The true value is that peculiarity which gives an object a character by itself. The associational or sentimental value is the false. Its imposition is due to lack of imagination, to an easy lateral sliding. The attention has been held too rigid on the one plane instead of following a more flexible, jagged resort. It is to loosen the attention, my attention since I occupy part of the field, that I write these improvisations. Here I clash with Wallace Stevens.
The imagination goes from one thing to another. Given many things of nearly totally divergent natures but possessing one-thousandth part of a quality in common, provided that be new, distinguished, these things belong in an imaginative category and not in a gross natural array. To me this is the gist of the whole matter. It is easy to fall under the spell of a certain mode, especially if it be remote of origin, leaving thus certain of its members essential to a reconstruction of its significance permanently lost in an impenetrable mist of time. But the thing that stands eternally in the way of really good writing is always one: the virtual impossibility of lifting to the imagination those things which lie under the direct scrutiny of the senses, close to the nose. It is this difficulty that sets a value upon all works of art and makes them a necessity. The senses witnessing what is immediately before them in detail see a finality which they cling to in despair, not knowing which way to turn. Thus the so-called natural or scientific array becomes fixed, the walking devil of modern life. He who even nicks the solidity of this apparition does a piece of work superior to that of Hercules when he cleaned the Augean stables.
Stevens’ letter applies really to my book of poems, “Al Que Quiere” (which means, by the way, To Him Who Wants It) but the criticism he makes of that holds good for each of the improvisations if not for the oevre as a whole.
It begins with a postscript in the upper left hand corner: “I think, after all, I should rather send this than not, although it is quarrelsomely full of my own ideas of discipline.
April 9
My dear Williams:
…
What strikes me most about the poems themselves is their casual character.… Personally I have a distaste for miscellany. It is one of the reasons I do not bother about a book myself.
(Wallace Stevens is a fine gentleman whom Cannell likened to a Pennsylvania Dutchman who has suddenly become aware of his habits and taken to “society” in self defence. He is always immaculately dressed. I don’t know why I should always associate him in my mind with an imaginary image I have of Ford Madox Hueffer.)
…My idea is that in order to carry a thing to the extreme necessity to convey it one has to stick to it;… Given a fixed point of view, realistic, imagistic or what you will, everything adjusts itself to that point of view; and the process of adjustment is a world in flux, as it should be for a poet. But to fidget with points of view leads always to new beginnings and incessant new beginnings lead to sterility.