When I’m feeling better I hope to write you a decent letter—the last two have been so haphazard, violent and vulgar. I hope these days of sea and sunshine and breezes are resting you and improving Tom.[48] In Havana I bought a New Yorker and read your van Loon snapshot—marvelling again at your flexibility and dash. Otherwise I was sipping the glorious limonades most of the time! couldn’t get my mouth open wide enough to receive much other nourishment! Took long walks around the harbour and along the Malacon. A lovely city, albeit insipid; full of white and gold and azure buildings. Even plaster has something to say.

250: To ——

Isle of Pines, Cuba [July?]

Dear ——: —/—/ I have not been able to write one line since I came here—the mind is completely befogged by the heat and besides there is a strange challenge and combat in the air—offered by “Nature” so monstrously alive in the tropics which drains the psychic energies.—And my poem was progressing so beautifully until — — — — took it into her head to be so destructive! How silly all this sounds! Howsoever—it’s a cruel jest of Fate—and I doubt if I shall continue to write for another year. For I’ve lost all faith in my material—“human nature” or what you will—and any true expression must rest on some faith in something.

It has been so disgusting to note the sudden turns and antics of my “friends” since I had the one little bit help I ever had toward my work in the money from Kahn. Everytime I came into N.Y. from the country I’d hear new monstrosities of fables going about town as to how I was squandering money on pate de foi gras, etc. And worse whisperings. It’s all been very tiresome—and I’d rather lose such elite for the old society of vagabonds and sailors—who don’t enjoy chit-chat.

Two of the latter, by the way, are keeping up a regular flow of letters and cards to me here. One, F——, came clear up to Patterson to see me during May—but found me gone, of course.

I was very touched to hear that he had journeyed all the way from Norfolk—in memory of two evenings in Brooklyn last January. Immortally choice and funny and pathetic are some of my recollections in such connection. I treasure them—I always can—against many disillusionments made bitter by the fact that faith was given and expected—whereas, with the sailor no faith or such is properly expected and how jolly and cordial and warm the tonsiling is sometimes, after all. Let my lusts be my ruin, then, since all else is a fake and mockery. —/—/

251: To His Mother

[Isle of Pines]  July 8th, 1926

Dear Grace: Well,—after two months of absolute silence I’m glad to hear from you—and sorry to know that you are so disturbed and worried as you are, and sick in bed. —/—/

The trip to Cayman I’m still trying to get over. Everyone (I don’t know why native Americans here should tell such stories) had been telling me how charming the little island was. More than that, the sea-sailing to and fro had interested me. Being in a very dull mood (the intense and sudden heat here had made me torpid and inactive) I thought the trip would spur me, stimulate me a little toward continuing my writing on the Bridge poem, not a line of which I had been able to add since I came down here.

Instead of a two days trip over, it took four. Headwinds all the way. It was not until the island was cleared that I realized how many were on that sixty-foot schooner. Thirty-five! and all of them niggers who proved to have no idea of ordinary decent cleanliness, and the crowd made it almost impossible to find a place to stand, lie or sit for ten minutes at a time—not to mention the fact that there was no shade from the intense blaze of the sun unless one could brave the stinks and fumes of a dozen odd sick and wailing nigger females below decks. Most of these never emerged from their hole there during the entire voyage, but pots, bowls, basins, fruit peelings and a thousand shrieks and wails were raised up every hour of the day and night to be emptied on the deck, my nose and ears being kept busy, I can tell you!

When we at last were in sight of the island we were greeted (even three miles out) with such droves of savage mosquitoes as I had never imagined outside of Bon Echo, Canada. And when I was landed I found them to be far, far worse. There was only one place on the island (no hotel) where I could be accommodated. A sort of boarding house kept by a woman who used to cook over at Santa Fe. Whether they were hers or not, I don’t know, but the house was packed with infants and children who kept up a constant racket and screaming. All the Negroes on the island were very pious, and about the time the children would quiet down a whole band of them in the house next door would raise their voices to God in hymns that would scrape the varnish off the woodwork. Worst of all, there was not an inch of screening on the house. I spent literally dollars buying insect powders and keeping a constant smudge going in my room so that my eyes were in a constant stream of tears from the smoke and my lungs nearly burst with suffocation.

Even then, one side of my face and neck were so badly poisoned from the constant bites that they were quite swollen. The beautiful beaches that I had heard about on the island I never saw. To walk more than half a mile from your doorstep was almost to court madness, St. Vitus dance, or death. The very arm with which you were attempting to beat off the regiments of insects would become so covered with them (even while in violent action) that you gave up any hope of relieving yourself of their company.

