and guzzling there must have been afterward! As for the critics--C’gs can be envied, in the same manner that even I can be envied, whereby I refer to the “clever” handling I recently got from Benét in the Canby crap can. At least we both have managed to evade the proverbial faint praise! Your clipping was the only one I’ve seen excepting a letter from Dos [Passos] in the last _Sunday Times_, and a laudatory review in the _Wall Street Journal_ which Wise had noticed. I hope you and others will make as much of a controversy about it as possible. That’s one thing good about Frank--he never hesitates a moment and never tires.

Since the Fleet with its twenty-five thousand gobs has left for Hawaii I have had a chance to face and recognize the full inconsequence of this Pollyanna greasepaint pinkpoodle paradise with its everlasting stereotyped sunlight and its millions of mechanical accessories and sylphlike robots of the age of celluloid. Efforts for a foothold in this sandstorm are still avid, but I have had little yet in encounter. “Crashing the gate” is a familiar expression out here, and it seems to be exclusively applied to the movie industry. To cap the climax I have to endure my mother’s apparently quenchless desire that I become an actor! But if I can hold on until the middle of May I’m due for an interview with Jesse Lasky (HIMSELF) and maybe through that entree I can creep into some modest dustpan in the reading dept. of Paramount. Your friend Dietz, by the way, draws a cool $750.00 a week as their ad. mgr.

It’s good to think of you as back near Patterson. I had a good letter from Malcolm. It all makes me homesick. Things like that croquet game in the rain, the afternoon at the cider mill, the skeleton surry ride and the tumble down the hill! I haven’t a thing to send for the _transition_ Am. issue. I can’t imagine ever having anything to say out here except in vituperation of the scene itself. If I could “afford” to go to work on some ranch it might be otherwise, but that, under present circumstances, doesn’t seem advisable.

Have just discovered the presence here of Mrs. Alice Barney, the world-famous grande dame and mother of Nathalie Clifford Barney of Paris, friend of Valéry, translator, -- -- -- --. As she is a great friend of Underwood of Washington I have been invited to her next weekly “evening.” She ought to be a little different than the typical Hollywood hostess--perhaps mildly Proustian. God knows I need some sort of diversion besides bus rides and the rigor mortis of the local hooch. -- -- -- --

304: TO WALDO FRANK

_Patterson,_ _June 12th ’28_

Dear goodhearted Brother: Your loan has been a godsend and I am only afraid I have appeared insensitive in not writing my thanks before. But you’ve been very busy getting settled, I know, and probably haven’t had any such extra thoughts. It’s nice, damned fine, of you to ask me up--maybe I’ll be able to make it along in August. But it’s a slim chance. I want above all things to get _The Bridge_ completed this summer, and aside from the necessity of taking any work which may come along I’ll need to keep my head or rather my nose away from too tempting horizons. But at least I _trust_ we’ll have a reunion and a long visit in the Fall.

I meant long ago to tell you my rather disappointing experience with Charlie.[59] During my first month on the Coast I happened to meet him sitting in his favorite restaurant one evening. I had a friend with me and he was also engaged, but I stopped for a moment in passing to say hello--identifying myself with you (whose address he wanted immediately). I later sent him an inscribed copy of _White Buildings_ along with a letter, but never got any response further than a formal letter from his secretary acknowledging receipt of same, etc. As I had already urged him to dine with me (my boss, Mr. Wise, was simply wild to meet him and entertain him) I couldn’t press matters much further. He was simply too busy otherwheres to be interested--that was obviously it--and all the stars have built walls of mystery about themselves as impregnable as Carcassonne! Just try to get them on the phone sometime! But Charlie surely was never so radiant and handsome as when I saw him.... Hair snow-white, which means almost as white as the smiling flash of his teeth, and those same eyes of genius.

I’m hardly qualified to give you any fair report on my reactions to your _NR_ series. I’ve missed several and those I did get a chance to read (out west) were read under disturbing circumstances. I remember such chapters as “Let’s be Comfortable,” “News as a Toy,” and the recent chapter on “The Arts” as especially keen analysis. The first two or three chapters seemed to hint at a little strain or rush; this more from their almost painful condensation of material and opinion than from other cause. But I ought to re-read them before barking. I can’t think of any living American with greater integrity or courage, you prove it on every page. The completed book will come out in the late fall, I take it. -- -- -- --

305: TO ISIDOR & HELEN SCHNEIDER

_Patterson, N. Y._ _July 16th, 1928_

Dear Isidor & Helen: Your good Parisian letter reached me here on about the third week after my return from the Coast. Leaving about the middle of May, I took the southern route across Texas to New Orleans, then down the Mississippi and up to NY by boat. The old French quarter of New Orleans with its absinthe speakeasies and wonderful cooking seemed unspeakably mellow and gracious after all the crass mechanical perfection of Hollywood, and the six hours on the great delta were even more symphonic than I had expected.

New York harbor looked both stridently busy and enormously friendly in the early morning light. I was mightily glad to get back among friends; I could find no work in California and excessively hysterical conditions arose between me and my family there. Altogether it was intolerable. I feel more like myself again, back in my familiar room at Mrs. Turner’s. Besides, we have located a marvellous bootlegger on a neighboring hill, who makes better beer than I’ve had north of Cuba! --/--/

306: TO HIS FATHER

_New York City_ _August 14th, 1928_

Dear Father: Your letter, forwarded from Patterson, reached me yesterday, I have been offered the use of the flat of a friend of mine [Cowley] who is spending the summer in the country, and I’m fortunate enough to have it for several weeks. I’ve been cooking my own meals and doing my best without the help of a flatiron to keep myself looking spruce, but my shoes are giving out as well as the several small loans that friends have given me--and so far I haven’t been able to make any connection with ad. work. I guess I’ll have to give that up.

I agree with you completely in what you say about learning a trade; in fact I have wanted to learn some regular trade like typesetting, linotyping, etc., for a long time back. However, connections that pay anything whatever while learning these trades are hard to find out about. And, of course, I need something more than air to live on in the meantime. I’m going to do my best during the next few days to find a job as a plumber’s or mechanic’s helper. The work is physically heavier than I have been used to for a long time, but I fancy I can make the adjustment in due time. The way things are now I’ll consider myself lucky to get anything. --/--/

307: TO HIS FATHER

_New York City_ _August 19, 1928_

Dear Father: I hope you won’t blame me for utilizing the check enclosed in your letter for some immediate necessities, without which my first pay day would seem even longer away! I can refund the money to you later. Meanwhile it will seem good to have something definite to do--as well as something definite to eat.

As I wired you, I start in tomorrow. The job isn’t much, but it can tide me over to something better. A former Cleveland acquaintance of mine has opened a book store here. He needs to be out a good deal collecting stock, rare editions, etc., and I’m coming in as clerk, besides which I shall have some work to do on his catalogues, make-up, etc. The offer wasn’t made until last Friday, else I should have let you know sooner.

This may strike you as a rather poor alternative to your invitation to return to Cleveland, but as there are two or three real possibilities hanging fire here--and of considerable ultimate importance,--I feel that I am justified in staying on the ground. One in particular, the editorship of a magazine, I should hate to risk missing. Thank you a lot though, Father, for your interest and help. --/--/

308: TO CHARLOTTE AND RICHARD RYCHTARIK

_Brooklyn, New York_ _Sept 16th, 1928_

Dear Charlotte and Richard: It has hurt me to think that you thought me indifferent about returning the remainder of the money that you so kindly loaned me. I confess my guilt: it _could_ have been done before. But nevertheless at _no_ time since you wrote me asking for it. Owing to the recent death of my Grandmother Hart (in Hollywood) I shall, however, be able to discharge the obligation fairly soon, as I come into a slight inheritance which will take care of several debts. I have been struggling without any money for weeks, but have finally secured a decent job with an advertising agency here.

This is perhaps a futile letter to write, since our friendship seems to have been already sacrificed. But I owe it to myself perhaps as much as to you to give you rightful evidence of my continued intention of honest behavior, no matter what you may have thought of me. You don’t know how often I have thought of you and regretted the circumstances of your recent loss of interest in me. You don’t know the extent to which I feel gratefully indebted to you both for many things outside the realm of money or anything that money could ever buy. But there is no use in trying to make apologies. As long as I believe in myself I shall insist on my good intentions and with the ultimate faith of putting them into practice. I can never, of course, ask others as much as that.

If you will be friendly enough to answer _this_ letter some time in the next three months I shall be glad to know that at least I may be sure of your present address. Otherwise, I’ll have to ask someone in Cleveland to look you up in the directory or telephone book to ascertain your present whereabouts at the time I’m able to write a check out.

