Y. E. A.
That this narrative may be complete, the articles and comment that appeared in The New York Times Book Review are reproduced, together with a letter to the editor written by the author of this volume, which, neither acknowledged nor published by him, obtained wide circulation through The Scoop,† † Issue of October 10, 1914. a magazine issued every Saturday by The Press Club of Chicago. It was quite characteristic of Allison to decline the very urgent requests of many friends to jump into the arena and make a claim for that which is his own creation and in coming to a negative decision, his reasons are probably best expressed in a letter to Henry A. Sampson, who himself writes poetry:
Yours of the 5th containing wormwood from the N. Y. Times (and being the 11th copy received from loving friends) is here.
Jealous! Jealous! Just the acute development on your part of the ordinary professional jealousy. Merely because I have at last found my place amongst those solitary and dazzling poets, Homer and Shakespeare, who, also, it has been proved, did not write their own stuff, but found it all in folk lore and copied it down.
Well, damn me, I can’t help my own genius and do not care for its products because I can always make more, and I compose these things for my own satisfaction.
I, with Shakespeare and Homer, perceive the bitter inefficacy of fighting the scientific critics. Walt Mason saw the versification was artful instead of “bungling and crude,” but the Times critic knows a copy out of a “chanty book” when he sees it.
I envy your being unpublished. You do not have to bleed with me and Homer and Bill. I feel the desiccating effects of my own dishonor. I grow distrustful. I wonder if you wrote your poems. You refused to publish. Were you, astute and keen reader of auguries, afraid of being found out? Who writes all these magnificent things that me and Homer and Bill couldn’t and didn’t write?
No, I don’t owe it to my friends to settle this. I’d a sight rather plead guilty and accept indeterminate sentence than to waste time on my friends. I’ve got ’em or I haven’t. And I want to convince enemies by a profound and dignified sneak.
From one who has had dirt done him.
Mantellini