Chapter XVIII: Part THREE: West Indies-Europe (3)

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_