309: TO CHARLOTTE RYCHTARIK

_Brooklyn, NY_ _Oct. 23rd, 1928_

Dear Charlotte: --/--/ Your letter made me feel a lot better. It lifted a load from my spirit that I had felt for many months. I really need to _see_ you, _talk_ with you to explain what a hell the last two years have been. Perhaps you’d then see how it has been almost impossible for me to write anyone. For who wants to hear nothing but troubles? I’ve waited, putting off writing again and again, hoping to have something interesting to offer--for that is what such as you and Richard deserve.

I can realize how deeply you have felt the loss of your mother. You seem to have been having your share of tribulations.... O, I know.... How I wish I could have seen you on your way through New York when you came back from Europe! Now it may be some time before we get together again. There is much to say, but little to tell--if you get what I mean. I haven’t had a creative thought for so long that I feel quite lost and _spurlos versenkt_. My present job lasts another week, and then I must tramp around again to find another. Moving around, grabbing onto this and that, stupid landladies--never enough sense of security to relax and have a fresh thought--that’s about all the years bring besides new and worse manifestations of family hysteria. It’s a great big bore! I feel like saying what the Englishman did: “Too many buttons to button and unbutton. I’m through!” -- -- -- --

310: TO MALCOLM COWLEY

[_Brooklyn_] _the 20th of the 28th at the A.M. 7-thirtieth_

Dear Malcolm: After the passionate pulchritude of the usual recent maritime houreths--before embarking for the 20th story of the Henry L Doherty Co’s 60 on Wall Street story--I salute your mss which arrived yesterday morning--as well as the really cordial apologies accompanying them for the really unhappy hours inaugurated last week by the hysteria of S. God damn the female temperament! I’ve had thirty years of it--lacking six months--and know something myself.

It’s me for the navy or Mallorca damned quick. Meanwhile sorting securities of cancelled legions ten years back--for filing--pax vobiscum--With Wall Street at 30 per--and chewing gum for lunch--

But here I am--full of Renault Wine Tonics--after an evening with the Danish millionaire on Riverside--and better, thank God, a night with a bluejacket from the Arkansas--raving like a ‘mad. And it’s time to go to work. So long.... I’ll be careful with the mss.[60] And your book’ll be out within 7 months.... About time! God bless you and give my love to Peggy! And as W. J. Turner says: “O hear the swan song’s traffic’s cry!”

311: TO MALCOLM COWLEY

_Brooklyn, NY_ _Dec. 1, 1928_

Dear Malcolm: It has been a pleasure for me to spend part of the last two days in typing the mss. of your book. Certainly I have been on more intimate terms with the poems than ever, and my enthusiasm has been heightened thereby rather than in any way diminished.

I now have two copies, one to turn over to the “secret” arbiter[61] here and one to take with me to England. Whatever may or may not happen over there I’ll at least be sure of having you along with me--which is much. By the way, if the mss. is returned to you, refused, be sure to send it at once to Coward-McCann, who, I understand, are calling for new poets and planning some kind of series of them. Hanna [Josephson] spoke to me about this yesterday.

Although I hope to get off next Saturday (probably on the _Tuscania_) I’m not at all certain. The bank behaves too strangely--now ignores my letters not to mention telegram. The meddlesome old nanny that is handling the matter there will soon hear from me through a lawyer if things don’t take a new turn by Monday. That’s the only way to handle it, I guess. I’m to see Art Hays Monday and talk it over. At any rate, I think it would be foolish to bring my troubles over to London with me and have them poison my first impressions of the place.

To get back to the poems: I omitted practically nothing but the Decorations. The arrangement you made is ideal. As to the places for the following, I think you’ll agree that they are ideal:

“Tumbling Mustard” just before “Memphis Johnny”

“Still Life” just before “Seaport” (it doesn’t fit in the Grand Manner section particularly)

“Two Winter Sonnets” just after “St. Bartholomew” (they come in eloquently there)

Really the book as we now have it has astonishing structural sequence. Most of the more doubtfully important poems come in the central section. There is the fine indigenous soil sense to begin with in the Juniata, and the eloquent and more abstract matter mounting to a kind of climax toward the end. Hope you don’t mind my enthusiasm!

See _Show Boat_ when you come to town. Wise took me last night; the beautiful new Ziegfield Theatre has them all beat--and the settings, songs, costumes and glistening lithe girlies! Like greased lightning--the suave mechanical perfection of the thing.

You may not hear from me again if I leave next Saturday, but Mrs. Turner will be informed when I leave anyway. I’ll see that your mss. (the original) is remailed to you registered, early next week. ----and I went on the best bat ever last night--Sam’s [Loveman] old place--finally two cops came in and joined the party at three o’clock--asked ---- to marry me and live with me in Spain--but she’s got to wait for her divorce from the Danish gaucho now on the pampas.

312: TO SAMUEL LOVEMAN

[_R.M.S._] _Tuscania off Newfoundland_ _Dec. 9 ’28_

Ahoy Sam! The ship is rearing like a high-strung broncho--and I’m out walking the quarter-deck much of the time--enjoying the rhythmical lift and plunge of it. We’ve had high seas running and sleet and rain since Sandy Hook but I’ve been down for every meal. O it’s great! The bad gin pains are leaving my head and--taking only the bad memories with them--_not_ the pleasant thoughts of you and Mony [Grunberg] and others.

This is a pleasant boat--not at all crowded--and such nice people. English servants know how to be pleasant as well as efficient. And of course I _would_ be given the one nearly handsome English waiter in the salon! Rather tough food--but I’m getting used to it. The whiskey--which is all I’ve tried thus far--is like balm of Gilead--or whatever Poe said. A little goes a long ways--and really doesn’t sadden one.

P.S. Melville makes fine reading on this trip.

313: TO SAMUEL LOVEMAN

(Postcard)

_Off Cornwall [England]_ [_December 13_]

Gorgeous weather all the way. Today is like the “Tristram” verse of Swinburne. Millions of sea gulls following us and soaring overhead with such a flood of golden light as seems tropical. The coast of Cornwall in sight, and Plymouth by tea time.

314: TO CHARMION WIEGAND

_R.M.S. Rumrunia off the Coast of Ireland_ _near Christmas ’28_

Dear Charmion: My performance given at the Anderson party last summer was but a slight forecast to the splendors of my behavior night before last--when at a bal masque, dressed in a red coat of a sergeant-major, sailor hat, shark swagger stick, etc.--I essayed a dervish whirl. But I seem to have made no enemies and rum has become the favorite drink throughout the cabin.

If anything, I’ve had almost too good a time! I have been the only native American in the whole tourist cabin. The rest being Britishers, Canadians, Australians visiting relatives abroad, etc.--and all of them the pleasantest crowd I ever met. Think I’m going to like London entirely too well for an early take-off to Spain. One old squire took me for a Cambridge man--and I admit that after a day or two in conflab with some of these natives one does tend to lose one’s “middle-western accent.”

You must excuse my exuberance momentarily at least. I can’t stop being tremendously pleased at the wonderful ale, the pleasant manners of practically everybody (and one gets such graceful and attentive service everywhere), the balmy spring air, and the prospect of meeting more of such people soon on foreign shores. I feel really rested now, despite a hectic round of pleasures.

It was so nice of you to come to the little beer party. When I think of the mad rush of that last day I’m moved to wonder how I ever kept on my feet. But I enjoyed the evening after all. Hope you met some people that you liked. I’m always a little vain about my friends. --/--/

315: TO WALDO FRANK

[_London, England_] _December 28 ’28_

Dear Waldo: Landed here with incipient flu but have managed to stave it off with good Jamaica rum and quinine. The city is soberly impressive--full of courtesy and deep character. I feel now as though I’d like to settle here--and even might--later on. But it’s too expensive to linger long now--and I’m apt to be off to Paris next week. Shall not stay there very long, either, as I want to get settled and at work.

Am expecting to meet Edgell Rickword soon but not many others. Laura Riding and Robert Graves (friend of Col. Lawrence and the one who introduced Cummings here) have been delightfully hospitable. I had a most luscious plum pudding with them Christmas -- -- -- -- on the Thames at Hammersmith in front of Wm. Morris’ old headquarters.

No snow here at all--and the grass as green as summer in the parks. I’ve already seen a great deal--tramping about by myself, drinking Australian wine with old charwomen in Bedford Street--talking with ex-soldiers, and then the National Gallery with the marvelous “Agony in the Garden” of El Greco. The beautiful black and white streaked stone facades of the buildings make me quite sentimental. London is negative (as Laura says) but one gets a chance to breathe and deliberate. And there is something genuine about nearly every Englishman one meets. I feel almost too much at home.

