The Adobe Indian hag sings her lullaby:
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he beetle is blindThe beetle is blindThe beetle is blindThe beetle is blind, etc., etc. and Kandinsky in his, _Ueber das Geistige in der Kunst_, sets down thefollowing axioms for the artist: Every artist has to express himselfEvery artist has to express his epoch.Every artist has to express the pure and eternalqualities of the art of all men. So we have the fish and the bait, but the last rule holds three hooks atonce—not for the fish, however. I do not overlook De Gourmont’s plea for a meeting of the nations, but Ido believe that when they meet Paris will be more than slightly abashedto find parodies of the middle ages, Dante and Langue D’Oc foisted uponit as the best in United States poetry. Even Eliot, who is too fine anartist to allow himself to be exploited by a blockheaded grammaticaster,turns recently toward “one definite false note” in his quatrains, whichmore nearly approach America than ever La Figlia Que Piange did. EzraPound is a Boscan who has met his Navagiero. One day Ezra and I were walking down a back lane in Wyncote. I contendedfor bread, he for caviar. I become hot. He, with fine discretion,exclaimed: “Let us drop it. We will never agree, or come to anagreement.” He spoke then like a Frenchman, which is one who discerns. Imagine an international congress of poets at Paris or Versailles, Remyde Gourmont (now dead) presiding, poets all speaking five languagesfluently. Ezra stands up to represent U. S. verse and De Gourmont sitsdown smiling. Ezra begins by reading, La Figlia Que Piange. It would be apretty pastime to gather into a mental basket the fruits of that readingfrom the minds of the ten Frenchmen present; their impressions of thesort of United States that very fine flower was picked from. After thisKreymborg might push his way to the front and read Jack’s House. E. P. is the best enemy United States verse has. He is interested,passionately interested—even if he doesn’t know what he is talkingabout. But of course he does know what he is talking about. He does not,however, know everything, not by more than half. The accordances of whichAmericans have the parts and the colors but not the completions beforethem pass beyond the attempts of his thought. It is a middle aging blightof the Imagination. I praise those who have the wit and courage, and the conventionality, togo direct toward their vision of perfection in an objective world wherethe sign-posts are clearly marked, viz., to London. But confine them inhell for their paretic assumption that there is no alternative but theirown groove. Dear fat Stevens, thawing out so beautifully at forty! I was one dayirately damning those who run to London when Stevens caught me up withhis mild: “But where in the world will you have them run to?” * * * * * Nothing that I should write touching poetry would be complete withoutMaxwell Bodenheim in it, even had he not said that the Improvisationswere “perfect,” the best things I had ever done; for that I place him,Janus, first and last. Bodenheim pretends to hate most people, including Pound and Kreymborg,but that he really goes to this trouble I cannot imagine. He seems ratherto me to have the virtue of self absorbtion so fully developed that hateis made impossible. Due to this, also, he is an unbelievable physicalstoic. I know of no one who lives so completely in his pretences asBogie does. Having formulated his world neither toothache nor the miseryto which his indolence reduces him can make head against the force ofhis imagination. Because of this he remains for me a heroic figure,which, after all, is quite apart from the stuff he writes and which onlyconcerns him. He is an Isaiah of the butterflies. Bogie was the young and fairly well acclaimed genius when he came toNew York four years ago. He pretended to have fallen in Chicago and tohave sprained his shoulder. The joint was done up in a proper Sayre’sdressing and there really looked to be a bona fide injury. Of coursehe couldn’t find any work to do with one hand so we all chipped in. Itlasted a month! During that time Bogie spent a week at my house at nosmall inconvenience to Florence, who had two babies on her hands justthen. When he left I expressed my pleasure at having had his company.“Yes,” he replied, “I think you have profited by my visit.” The statementimpressed me by its simple accuracy as well as by the evidence it bore ofthat fullness of the imagination which had held the man in its tide whilewe had been together. Charlie Demuth once told me that he did not like the taste of liquor,for which he was thankful, but that he found the effect it had on hismind to be delightful. Of course Li Po is reported to have written hisbest verse supported in the arms of the Emperor’s attendants and with adancing-girl to hold his tablet. He was also a great poet. Wine is merelythe latchstring. The virtue of it all is in an opening of the doors, though some roomsof course will be empty, a break with banality, the continual hardeningwhich habit enforces. There is nothing left in me but the virtue ofcuriosity, Demuth puts in. The poet should be forever at the ship’s prow. An acrobat seldom learns really a new trick, but he must exercisecontinually to keep his joints free. When I made this discovery itstarted rings in my memory that keep following one after the other tothis day. I have placed the following Improvisations in groups, somewhat after theA. B. A. formula, that one may support the other, clarifying or enforcingperhaps the other’s intention. The arrangement of the notes, each following its poem and separated fromit by a ruled line, is borrowed from a small volume of Metastasio, _VariePoesie Dell’ Abate Pietro Metastasio_, Venice, 1795. _September 1, 1918_
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