Isn't it funny what happens to critics who would mark out meters and bounds for the Muse—denying the name "poem," for example, to a work because it is not like some other work, or like one that is in the minds of them?
I hope you are prosperous and happy and that I shall sometimes hear from you.
Howes writes me that the "Lone Hand"—Sydney—has been commending you.
Sincerely yours, Ambrose Bierce.
Washington, D. C.,
October 9,
1909.
Dear George,
I return the poems with a few random comments and suggestions.
I'm a little alarmed lest you take too seriously my preference of your rhyme to your blank—especially when I recall your "Music" and "The Spirit of Beauty." Perhaps I should have said only that you are not so likely to write well in blank. (I think always of "Tasso to Leonora," which I cannot learn to like.) Doubtless I have too great fondness for great lines—your great lines—and they occur less frequently in your blank verse than in your rhyme—most frequently in your quatrains, those of sonnets included. Don't swear off blank—except as you do drink—but study it more. It's "an hellish thing."
It looks as if I might go to California sooner than I had intended. My health has been wretched all summer. I need a sea voyage—one via Panama would be just the thing. So if the cool weather of autumn do not restore me I shall not await spring here. But I'm already somewhat better. If I had been at sea I should have escaped the Cook-Peary controversy. We talk nothing but arctic matters here—I enclose my contribution to its horrors.