Your pipe grows mellower every day. It’s a little like Paul Robeson’s voice--and I’ve been enjoying him by the way. He and Essie have taken a sumptuous home of an ex-ambassador to Turkey for the rest of his engagement. But he’s anxious to get to Paris to earn some astonishing laurels offered him there. --/--/

1929

316: TO SAMUEL LOVEMAN

(Postcard)

[_Paris, France_] [_January 23, 1929_]

Dinners, soirées, poets, erratic millionaires, painters, translations, lobsters, absinthe, music, promenades, oysters, sherry, aspirin, pictures, Sapphic heiresses, editors, books, sailors. _And How!_

317: TO JOSEPH STELLA

_Paris_ _January 24th, 1929_

Dear Mr. Stella: Sometime before leaving America Charmion Habicht [Wiegand] showed me a copy of your privately issued monograph called “New York,” containing your essay on Brooklyn Bridge and the marvelous paintings you made not only of the Bridge but other New York subjects. This has been the admiration of everyone to whom I have shown it. And now I am writing you to ask if you will give permission to an editor friend of mine to reproduce the three pictures--“The Bridge,” “The Port,” and the one called “The Skyscrapers.” He would also like to reprint your essay.

I am referring to Mr. Eugene Jolas who is an editor of _transition_--a magazine which you have probably heard of. He would like to use this material in the next number if you will be so kind as to give us permission. _transition_ is able to pay little or nothing now for contributions, but, since our friend Varèse has told me that your essay has never been printed in any journal, we feel that so splendid and sincere a document should have wider circulation than private printing has allowed it.

I have also a private favor of my own to ask of you. I should like permission to use your painting of the Bridge as a frontispiece to a long poem I have been busy on for the last three years--called _The Bridge_. It is a remarkable coincidence that I should, years later, have discovered that another person, by whom I mean you, should have had the same sentiments regarding Brooklyn Bridge which inspired the main theme and pattern of my poem. --/--/

318: TO GERTRUDE STEIN

[_Paris_] _Jan. 31, ’29_

Dear Miss Stein: May I introduce myself as a friend of your friend, Laura Riding?

And on that presumption may I ask to see you some hour early next week--whenever it may suit your convenience to have me call--?

I am going away for the weekend, but shall probably be back by Monday evening. I hope I may hear from you.

319: TO MALCOLM COWLEY

[_Paris_] _Feb. 4 ’29_

Dear Malcolm: Time here flies faster than I can count. And now along comes the good news from you about the book of poems. Of course I’m all the happier that you got better terms from Hal [Smith]--it’s all to the good. But I do hope that you have seen Munson by this time, and at least thanked him for his interest. For the very fact that you were able to make such an announcement to Hal may well have influenced his interest to a great extent. Such matters are rather officious for me to mention I fear, but I do think Munson deserves some real credit. --/--/

I’m dizzy, also, with meeting people. “Teas” are cocktails here--and then that’s just the start of the evening. And as lions come these days, I’m known already, I fear, as the best “roarer” in Paris.

Have just returned from a weekend at Ermenonville (near Chantilly) on the estate of the Duc du Rochefoucauld where an amazing millionaire by the name of Harry Crosby has fixed up an old mill (with stables and a stockade all about) and such a crowd as attended _is_ remarkable. I’m invited to return at any time for any period to finish _The Bridge_, but I’ve an idea that I shall soon wear off my novelty. Anyway, Crosby, who inherited the famous Walter Berry (London) library, has such things as first editions of Hakklyt [Hakluyt] (I can’t spell today) and is going to bring out a private edition of _The Bridge_ with such details as a reproduction of Stella’s picture in actual color as frontispiece.

He’s also doing Lawrence, Cummings and Kay Boyle. It takes a book to describe the Crosbys--but it has (I mean the connection) already led me to new atrocities--such as getting drunk yesterday and making violent love to nobility. As -- -- -- -- was just about to marry, I couldn’t do better, though all agree (including Kay Boyle and Lawrence Vail) that I did my best. --/--/

320: TO WALDO FRANK

[_Paris_] _February 7th, 1929_

Dear Waldo: It would take volumes to tell you all that’s happened--mainly the people I’ve met, I fear, and just that sort of thing. For I haven’t got down to work yet, and probably won’t do so until I get off to some quieter place in the country. This City, as you know, is the most interesting madhouse in the world. But I intend getting away as soon as possible. Not to Spain, though, for a while. I want to learn French--and as you know, Mallorca won’t teach me Spanish either. So the above bank address is good for some time. And please don’t forget to send me your _Re-discovery of America_ now, as soon as possible. I need it as a balance against the seductions of Europe, for I’m afraid I _am_ being seduced by the astonishing ease of life hereabouts. Paris really is a test for an American, I’m beginning to feel. And I’m so far from certain that I’m equal to it in my present mood that I’m quite uneasy. However, things don’t look so bad. --/--/ I had thought of going to Villefranche, but after last weekend at Ermenonville I changed my mind. The beautiful grounds of the Chateau, donkeys and bikes to ride, a whole tower to myself and all the service that millionaires are used to having--all that is very alluring, and I would be quite alone except for the gatherings on weekends. But Harry is highly erratic and nothing may come of it. I may go out to Jolas’s place in Haute-Marne instead. At any rate I won’t be far from Paris.

I can’t tell you how deeply I appreciate your generous pains in sending me the letters of introduction. Gide, I heard, left for Africa a few days before your letter reached me. I haven’t looked up Larbaud yet, but intend to. I trust that I can use those for Spain at any time in the future, for I do intend going to Spain, you know, perhaps before the end of this year. Jolas took me around to meet Soupault and his wife who entertain a good deal and who have been very generous with me. I haven’t had a good talk yet with Aragon but have met him several times along with others. An amazingly handsome fellow, I think, who possesses an elegance that is rare. I went to see Gertrude Stein despite my indifference to most of her work. One is supposed to inevitably change one’s mind about her work after meeting her. I haven’t, but must say that I’ve seldom met so delightful a personality. _And_ the woman is beautiful! AND the Picassos!

Margy [Naumburg] has been here but I haven’t yet seen her. Everyone has been having colds and flu and she didn’t escape. There is no point, I’m sure, in listing more names, as it might well bore you. Certainly I’m a bit tired with all the talking and chattering, however interesting it is at times. I feel a great need to get into myself again, and into my work. When I consider that it has been over a year since I have written anything longer than scratch notes for _The Bridge_ I’m almost overwhelmed. What a year it has been, too! It has been the most decisive year of my life in a number of ways. But I also find that I now need more strength than ever. --/--/

321: TO CHARLOTTE AND RICHARD RYCHTARIK

[_Paris_] _Feb. 26th, 1929_

Dear Charlotte & Richard: First of all--before you read another word of this--you must swear to me not to repeat to anyone that you have even heard from me, not even that you know where I am. I hate to begin my letter so seriously, but in time you will know more about _why_ I don’t want my family to find my whereabouts right now. I am very serious about this request, and I’m sure that you have enough interest in my work to abstain from any action which would cripple me.

It was fine to hear from you--two good long letters--and to know that all is going along so well in every way. I’m especially glad that you, Richard, have received such good notice and representation in the theatre literature which you mentioned. And from the other matters mentioned, I judge that Cleveland has been far from a cemetery--part of the credit for which is due to you both, _I know_. The Christmas card was a beauty, but then, so are all of them that you have ever made!

I scarcely know how to begin to tell you all that’s been happening to me during the last year. But here’s a brief summary, omitting thousands of details, all of which, however, are really important.... During my sojourn with the millionaire in California last winter my mother made life so miserable for me with incessant hysterical fits and interminable nagging that I had to steal off east again, like a thief in the night, in order to save my sanity or health from a complete breakdown. I went back to Patterson and tried to pull myself together, without money or prospects of any kind. Then in September, after I had secured a good job with an advertising agency, my Grandmother died, leaving me the inheritance which my grandfather bequeathed me over fifteen years ago.

Of course there had been a coolness between my mother and me ever since I left California. The net result of this was that (being co-executor of the estate with the Guardian Trust Co.) she held back her signature to the papers for weeks, pretending to be too ill to sign her name. And finally she threatened to do all sorts of things if I did not come at once to California and spend it with her--among which she said she would write to my father and try to get him to intercede with the bank against paying me! This could have no effect whatever, but you may gather a little bit from what I have said about just how considerate and honorable she was! I can’t begin to tell you about all the underground and harrowing tactics she employed. Got people who were practically strangers to write me threatening and scolding letters, so that I never came home from work without wonder--and trembling about what next I should find awaiting me. She had, through abuse, destroyed all the affection I had for her before I left the west; but now she made me actually hate her. I finally had to consult a lawyer, who directed his guns on the bank. This finally brought results. In the meantime I had given up all my plans about buying a little country place in Connecticut, for her ultimate home as much as mine. There was literally no other sensible plan but to take my money and get out of communication as soon as possible.