You can picture me, then, pacing back and forth in my room, very much in the mood of old Mrs. Johnson, in our kitchen at 1709 [Cleveland home of Crane family]—with a hand pressed on the top of my head, whispering to myself that I would soon be quite insane and relieved of my torments.

Someday I’ll tell you more about this famous “vacation” and “holiday” in the picturesque West Indies. I had ten days and long nights of it before the boat captain finally pulled anchor and started back to Gerona again. The load this time was as heavy as before and equally dirty. The trip was equally long. We lay for two whole days in midocean and a dead calm, the water so still that you could see yourself in it like a mirror. The sun was terrific and the decks scorched your feet. Not a bit of shade, and I couldn’t go below decks without nausea. Our island seemed like Paradise and Mrs. Simpson like the goddess of Liberty when I finally got home. Two days later I was taken with abscesses in both ears, and I am still suffering night and day, though they seem to be on the mend.

Added to this, during the first week home, I had such difficulty in breathing, especially at night—with pains in the chest and terrific sweats—that I became seriously alarmed. Mrs. S. and I both agreed that I had better go at once to Havana and consult with an able physician. Which I finally did. Doctor A. Agramonte, Velado—a grad. of Columbia University, etc.

He pronounced me alright except [for] a slight infection of the throat, which may have been contracted from the common water supply on the boat, so musty and contaminated that at the time I almost parched my system by attempting to avoid all drinking. The ear trouble he said was probably due to sun exposure. I was given some prescriptions and returned on the next boat. Mrs. Simpson has been goodness itself in douching my ears and in giving me whatever other attentions I have needed. The last three days it has almost disappeared and then come again, by turns. I am hoping that nothing chronic ensues. The pain has been nerve wracking and my whole system is at present functioning “below par”.... So much for the Cayman trip. —/—/

252: To William Wright

Isle of Pines   July 16, 1926

Dear Bill: —/—/ I liked the poem from The Bookman—even, if as you say, you don’t attempt more than a play of words. Convictions of any sort are hard to maintain these days—and maybe Spengler is right. Have you read his Untergang des Abendlandes—now translated (Knopf)? I envy people like Wheeler Lovell—who have intensive work to do without having to wrestle with either angels or devils to continue with it. I get awfully exhausted sometimes, trying to achieve some kind of consistent vision of things. But I don’t seem to be able to relax—and knowing quite well all the time that most of my energy is wasted in a kind of inward combustion that is sheer nonsense. All else seems boresome, however,—so I must continue to kill myself in my own way. —/—/

253: To Waldo Frank

[Isle of Pines]  July 24, 1926

Hail Brother! I feel an absolute music in the air again, and some tremendous rondure floating somewhere—perhaps my little dedication [“To Brooklyn Bridge”] is going to swing me back to San Cristobal again.... That little prelude, by the way, I think to be almost the best thing I’ve ever written, something steady and uncompromising about it. Do you notice how its construction parallels the peculiar technique of space and detail division used by El Greco in several canvasses—notably the Christus am Olberg? I’ve just been struck by that while casually returning to my little monograph as I often do.

Read the above between the 6th & 7th stanzas of the last I sent—and you have the poem complete. It’s done, and I won’t bother you with any more scraps....

The news of Allen Tate’s generosity refreshed me a great deal; truly beautiful of him. You must know by now, how little I credited the Light gossip; I simply thought you’d be interested in hearing the sort of thing that goes around. I don’t mean to say I sensed the ultimate facts as your enclosure establish them—but I have always known that your efforts were the sine qua non in this situation ... your devotion and courage the sustaining factor.

I shall not write Kahn for awhile, or if I do it will be in a different mood than you need to fear of. I sent Spengler to you registered, two weeks ago. Don’t know any exact date for the appearance of White B’s, the contract specifies only in “the fall of 1926”; November, perhaps. —/—/

254: To Waldo Frank

[Isle of Pines]  July 26th, ’26

Dear Waldo: Dear repository of my faith, will you also serve as sanctum of some [of] my “works”? By which I mean that, though I shouldn’t bother you now while you are busy with inner work of your own, I still must ask you to keep the enclosed somewhere.[49] One never knows what may happen, fires burn the house here, etc., and mss. be burnt or otherwise lost—and in the case of this Bridge I feel enough honor-bound to desire preserved whatever evidence of my industry and effort is forthcoming.

I don’t presume to ask you for comments. Read it if you like and fold it away somewhere. You have the last section (“Atlantis,” as I have decided to call it) haven’t you? I have discovered that it IS the real Atlantis, even of geology!

