"I took some of D'Annunzio's books to read on my voyage home. I read Il Piacere. I realized its charm, I realized the highly æsthetic quality of its author, a scholarly and exact æstheticism as well as an emotional æstheticism. But, nevertheless, I had to force myself to read the book. It was simply a description of a young man's amorous adventures. And I could not see any reason for the existence of this carefully written record of passional experiences.
"It seemed to me that the war had swept this sort of thing aside, or had swept aside my interest in this sort of thing. The book seemed to me as dull and trivial and as remote as a second-rate eighteenth-century novel. And I wondered if we would ever again return to the time when such a record of a young man's emotional and sensual experiences would be worth while.
"I came to the conclusion that D'Annunzio himself would not now write such a novel. I think that it would seem to him to be too trivial a report on life. I think that the war has so forced the essential things of life upon the attention of young men."
SIXTEEN DON'TS FOR POETS
ARTHUR GUITERMAN
Arthur Guiterman has been called the Owen Seaman of America. Of course he isn't, any more than Owen Seaman is the Arthur Guiterman of England. But the verse which brings Arthur Guiterman his daily bread is turned no less deftly than is that of Punch's famous editor. Arthur Guiterman is not a humorist who writes verse; he is a poet with an abundant gift of humor.
Now, the author of The Antiseptic Baby and the Prophylactic Pup and The Quest of the Riband, and of those unforgetable rhymed reviews, differs from most other poets not only in possessing an abnormally developed sense of humor, but also in being able to make a comfortable living out of the sale of his verse. But when he talked to me recently he was by no means inclined to advise all able young poets to expect their poetry to provide them with board and lodging.