After having received written promise from the bank (as well as an advance) that the money would be in my hands by a certain day, I went ahead and engaged steamer passage to London. But the bank did not even keep its word, and I did not actually get the money until a few hours before the boat sailed. You can imagine my state of mind. I got on the boat more dead than alive. And I have not since had the least desire to know what is going on in California, and doubt if I ever _shall_ care. Since my mother has made it impossible for me to live in my own country I feel perfectly justified in my indifference. I have had no particular quarrel with my father, and shall write him sometime after _The Bridge_ is done and I don’t fear mental complications. Meanwhile I’m so sure that she has carried out her threat and written him certain things that I’d rather keep out of it all. Twenty-five years of such exhausting quibbling is enough, and I feel I owe myself a good long vacation from it all. Neither one of them really cares a rap for me anyway. I have much more to tell you sometime, but this is enough for now....

--/--/ Went to the famous dangerous and tough Limehouse section expecting some exciting adventures, but found that most of the young toughs drank only lemonade--and after I had had several swigs of Scotch they all seemed to be afraid of me! O life is funny! I’d like to go back to England sometime in the summer of the year. The damp, raw cold was like a knife in my throat--and the hotels like cellars. I left there on the 7th of January, and life has been like a carnival ever since--here in Paris.

I’ve never been in such a social whirl--all sorts of amusing people, scandalous scenes, cafe encounters, etc. Writers, painters, heiresses, counts and countesses, Hispano-Suizas, exhibitions, concerts, fights, and--well, you know Paris, probably better than I do. I had originally intended to stop here only two or three weeks on the way to a permanent location at Mallorca, one of the Balearic Islands (Spain). But I’ve fallen so much in love with the French and French ways that I’ve decided to stay here until summer anyway, and try to learn the language before leaving.

All sorts of things have happened. Through Eugene Jolas, editor of _transition_, I met Harry Crosby who is heir to all the Morgan-Harjes millions and who is the owner of a marvelous de luxe publishing establishment here. --/--/ He has renovated an old mill (16th century) out on the ground of the chateau of the Comte du Rochefoucauld at Ermenonville where I have spent several wild weekends. Polo with golf sticks on donkeys! Old stagecoaches! Skating on the beautiful grounds of the chateau! Oysters, absinthe, even opium, which I’ve tried, but don’t enjoy. I had the pleasure, last week, of spending five days out there working all by myself, with just the gardener and his wife bringing me food and wine beside a jolly hearth-fire. And the beautiful forests all around--like the setting for _Pelléas et Mélisande_! I’m going out again soon. Meanwhile I dream of how fine they’ve promised to publish _The Bridge_--on sheets as large as a piano score, so none of the lines will be broken--and they have already sent to the Brooklyn Art Museum to have the Stella picture of the Bridge copied in color for reproduction as a frontispiece! --/--/

322: TO SAMUEL LOVEMAN

(Postcard)

[_Collioure, France_] _April 23 ’29_

Nightingales all night and the sound of surf all day! I don’t know what could rival this spot for form and color. Hope you are alright--you certainly haven’t wasted much ink telling me!

323: TO SLATER BROWN

_Collioure, Pyrénées-Orientales_ _25 Avril ’29_

Bill: Why the hell don’t you write to me? You used to. And here I am, sitting by the shore of the most shockingly beautiful fishing village--with towers, baronial, on the peaks of the Pyrenees all about, wishing more than anything else that you were on the other side of the table.

This begins to look as good as the West Indies. Maybe--if I could talk Catalan it would be better. I began to feel as you predicted about Paris. Wish you were with me! I don’t know whether you want to hear from me or not--since you have never written--but here’s my love anyway, Bill--

324: TO GERTRUDE STEIN

(Postcard)

[_Collioure_] [_ca. April 29_]

There has been too much wind to notice odors. I like it so far, and expect to stay awhile. Feel quite indigenous since spending last night out on a sardine schooner. The dialect isn’t so easily assimilated.

325: TO ISIDOR SCHNEIDER

_Collioure, Pyr.-Orientales_ _May 1st, 1929_

Dear Isidor: --/--/ As regards creative writing--I can’t say that I’m finding Europe extremely stimulating. I left home in a bad state of nerves and spirit and haven’t exactly recovered yet, so perhaps my reactions are not as fresh as they might be. Perhaps a few weeks of the quiet of places like this ancient fishing port may change my mind--but at any rate I haven’t so far completed so much as one additional section to _The Bridge_. It’s coming out this fall in Paris, regardless. -- -- -- -- If it eventuates that I have the wit or inspiration to add to it later--such additions can be incorporated in some later edition. I’ve alternated between embarrassment and indifference for so long that when the Crosbys urged me to let them have it, declaring that it reads well enough as it already is, I gave in. Malcolm advised as much before I left America, so I feel there may be some justification. The poems, arranged as you may remember, do have I think, a certain progression. And maybe the gaps are more evident to me than to others ... indeed, they must be. --/--/ I recently have been informed that the 1st edition of _White Bldgs._ is sold out. There won’t be another for awhile, I guess. There were only 500 printed, just half the number that I, until recently, had supposed. But that’s the usual number, I’m told.

I do hope you prevail on L[iveright] to bring out Hopkins’ verse. But I doubt it. I think he’s a bit thick-skinned to sympathize. Recently a friend of Laura Riding and Graves, Geoffrey Phibbs, whom I’ve never met, sent me a copy right out of a clear sky. I was dumb-foundered--for it certainly is rare when such wealthy bibliophiles as Harry Crosby are unable through all their London agents to locate a copy. So when I come back, we’ll have at least one copy “in the family” as it were! whatever Liveright decides.

London, I can still believe, might be delightful under proper circumstances. I had incipient flu before I landed, then the raw cold of the particular season, the bad hotel accommodations, the indigestible food AND Laura’s [Riding] hysterical temper at the time--all combined to send me off with no particular regrets. It’s certainly the most expensive place I can imagine--more than even New York unless you’re really settled down. I loved its solid, ponderous masonry--and the gaunt black-and-white streakings and shadings. It’s a city for the etcher. I must tell you about my excursion to Limehouse sometime--where, expecting to be blackjacked, etc., I drank so many scotch-and-sodas during a game of darts in one of the pubs, that I frightened people, actually scared some of the toughs about--all of whom struck me as being very pleasant people. I’d like to go there again and stay longer sometime--but not during the winter!

As for Paris, I’ll have to wait until I see you to touch the subject. Phillipe Soupault and his wife were about the most hospitable French people I met, and Gertrude Stein about the most impressive personality of all. The marvellous room of hers, the Picasso’s, Juan Gris and others (including some very interesting youngsters) on the walls! Then there were Ford Madox Ford, Wescott, Bernadine Szold (just back from the Orient), Richard Aldington, Walter Lowenfels (who has an interesting book of verse coming out in England--(Heinemann), Emma Goldman, Klaus Mann, Eugene MacCown, Jolas (whom I like very much), Edgar Varèse, Rene Crevel, Kay Boyle, (who has decided she likes me) and a hundred others just as interesting, or more so, who aren’t particularly known. The Tates are living in Ford’s apartment while he is away, and declare they never want to leave Paris. I like it all too well, myself, but would have to live there a long while before I could settle down to accomplish any work, I fear. And lately--all cities get on my nerves after a few weeks. I’d never want to settle down for good over here like many do, however,--town _or_ country. For even here by the blue inland sea, with ancient citadels and fortifications crowning the heights of a lovely white-walled, village--I can’t help thinking of my room out there in Patterson. Silly, I know ... but what can one do about it?

My plans are vague. May stay here two months more or only two weeks. Spain is very near, but also, I hear, very expensive. I’m crossing over to a nearby town to see a bull fight in a couple of days. But I may not explore it much further at the time, regardless of my intense interest. There are other small ports between here and Marseille which are very intriguing. I can’t regret not seeing everything this trip--or even never. You see I like France pretty well! -- -- -- --

326: TO ALLEN TATE

_Marseille,_ _11 June ’29_

Dear Allen: --/--/ I didn’t stay more than three weeks at Collioure. Since then I’ve been in and about Marseille, a city which has a great deal of interest to me, although there’s nothing whatever here to interest the usual type of tourist. Have just come back from two weeks visiting Roy Campbell and family out at Martigues, a sort of Venice and Gloucester combined, being built on three islands made by canals joining the Etang de Berre with the sea.

I have come to love Provence, the wonderful Cezannesque light (you see him everywhere here) and the latinity of the people. Arabs, Negros, Greeks, and Italian and Spanish mixtures. The Campbells rent a house and have a maid for almost nothing, but swimming isn’t good there and there are other features which might not appeal to you as much as the country east of here where you are planning to go. Marsden Hartley whom I encountered here knows the whole coast, both sides of the Rhone, and prefers it here. I’m coming back to Paris within a couple of weeks but may take a swift excursion over to Nice and environs beforehand, just to see what I’ve missed by hanging around here so long. Then maybe my advice will be worth more than at present.

