Of course Sandburg will tell you that you miss the “big drifts,” and Bodenheim will object to your not being sufficiently decadent.
You thank your bloomin gawd you’ve got enough Spanish blood to muddy up your mind, and prevent the current American ideation from going through it like a blighted collander.
The thing that saves your work is opacity, and don’t forget it. Opacity is NOT an American quality. Fizz, swish, gabble, and verbiage, these are echt Americanisch.
And alas, alas, poor old Masters. Look at Oct. Poetry.
Let me indulge the American habit of quotation:
“Si le cosmopolitisme littéraire gagnait encore et qu’il réussit à étaindre ce que les differénce de race ont allumé de haine de sang parmi les hommes, j’y verrais un gain pour la civilization et pour l’humanité tout entière”.…
“L’amour excessif d’une patrie a pour immédiat corollair l’horreur des patries étrangères. Non seulment on craint de quitter la jupe de sa maman, d’aller voir comment vivent les autres hommes, de se mêler à leur luttes, de partager leur travaux, non seulment on reste chez soi, mais on finit par fermer sa porte.”
“Cette folie gagne certains littérateurs et le même professeur, en sortant d’expliquer le Cid ou Don Juan, rédige de gracieuses injures contre Ibsen et l’influence, hélas, trop illusoire, de son oevre, pourtant toute de lumière et de beauté.” et cetera. Lie down and compose yourself.
I like to think of the Greeks as setting out for the colonies in Sicily and the Italian Peninsula. The Greek temperament lent itself to a certain symmetrical sculptural phase and to a fat poetical balance of line that produced important work but I like better the Greeks setting their backs to Athens. The ferment was always richer in Rome, the dispersive explosion was always nearer, the influence carried further and remained hot longer. Hellenism, especially the modern sort, is too staid, too chilly, too little fecundative to impregnate my world.
Hilda Doolittle before she began to write poetry or at least before she began to show it to anyone would say: “You’re not satisfied with me, are you Billy? There’s something lacking, isn’t there?” When I was with her my feet always seemed to be sticking to the ground while she would be walking on the tips of the grass stems.