PART THREE West Indies-Europe (1926-1930) (continued 2)

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:

“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.