I’m planning on returning to N.Y. before very long. How soon depends largely on what I hear from the Crosbys on my return to Paris regarding their edition of _The Bridge_. I’m anticipating a good visit with you and Carolyn [Gordon] before many days. Thanks a lot for the money order, exactly correct in amount, and quite providential at the moment as the bank has been slow in forwarding me funds. -- -- -- --

327: TO WALDO FRANK

(Postcard)

[_Marseille_] _June 17, 1929_

Can’t get around to that long and grateful letter to you that you so much deserve. Why?--don’t ask me yet! But it isn’t because I don’t often long to see you. I have been in an undecided state since before we last met. I pray for relief.

328: TO MALCOLM COWLEY

[_Paris_] _July 3rd, 1929_

Dear Malcolm: Since reading the proofs I’m certain that the book is even better than before. And the notes!--When you first mentioned them to me I admit having trembled slightly at the idea. But since seeing them I haven’t a doubt. The maturity of your viewpoint is evident in every word. Humor and sincerity blend into some of the cleverest and adroit writing I know of, leaving the book a much more solidified unit than it was before. I haven’t had the original mss. with me for comparison, but wherever I have noted changes they seem to be for the better. Nor do I regret any of the additions. I like the added bulk of the book. Really, Malcolm--if you will excuse me for the egoism--I’m just a little proud at the outcome of my agitations last summer. _Blue Juniata_ will have a considerable sale for a long period to come, for the bulk of it has a classical quality--both as regards material and treatment--that won’t suffer rejection by anyone who cares or who will later care for American letters.

I would particularize more copiously except that I’m expecting to see you within relatively so short a time.... I’ll be back in NY by the first of September at the latest, and I may be back a month before. Perhaps it’s just as well that a good part of my money is tied up in a savings account in New York and inaccessible to me here. As it is, I haven’t any great regrets about coming back at this time. When I come to France again I’ll sail direct for Marseille--and it’s certainly my intention to come again! I’m looking forward to talking it all over with you--so get a little cider ready for the occasion! --/--/

329: TO CARESSE CROSBY

_Patterson, New York_ _August 8th, 1929_

Dear Caresse: Herewith are the gloss notes that I showed you, now corrected and ready to include with the composition of the first two sections of _The Bridge_. You will see where each block of them falls by the _key lines_ typed at the left. I have kept them narrow as that seems to be the custom--and we don’t want to crowd our margins. (See MacLeish’s _Hamlet_ and the version of “The Ancient Mariner” as printed in the _Oxford Anthology_.) I can’t help thinking them a great help in binding together the general theme of “Powhatan’s Daughter.” As for the Columbus note, it simply silhouettes the scenery before the colors arrive to inflame it....

I’m working on the other remaining sections indicated in the index of the ms. as you have it, and hope to get a couple of them off to you within ten days. I haven’t had a chance to see Mr. Fox, director of the Brooklyn Museum, yet, as he has been away on his vacation, but have an appointment made with his secretary for early next week. I’m hoping to see Harry Marks as soon as he returns in order to ask his advice about having a copy made of the picture, the amount to pay, etc. Meanwhile, from what Harry [Crosby] said, I judge that you are going ahead with setting certain sections. Don’t rush along too fast, though--please! If we get it out by the last of November it will be soon enough. Meanwhile I’m not negotiating with Liveright or anyone else. I don’t think there will be any difficulty whatever in disposing of the 250 which you are printing. I don’t know how many people have already bespoken copies, and I’ll send you a list of names later on which will be pretty sure-fire.

New York seems better than ever to me. The beaches are wonderful--and packed with pulchritude. Where are you these days? I somehow can’t picture you as still in Paris.

P.S. Please ask Harry if he can think of any job for that nice Danish boy I introduced him to the morning I sailed. He’s without work or funds--and starving. He’s an expert trainer and keeper of horses (Danish Royal Artillery) and speaks English fairly well. -- -- -- -- Honest, industrious, and will do anything that’s honorable.

330: TO HARRY AND CARESSE CROSBY

_Brooklyn, N.Y._ _August 30th, 1929_

Dear Harry and Caresse: I had my first visit with Harry Marks today and am glad to hear that he has nothing as yet to report about any work of yours on _The Bridge_. For, as you know, I am anxious to add more--the “Cape Hatteras” section, at least--before you bring it out. This is now being worked out rapidly, and the aeronautical sections which you so much admired have been improved and augmented considerably. However, the line-lengths are longer than in any other section--so long, in fact, that to preserve them unbroken across the page I think we ought to change our plan regarding page size and use, instead of the previously-agreed-on Perse book for a model, your Mad Queen volume--even better looking in other respects, too, I think. I hope I can ask you for this change without appearing too presumptuous!

How did you like the “gloss” I sent you recently? I’m passionately anxious to hear from you as soon as possible. --/--/

I’m settled at last in a comfortable furnished apartment--not far from the navy yard. There have been great house-warmings, especially since I can buy corn whiskey from my janitor for only $6. per gallon! No more querulous, farty old landladies for me for awhile. Write me from now on directly at the above address instead of Patterson. Liveright is issuing a second edition of _White Buildings_--_Vanity Fair_ bestows laurels in the Sept. issue--Eliot urges me to contribute as well as old Mamby Canby of _The Sat[urday] Review_, the old enemy camp. So I’m feeling optimistic to a large extent.

331: TO CARESSE CROSBY

_Brooklyn, N.Y._ _6th September 1929_

Dear Caresse: Just received the first specimen proofs a little late, unfortunately, as my old landlady out at Patterson had thought they were “printed matter” and had failed to forward them as soon as certain other mail. But you’ll be writing me direct to the above address in the future anyway.

Please go ahead and set up what sections you already have in the large sized type. I like it much better than the smaller sized Caslon. Only--don’t you think that page (I’m using it as a model) would look better balanced, and certainly not crowded, with about four more lines of verse on it? I think that the extreme depth of the bottom margin looks awkward rather than luxurious.

I have more to send--and it’s very important. I am working like mad since I’ve found this apartment where I can keep my own hours, etc. I’m too rushed to type you out a final copy of this finale to the “Cape Hatteras” section yet, but you can get some idea of what I’m accomplishing by the muddled copy I’m including herewith. You’ll have the final version--including what you read in Paris--within a few days, aeronautics and all. It looks pretty good to me, and at least according to _my_ ideas of _The Bridge_ this edition wouldn’t be complete or even representative without it.

Then the “Quaker Hill” section--and “Indiana,” the final subsection to “Powhatan’s Daughter” (which won’t require any gloss, I think) will come in quick succession. I know what to plan on fairly well when I get into one of these fevers of work. So please be patient. The book must have these sections and I can promise to have them in your hands by the second week in October! Then clear steaming ahead! I’m very happy about the paper, format and all which you have selected. I’ll try to get you the fresh photo of Stella’s picture within a few days.

I hope you and Harry are still planning on a visit here next winter. Then maybe I can make up for the kiss I missed when sailing! Do you really like that little necklace that much?!! My gifts seldom have so fortunate a reception!

332: TO CARESSE CROSBY

[_Brooklyn_] _Sept. 6th ’29_

Dear Caresse: I forgot to include this new version of “Cutty Sark” in the earlier letter sent today. I have changed very little--what little has been only to promote clarity--which includes a more generous sprinkling of punctuation. So please use this instead of the version you’ve had.

The same quotation as before is used on the introductory sheet:

O, the navies old and oaken O, the _Temeraire_ no more!

--_Melville_

Hope this doesn’t put you out!

333: TO CARESSE CROSBY

_Patterson, N. Y._ _Sept. 17, 1929_

Dear Caresse: I sent you, registered, the “Cape Hatteras” last version. But retyping it for a magazine, I couldn’t help glimpsing some necessary improvements. So please use this _second_ version, as enclosed. I vow that you’ll be troubled by no further emendations--excepting perhaps a comma or so on the proofs.

Since I’m writing I can’t help saying that I’m highly pleased with the way I’ve been able to marshal the notes and agonies of the last two years’ effort into a rather arresting synthesis....

Gosh, how I’d like a bottle of Cutty Sark tonight to soothe my excited nerves! The countryside is the dryest here in years--and nothing to hope for next year, as frost and this later drowth have ruined the apple crop! I had to flee the heat in the city for a week’s work up here in my old farmhouse room. It’s lovely, too. Another week of it--by which time I expect to have finished the two remaining sections,--and I’ll be back in city quarters (130 Columbia Hts)....

