I know a poet who could make nothing of Vachel Lindsay’s things until Lindsay chanted them to him one day. And I know another who said to me, when I remarked that I didn’t like Alfred Kreymborg’s verse, “Oh, but you would if you knew him.” I am puzzled, because I know this man to be an intelligent being. And somehow I have always been under the naive impression that poetry was a matter of art.
But there are worse things. There is one type of person we always eject promptly from the office of The Little Review. He is the person who says that Amy Lowell’s poetry has no feeling in it. Now please listen: I want to quote you something. It is called Vernal Equinox, it was written by Miss Lowell, and it appeared in the September issue of Poetry; but I want to see it put down in these pages so that we may actually know it has been in The Little Review:
The scent of hyacinths, like a pale mist, lies between me and my book;
And the South Wind, washing through the room,
Makes the candles quiver;
My nerves sting at a spatter of rain on the shutter,
And I am uneasy at the bursting of green shoots
Outside, in the night.
Why are you not here to overpower me with your tense and urgent love?
A poet whose new book will soon be talked of said to me, when I showed this to him, “Yes, it’s very clever, but it has no feeling.” He left the office gladly in three minutes.