My plans are soaring again, the conception swells. Furthermore, this Columbus is REAL. In case you read it—(I can’t be serious)—observe the water-swell rhythm that persists until the Palos reference. Then the more absolute and marked intimation of the great Te Deum of the court, later held,—here in the terms of C.’s own cosmography.

Mrs. S. is the god’s own gift. This were a perfect place for work but for the prostrating heat. I think of next winter! Last night a wonderful breeze came up—and you can walk singing through the grove with a great moon simply bending down.

255: To Malcolm Cowley and Peggy Baird

Isle of Pines, Cuba   July 29th

Dear Malcolm and Peggy: I’ve been wanting to tell you how glad I’ve been to know about your good luck with the Post business, etc.—but you probably know by this time what I’ve been going through with.... There’s really no news except that I’m better and have begun to write—for a period until prostrated by the heat—like mad. Columbus has been cleared up—and a lot of other things started within ten days.

In the middle of The Bridge the old man of the sea (page Herr Freud) suddenly comes up. I enclose this section,[50] hoping you’ll like it. Please mention or display it to no one but Allen and les Browns for the time: it makes me nervous to have parts of an unfinished drama going about much before the curtain goes up.

It happens that all the clippers mentioned were real beings, had extensive histories in the Tea trade—and the last two mentioned were life-long rivals. Rather touching....

256: To His Mother

[Isle of Pines]  July 30th

Dearest Grace: —/—/ Everything new sent down here now incurs terrific customs duty, so don’t send me any luxuries—or necessities either until I ask for them. Waldo sent me some ointment for bug bites after he went north—and the duty came to over the original price in NY; I was so angry I threw it back into the post office and refused to have anything more to do with it (by which please understand I didn’t pay the duty).

You already have most of the news from Grandma’s letter, and Mrs. Simpson’s letter also must have arrived explaining the cable matter. I wasn’t worried about it because I was certain that you had received my letter almost immediately afterward—couldn’t have before or else how could my whereabouts have been questioned in the cable. I’m feeling quite well now—all but sleep, and whether that’s due to the heat, chronic insomnia or my present ferment of creative work, I don’t quite know. Certainly the hayhennies and crowing roosters (at all times of nights) and the breathlessness of the “air” don’t encourage one to slumbers. In a number of ways, however, I’m better acclimated, and I don’t need to memorize your advice to know enough to keep out of the sun and physical work! My spasm of hay fever seems to have gone—at about the same time it leaves in the north, that is, the spring session.

In all other ways this is the most ideal place and “situation” I’ve ever had for work. Mrs. S—— lets me completely alone when I’m busy; let’s me drum on the piano interminably if I want to—says she likes it—and has assumed a tremendous interest in my poem.... She reads and sews a great deal and just talks enough to keep on splendid and equable terms with me. She’s a perfect peach, in other words. The result is—that now that my health’s better I’m simply immersed in work to my neck, eating, “sleeping,” and breathing it. In the last ten days I’ve written over ten pages of The Bridge—highly concentrated stuff, as you know it is with me—and more than I ever crammed into that period of time before. I can foresee that everything will be brightly finished by next May when I come north, and I can make a magnificent bow to that magnificent structure, The Brooklyn Bridge, when I steam (almost under it) into dock! For the poem will be magnificent.

Meanwhile my other book, White Buildings, will have been published. It comes out sometime this fall. I have my contract and the $100. advance royalties mentioned in Grandma’s letter. O’Neill finally backed out on the foreword, as I thought he would. He’s enthusiastic about my work, I’ve never doubted that, but he didn’t have the necessary nerve to write what his honesty demanded—a thorough and accurate appraisal of my work. He can’t write criticism, never has tried even, and I foresaw the panic that this proposal on the part of our mutual publisher would precipitate in his bosom.... None other than Allen Tate!, it seems, is to write the foreword. I was informed by my publisher of all this—along with the acceptance. Has written it, in fact.... And (mum’s the word on this!) I was very much touched to hear from Waldo, who knows all the inner workings on this, that Allen offered his foreword under O’Neill’s signature when he heard that O’Neill had backed out. Of course I wouldn’t think of anything like that—so the foreword goes back to its own name. I’m very glad things have turned out this way. My umbrage toward Allen is erased by the fidelity of his action, and I’m glad to have so discriminating an estimate as he will write of me. —/—/

257: To Waldo Frank

[Isle of Pines]  Aug 3

Dear Waldo: Enclosed is “Atlantis”;[51] there have been variances since your copy whether you have it now or not.—So will you kindly humor my present little neurosis, and take care of this. I feel as though I were dancing on dynamite these days—so absolute and elaborated has become the conception. All sections moving forward now at once! I didn’t realize that a bridge is begun from the two ends at once.... Don’t bother to read what I send you; ye Gods I hope to preserve at least the credit of not presuming on you to the point of total vulgarity. It’s all right to be elegant—if you are rebellious like Rimbaud; however, I have to admit grosser preoccupations; so I’m sloppy.