334: TO LORNA DIETZ

_Patterson_ _Wednesday [ca. October 23, 1929]_

Dearest Lorna: I’ve been _weltschmerzing_ a little bit all by myself here since last Saturday afternoon, when I suddenly picked up and left town. I’ve never seen such color as this year’s autumnal shades, but the storm that began this morning after three wonderful days of sunshine probably won’t leave so much on the boughs to be gazed at.... Nevertheless I’m staying on at least until next Monday--and maybe somewhat longer. I feel quite rested already, but I know that I need a little “reserve” after the way I’ve been acting. I’m _hoping_ also, to complete the last two sections [_The Bridge_], God ‘elp me! And then to come back to town and see you again in your sweet, new, cheerful, rosy little nest! -- -- -- --

335: TO CARESSE CROSBY

_Brooklyn, N.Y._ _December 26th, 1929_

Dearest Caresse: I am hastily enclosing the final version of “Quaker Hill,” which ends my writing on _The Bridge_. You can now go ahead and finish it all. I’ve been slow, Heaven knows, but I know that you will forgive me. I haven’t added as many verses to what you took with you as I had expected. I had several more, roughly, in notes, but think that my present condensation is preferable. “Quaker Hill” is not, after all, one of the major sections of the poem; it is rather by way of an “accent mark” that it is valuable at all.

By the way, will you see that the middle photograph (the one of the barges and tug) goes between the “Cutty Sark” Section and the “Hatteras” Section. That is the “center” of the book, both physically and symbolically. Evans is very anxious, as am I, that no ruling or printing appear on the pages devoted to the reproductions--which is probably your intention anyway.

I have an idea for a change in one line of the dedication “To B. Bridge.” If you don’t like it, don’t change it. But I feel that it is more logical, even if no more suggestive. Instead of:

“--_And elevators heave us to our day_”

I suggest

“--_Till elevators drop us from our day_”

I’ll leave the choice to you.

I think of you a great deal. This letter doesn’t represent _me_ really, at all. But I must get it off for the _Mauretania_ or else risk the delays of one of the slower steamers, and I fear that you are already impatient. I shall write you more very soon, meanwhile I hope that you have recovered somewhat from the exhaustion that must have followed on your brave and marvelous endurance at the time of your departure. --/--/

P.S. Please send a review copy to Yvor Winters--RFD1, Palo Alto, California. -- -- -- --

1930

336: TO CHARLOTTE RYCHTARIK

_Brooklyn, N.Y._ _February 11th, 1930_

Dear Charlotte: I shoulda, kinda, gotta, really write you before ... but how time does fly! No, I’m not in Africa chasing lions and monkeys, but right here in Babylon hunting jobs. Sometimes I am sure, very sure indeed, that my days of romance are thoroughly dead and passed. I happen to be in that mood now--and if money has anything to do with the matter perhaps I’m right. Friends make a big difference however, and I hope I may always be expecting another letter from you and Richard.

I almost shed tears when I think of how little I saw of you during my last visit. My melodramatic departure and the attending circumstances sent me to bed with a backache for three weeks after I got home. Then, as you guessed, the terrible shock of Harry Crosby’s suicide threw me flat again for another week. I had just given a big party for him and his wife a few days before that happened, and I was with his wife and mother on the evening when the disaster occurred. In fact it was I who had to bring the terrible news to those two lovely women. Mrs. Crosby left for France a couple of days later, just as she had planned to do anyway. I think she has been a very brave woman to go right ahead and bring out the Paris edition of _The Bridge_ on regular schedule. I heard from her yesterday--and by now the edition is ready to be shipped to the agent here, Harry F. Marks, ----. As I told you, it’s a beautiful job of printing. The type used is a new French type, very much like the face which Richard recommended, Garamond. The Liveright edition (ready April 1st) is in Garamond and will be quite handsome also. Great interest has been aroused in advance and I am sure to get some very laudatory reviews. I really don’t want to write any poetry for awhile now, but just the same feel somehow depressed that I haven’t some ambitious project on hand to take the place of _The Bridge_. I haven’t seen the dancers that you spoke of, but hear that they are very good. If you ever get a chance to see the pantomime of Angna Enters in Cleveland be sure not to miss her. She is wonderful! Humor, pathos, tragedy--the whole gamut of the emotions. And there have been some wonderful art shows here this winter, better than any I saw in Europe. The Museum of Modern Art right now has a marvelous collection of modern French painters, etc. Georgia O’Keeffe, Marin shows--and I wish you could see the show of a friend of mine, Peter Blume! --/--/

337: TO WALDO FRANK

[_Brooklyn_] _March 16th_

Dear Waldo: It was _so_ kind of you to have replied so quickly and generously! I feel quite guilty for not having thanked you sooner. I’ve really never known so discouraging a time job-hunting. Insomnia has got me on the rack--and I really can’t envisage just what is in store, but perhaps after the reviews of _The Bridge_ come out (Liveright’s edition is due out next week) I’ll possibly be able to rally my confidence and make a better impression in “the business world.”

Meanwhile the disintegrating forces of N.Y. strike me as pretty severe!

It was reassuring to know that you got your copy of _The Bridge_. Cummings and one or two others didn’t--quite inexplicably. There’s much in it new to your eyes, and I am quite tremulous of your opinion, though perfectly content to wait for the time when you can afford to give it a good reading.

I’ll try to find you a first edition of _White Buildings_--but I haven’t much hope of locating one. Among your books somewhere you’ll find the copy I gave you, inscribed too, for I’m awfully certain I didn’t fail in that essential courtesy due long ago. Or you may have lost it. I’ll send you a copy of the second edition anyhow, and if my memory has served me wrong you’ll forgive me I’m sure. --/--/

338: To Paul Rosenfeld

_Patterson, N.Y._ _April 21st_,

Dear Paul: I’m sorry not to have the “Letter”[62] in your hands by this time. I’m hoping that a week’s delay won’t afflict your schedule too seriously.

As usual, when I attempt any sort of technical disquisitions I’m struggling against the chronic habit I seem to have--of trying to cram everything into one paragraph! I got clogged up, then paralyzed,--at least momentarily thrown off. But my intentions are honest and good. And I’m hoping to make my promise good by next Saturday.

There’s no liquor out here, at any rate.

339: TO HERBERT WEINSTOCK

_Patterson, New York_ _April 22nd, 1930_

Dear Herbert Weinstock: You have my sincerest gratitude for your enthusiastic review of _The Bridge_. Van Vuren had already sent me a copy, and I was just on the point of writing you my thanks when along came your good letter.

I hope I am deserving of such lofty companions as you group me with. I am almost tempted to believe your claims on the strength of your amazing insight into my objectives in writing, my particular symbolism, the intentional condensation and “density” of structure that I occasionally achieve, and the essential religious motive throughout my work. This last-mentioned feature commits me to self-consciousness on a score that makes me belie myself a little. For I have never consciously approached any subject in a religious mood; it is only afterward that I, or someone else generally, have noticed a prevalent piety. God save me from a Messianic predisposition!

It is pertinent to suggest, I think, that with more time and familiarity with _The Bridge_ you will come to envisage it more as one poem with a clearer and more integrated unity and development than was at first evident. At least if my own experience in reading and rereading Eliot’s _Wasteland_ has any relation to the circumstances this _may_ be found to be the case. It took me nearly five years, with innumerable readings to convince myself of the essential unity of that poem. And _The Bridge_ is at least as complicated in its structure and inferences as _The Wasteland_--perhaps more so.

I shall remember to write you my exact whereabouts in time to reach you before you leave for the East and Europe, and we shall meet somewhere in New York. At present the unemployment situation has me balked for any definite location beyond the next day or so.

340: TO EDA LOU WALTON

_Patterson, New York_ _April 23rd, 1930_

Dear Eda Lou: I am enclosing an extract from a letter written to Otto Kahn some time ago explaining my intentions in certain sections of _The Bridge_. I submit it to you more or less as I did to him, not as a justification for the poem but as a fairly accurate chart of certain purposes in the poem which I may or may not have succeeded in accomplishing. It may interest you. And since you have been kind enough to include the poem in your course at N.Y.U., it may prove even helpful in elucidating certain aspects of the poem.

Please keep this paper to yourself, however. I am at present busy with an elaboration of it into a more or less formalized essay for _The New American Caravan_. I’d like to have it back within two weeks if it won’t trouble you too much.

341: TO SELDEN RODMAN

_Brooklyn, N.Y._ _May 22nd, 1930_

Dear Mr. Rodman: Your criticism of _The Bridge_ was very much to the point, and I am grateful for your enthusiasm. I also share your admiration for the poetry of Archibald MacLeish, though I feel that at times he betrays too evidently a bias toward the fashionable pessimism of the hour so well established by T. S. Eliot.

I tried to break loose from that particular strait-jacket, without however committing myself to any oppositional form of didacticism. Your diffidence in ascribing any absolute conclusions in the poem is therefore correct, at least according to my intentions. The poem, as a whole, is, I think, an affirmation of experience, and to that extent is “positive” rather than “negative” in the sense that _The Waste Land_ is negative.

In a few days I am leaving town for the summer, but I should like to meet you next autumn if you are in this vicinity then.

342: TO ISIDOR SCHNEIDER

_Patterson, N.Y._ _June 8, ’30_

Dear Isidor: --/--/ That makes me all the more grateful for the evident care which you took in your review of _The Bridge_. Certainly I don’t see what more I could ask for--than your generous credit to and recognition of practically all the aspirations implicit in the poem. I hope the actual poem is deserving of it all. If you have read Winters’ attack in the June issue of _Poetry_ you cannot have been more astonished than I was to note the many reversals of opinion he has undergone since reading my acknowledgment to Whitman in the later “Cape Hatteras” section.

Had it not been for our previous extended correspondence I would not, of course, have written him about it. But as things stood I could hardly let silence infer an acceptance on my part of all the wilful distortions of meaning, misappropriations of opinion, pedantry and pretentious classification--besides illogic--which his review presents par excellence. I must read what prejudices he defends, I understand, against writing about subways, in the anti-humanist symposium. Poets should defer alluding to the sea, also, I presume, until Mr. Winters has got an invitation for a cruise!

I haven’t any work whatever in mind. I guess I can trust my father’s promise of a small allowance to carry me along out here until fall, when the gates of employment may prove a little better oiled than they have for some time past. If you hear of anything, Isidor, please let me know. I’m aching to get busy at almost anything. --/--/

343: TO ALLEN TATE

_Gaylordsville, Conn._ _July 13th, 1930_

Dear Allen: Your last good letter and the admirable review of _The Bridge_ in _The Hound & Horn_ deserved an earlier response, but time has somehow just been drifting by without my being very conscious of it. For one thing, I have been intending to get hold of a copy of _The Hound & Horn_ and give your review a better reading, before replying, than I could achieve at the tables in Brentano’s when I was in town about two weeks ago. I still haven’t a copy and consequently may wrong you in making any comments whatever. But as I don’t want to delay longer I hope you’ll pardon any discrepancies.

The fact that you posit _The Bridge_ at the end of a tradition of romanticism may prove to have been an accurate prophecy, but I don’t yet feel that such a statement can be taken as a foregone conclusion. A great deal of romanticism may persist--of the sort to deserve serious consideration, I mean.

But granting your accuracy--I shall be humbly grateful if _The Bridge_ can fulfil simply the metaphorical inferences of its title.... You will admit our age (at least our predicament) to be one of transition. If _The Bridge_, embodying as many anomalies as you find in it, yet contains as much authentic poetry here and there as even Winters grants,--then perhaps it can serve as at least the function of a link connecting certain chains of the past to certain chains and tendencies of the future. In other words, a diagram or “process” in the sense that Genevieve Taggard refers to all my work in estimating Kunitz’s achievement in the enclosed review. This gives it no more interest than as a point of chronological reference, but “nothing ventured, nothing gained”--and I can’t help thinking that my mistakes may warn others who may later be tempted to an interest in similar subject matter.

Personally I think that Taggard is a little too peremptory in dispensing with Kunitz’s “predecessors.” We’re all unconscious evolutionists, I suppose, but she apparently belongs to the more rabid ranks. I can’t help wishing I had read more of Kunitz before seeing her review. He is evidently an excellent poet. I should like to have approached him, not as one bowing before Confucius, nor as one buying a new nostrum for lame joints. Taggard, like Winters, isn’t looking for poetry any more. Like Munson, they are both in pursuit of some cure-all. Poetry as poetry (and I don’t mean merely decorative verse) isn’t worth a second reading any more. Therefore--away with Kubla Khan, out with Marlowe, and to hell with Keats! It’s a pity, I think. So many true things have a way of coming out all the better without the strain to sum up the universe in one impressive little pellet. I admit that I don’t answer the requirements. My vision of poetry _is_ too personal to “answer the call.” And if I ever write any more verse it will probably be at least as personal as the idiom of _White Buildings_ whether anyone cares to look at it or not.

This personal note is doubtless responsible for what you term as sentimentality in my attitude toward Whitman.[63] It’s true that my rhapsodic address to him in _The Bridge_ exceeds any exact evaluation of the man. I realized that in the midst of the composition. But since you and I hold such divergent prejudices regarding the value of the materials and events that W. responded to, and especially as you, like so many others, never seem to have read his _Democratic Vistas_ and other of his statements sharply decrying the materialism, industrialism, etc., of which you name him the guilty and hysterical spokesman, there isn’t much use in my tabulating the qualified, yet persistent reasons I have for my admiration of him, and my allegiance to the positive and universal tendencies implicit in nearly all his best work. You’ve heard me roar at too many of his lines to doubt that I can spot his worst, I’m sure.

It amuses me to see how Taggard takes up some of Winters’ claims against me (I expected this and look for more) in his article in the Anti-Humanist volume, especially as that borrowing doesn’t seem to have obviated his own eclipse according to her estimate of the new constellation. I have the feeling that Miss Taggard is not only conducting her own education in public (as someone once said of George Moore) but also the education of her subjects.... At least she seems now to have attained that acumen which is a confusion to all.

I’m leaving this week-end for a visit to Cummings in New Hampshire. After a final row with Addie M. Turner (who is about to sell her place anyway) I have moved my things down the road to Fitzi’s [Fitzgerald]. Occasionally I am appalled at my apparently chronic inability to relinquish some hold or connection that has long since ceased to yield me anything but annoyance--until some violence of fates forces my release. That’s one of many ways I seem to keep of wasting time. --/--/

344: TO GUGGENHEIM MEMORIAL FOUNDATION[64]

[_Gaylordsville_] [_August 29, 1930_]

My application for a fellowship is prompted by a desire for European study and creative leisure for the composition of poetry. I am interested in characteristics of European culture, classical and romantic, with especial reference to contrasting elements implicit in the emergent features of a distinctive American poetic consciousness.

My one previous visit to Europe, though brief, proved creatively stimulating in this regard, as certain aspects of my long poem, _The Bridge_, may suggest. Modern and medieval French literature and philosophy interest me particularly. I should like the opportunity for a methodical pursuit of these studies in conjunction with my creative projects.

My next volume of poetry will probably be issued by Horace Liveright, Inc., who has already issued my two previous books, _White Buildings_ and _The Bridge_.

345: TO ALLEN TATE

_Gaylordsville, Conn._ _Sept. 7th, 1930_

Dear Allen: Have you ever had boils? I got my first specimen during my visit to the Cummingses six weeks ago, brought it home along with several up-and-coming progeny, and “the loyal and royal succession of the Plantagenets” (as E.E. referred to them) has not left me yet. Since the throne room is in my right arm pit, not to mention the chamber and royal nursery, I’ve scarcely been able to manipulate my right arm to the meek extent of writing a letter much of the time. I think that I have now established at least my better intentions!

The pictures of your homestead were much appreciated and widely circulated hereabouts. It’s my opinion that you now have about all one could ask for in the way of rural comfort not to mention dignity. Certainly it surpasses anything owned and directed by any of our mutuals in this valley. I should enjoy the visit you suggested (many thanks!) but, boils or no boils, I’ve got to get located in some office as soon now as possible--or at least be on the scene of interrogation, prison, palace, and supplication. --/--/

I was glad to get your _Three Poems_. The distinguished diction throughout reminds me of the little advance I have ever made in essential flexibility and the finer intonations. These qualities seem most evident to me in the “Message from Abroad,” which, though it is largely inferential to me in its substance, is in a way, all the more welcome as a poem to be re-read for a multiple suggestiveness that may very well take on clearer perspective with time. “The Cross” keeps me guessing a little too strenuously. I can’t help thinking it perhaps too condensed, and, as Bill [Brown] suggested, a not entirely fused mélange of ecclesiastical and highly-personalized imagery. In which case you sin no more than Eliot in the recent “Ash-Wednesday.” The “Ode to the Confederate Dead” is as excellent as ever, I don’t think essentially improved except as regards rhythm: the wind-and-leaf interpolations adding a certain subjective continuity.

My summer seems like a blank to me right now. Perhaps my study of Dante--the _Commedia_ which I had never touched before--will have been seen to have given it some significance, but that isn’t much to boast of. --/--/

346: TO SOLOMON GRUNBERG

_N.Y.C._ _Sept. 30th ’30_

Dear Mony: --/--/ Now that I am back in town again, looking for the needles in haystacks and jobs in limbo,--now that the most monotonous and familiar situation of _all_ engrosses, nay inundates me, I’m taking “time off” to answer in the hope that you’ll write me more news and also be sure to look me up on your next visit to these parts.

I’m most grateful for your continued interest in _The Bridge_. After so much grandiose talk as I indulged myself in during its interrupted progress it’s a wonder if most of my friends aren’t appalled at its ultimate shortcomings. Some of them are. It’s gone into a second printing, however, which means a sale exceeding the first thousand. If last spring hadn’t ushered in such a calamitous slump in all books I imagine I might have been more fortunate; at any rate I can’t complain about most of the reviews.

My summer was a kind of steady doldrums, enlivened only by a sudden insight into the values and beauty of Dante’s _Commedia_. Not that I’ve learned Italian, but that I found a decent translation (Temple Classics Edition) thanks to Eliot’s inspiring essay on Dante. My recent struggles with a poem of large proportions and intricate framework, I think, gave me a maturer appreciation of the _Commedia_ than I could have mustered ten years ago. Sometimes one feels that one’s neglect or “indifference” to a great masterpiece is almost justified, pending the proper development of one’s own powers of perception proportionate to the opportunity postponed. (I didn’t realize that alliteration was so “on the job” this morning!) Of course I now realize how much more than ever I have to work to accomplish anything whatever.

Some conversations with you again would be very welcome interludes in my present job-obsession. Aren’t you planning on New York before long? -- -- -- --

347: TO SELDEN RODMAN

[_New York City_] _October 27th, 1930_

Dear Mr. Rodman: Thank you for sending me a copy of _The [Harkness] Hoot_. The copy that you had previously sent to _The New Republic_ (via the hands of Slater Brown) had already afforded me considerable pleasure. Despite the unfortunate sentimentality of Hale’s oration the issue is amply justified by your essay on MacLeish, if I may say so,--the most penetrating estimate that he has so far received.

As for Hale, I recommend his perusal of the recent rape of _The Woman of Andros_ conducted by Mike Gold in the columns of _The N. R._--if he wants to see himself outdone on his own ground. Not that I care for Wilder. Never having read a word he wrote I cannot be expected to nurse sighs or curses. But I _have_ read something of Spengler--and would just as soon he showed an American visa, for once, before predicting any more details of “our” future. --/--/

348: TO WILLIAM WRIGHT

_Brooklyn, New York_ _November 21, 1930_

Dear Bill: --/--/ The details of your summer program and the description of your winter quarters reflect an enviable settled state of affairs. New York is full of the unemployed, more every day, and the tension evident in thousands of faces isn’t cheerful to contemplate. It is a little strange to see the city so “grim about the mouth,” as Melville might say. Yours truly has been having his grim moments, too; in fact I’m pretty well convinced that unmitigated anxiety has a highly corrosive effect on the resilience of the imagination. I am trying to write a couple of articles for _Fortune_--that deluxe business-industrial monthly published by Time, Inc.--and I am appalled at the degree of paralysis that worry can impose on the functioning of one’s natural faculties. One assignment is a “profile” of Walter Teagle, president of Standard Oil (N.J.). I managed to keep the oil king talking far beyond the time allotted, but when I come to write it up in typical _Fortune_ style the jams gather by the hundred.

I am so pleased that you continue to enjoy _The Bridge_. I admit having felt considerably jolted at the charge of sentimentality continually levelled at the “Indiana” fragment, particularly when such charges came from people who acknowledged a violent admiration for Hardy’s poetry. For many of his lyrics have seemed to me at least as “sentimental” as this “mawkish” performance of my own. But I approve of a certain amount of sentiment anyway. Right now it is more fashionable to speak otherwise, but the subject (or emotion) of “race” has always had as much of sentiment behind it--as it has had of prejudice, also. Since “race” is the principal motivation of “Indiana,” I can’t help thinking that, observed in the proper perspective, and judged in relation to the argument or theme of the Pocahontas section as a whole, the pioneer woman’s maternalism isn’t excessive.

Did I mention my pleasure in reading a very skillful poem of yours about various types of fur. It came out in _Poetry_, I think. Certainly Baudelaire would have been charmed by its adept blending of beautiful names with a world of tactile sensations. The geographical evocations implicit in the list of animals mentioned were delightful. I see a great many reasons for you to continue writing, especially since it brings you none of the pangs that accompany a more professional concern with the muses. I haven’t written a line for over nine months, and nine months is not so promising a period in the seven arts as it may be in the physical sciences.

I’ll try not to be so remiss in writing again. Would I be deemed insensitive in requesting a temporary loan to help carry me over till a check from _Fortune_ can be expected. Please be very frank. Money is “hard” everywhere these days, and if you can’t spare 25 or 50 dollars, or if you have any scruples against such transactions, I shall remain as affectionate and as spontaneous a partner to our friendship as ever. In fact I would prefer to shoulder double my present quandary before exposing you to any stringencies.

I have applied for a Guggenheim Scholarship (which would give me a year’s study and creative freedom abroad) and hope to God that I’ll gain approval. Announcements are made early in March. Meanwhile I’m praying that I can write well enough on industrial subjects to keep on with _Fortune_. My room here is surprisingly cheap--a weekly rate that barely exceeds rooming house costs--and with these articles I’ve had to be located where messages could be taken in my absence. The requirement of advance payment is none too comforting, however. --/--/

349: TO WILLIAM WRIGHT

_Brooklyn, N.Y._ _November 29th, 1930_

Dear Bill: Your imagination is evidently as magnanimous as your hand is.... By ascribing my almost chronic indigence to so Nietzschean a program as the attitude of “living life dangerously” infers, you make me blink a little. For my exposures to rawness and to risk have been far too inadvertent, I fear, to deserve any such honorable connotations;--and my disorderly adventures and peregrinations I regard with anything but complacency. However, it isn’t everyone who can lend help with such graceful tolerance of evident shortcomings; and your euphemisms make me doubly grateful.

The Teagle article is now awaiting approval. I hope to know more about my immediate fate early next week. If that doesn’t eventuate in a check and another assignment, then my best bet lies in the direction of book-selling in one of the many Doubleday-Doran shops in the metropolitan area. I know someone who may succeed in insinuating me there. In normal times, of course, I should have been located with an advertising agency months since. No, teaching isn’t a solution for me, Bill. I haven’t any academic education whatsoever. You may have forgotten that I left East High without even a diploma--in my junior year. Mirabile dictu!... Noblesse oblige!... Pax vobiscum!... Nunc dimittis est ... so who am I, therefore, to rule a class!

I’m hoping that I won’t need to cash your second check, a contingency which I’ll do my best to avoid. You’ll hear from me again very soon. Meanwhile I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your kindness.

350: TO ISIDOR SCHNEIDER

_Brooklyn, N.Y._ _December 2nd, 1930_

Dear Isidor: --/--/ As for the “Hymn Against Violence,” I’m all for it! It is beautifully sustained, amazingly compact; its imagery is often as startling as Rimbaud’s:

“--then overhear reiteration’s tremor drum upon your brain the changeless diaries of fear.” and “Harder curds the cloud. Waking in us no ease, night comes of terror darkened infinite, of dying herds.”

A strange and sombre metre. Biblical as it is, and owing something perhaps to Hopkins’ exclamatory use of violent internal stresses, it is still highly original and by all odds the best poem of yours that I have yet seen. It’s a poem that I imagine Eliot would be very glad to have for _The Criterion_. But you probably got much better remuneration from _The Menorah_; besides, Eliot is apt to deliberate a year or so before informing one of his decision. --/--/

351: TO SAMUEL LOVEMAN

[_Chagrin Falls, Ohio_] _December 29th, 1930_

Dear Sam: To make partial amends for my neglect of you, I am, as you see, giving you the full, blazing benefit of the official stationery! Of course, had I been consulted, I should never have permitted so harmless a slogan as “The place to _bring_ your guest.” The fourth word would still have begun with “b,” but there would have been more action implied in the order of the other letters substituted, or I’m no befriender of monks and monkery.

However, that might belie the nights hereabouts. As I have just written to B---- A----, _la vie sportif_ continues its reckless pace hereabouts without any too great abundance of absinthe, gobs, apple-vendors or breadlines. It’s too bad that all this drouth and quietude should have produced, so far at least, nothing better than a maidenly complexion and a bulging waist line. Gone is that glittering eye of Sands St. midnights, erstwhile so compelling; and the ancient mariner is facing the new year with all the approved trepidations of the middle west business man, approved panic model of 1931. So much for resignation. It brings me at least a little more sleep than I was getting in New York.

For about ten days I was busy at my father’s store on Euclid, near Higbee’s [Cleveland]. Driving in from the Falls here, wrapping Xmas parcelpost bundles, and driving back at night, I lived in a veritable whirl of excitement. Now that the Xmas “rush” is a memory only, I am casting about for some connection or other with what remains of the direct mail advertising business here. So far it doesn’t look promising. But unless I manage to turn a few honest pennies I mayn’t get back to your skyline for many months. Of course I knew that when I came out here, but I had borrowed all I felt justified in borrowing and the situation in NY looked, and still looks, hopeless. As you had no doubt observed, it had gotten considerably under my skin. --/--/