Gorham sent me Allen’s Preface, which I also enclose (you’re quite sure to want to read this, if you haven’t already). I think it clever, valiant, concise and beautiful. I’m more fortunate than I might have been had things gone as they were supposed to have gone. Gorham said he’d been up to see you. I’m trying to let down completely for awhile and “recuperate.” “Powhatan’s Daughter” must be that basic center and antecedent of all motion—“power in repose.”

Mrs. S— has been following me in some of my recent reading, with the result that she has named one of her roosters “Ferdinand, Count Fathom”! It’s a good thing you aren’t near to hear our piano going it these days!

I’ve just sent Kahn the Dedication and “Ave Maria.” Please return me A.’s preface. Don’t know whether I’ll use the enclosed “Notes” or not. A reaction to Eliot’s Waste Land notes put them in my head. However, the angle chart from The Scientific Am[erican] embodies a complete symbolism of both Bridge and Star, even including the motif of the “holy tooth.” And I should like to use it on the cover. If the notes amuse you at the moment—as I wrote them—

Have you read how handy our Orizaba recently proved in the cyclone off Florida—when Cutty Sark was bobbing up?

258: To Isabel and Gaston Lachaise

(Postcard)

[Isle of Pines]   [ca. August]

This quarry is in the mountains, near our place. There’s plenty to work on anytime you come! Your bird (the gull) is divine, produces sea music, even winks at times!

259: To Waldo Frank

[Isle of Pines]  August 12th

Dear Waldo: Your Menorah [Journal] scolding is good and proper.... When all America, not only the Jew, takes that to heart it will be well for all of us. I know a number of prosperous Jew families in Cleveland, among my best friends there, but they’re mostly alike, sadly similar to your categorical disposals.... And, has the Gide essay appeared yet? Remember your promise.

I want to meet Ornstein someday. But I never seem to hear or read of any of these concert tours he is supposed to have to make for bread, etc. Mrs. Simpson was enormously pleased at your postcard; and I with your praise of the Dedication. You generally do pick the weakest link; that verse has bothered me, and will undoubtedly be somewhat amended before the book. I’ve sent it to The Dial and The Criterion (London); the little money may help, IF they take it. Probably won’t let anything else out of the bag on this side of the water, though, for sometime yet. It keeps too many question marks in my head, albeit a little change in the purse. I play the lottery, though, and like it. I’m going to win a thousand before spring; you see. “I knew I’d see a WHALE!”

I’m reading [Sandburg’s] The Prairie Years now. More of “Powhatan’s Daughter” later. It ends up with the prodigal son from the ‘49. There’s to be a grand Indian pow-wow before that. Two of three songs have just popped out (enclosed) which come after “Cutty Sark” and before “The Mango Tree.” The last, “Virginia” (virgin in process of “being built”) may come along any time. I skip from one section to another now like a sky-gack or girder-jack. Even the subway and “Calgary Express” are largely finished. Though novel experiments in form and metre here will demand much ardor later on.

I’m happy, quite well, and living as never before. The accumulation of impressions and concepts gathered the last several years and constantly repressed by immediate circumstances are having a chance to function, I believe. And nothing but this large form would hold them without the violences that mar so much of my previous, more casual work. The Bridge is already longer than The Wasteland,—and it’s only about half done.

But enough of this shop talk. I’ll exhaust your patience with it someday. You know I don’t expect comments of any sort, except when they’re easy and spontaneous. —/—/

260: To Waldo Frank

[Isle of Pines]  August 19th ’26

Dear Waldo: Here, too, is that bird with a note that Rimbaud speaks of as “making you blush.” We are in the midst of the equatorial storm season; everyday, often at night, torrents engulf us, and the thunder rods jab and prospect in the caverns deep below that chain of mountains across. You can hear the very snakes rejoice,—the long, shaken-out convulsions of rock and roots.

It is very pleasant to lie awake—just half awake—and listen. I have the most speechless and glorious dreams meanwhile. Sometimes words come and go, presented like a rose that yields only its light, never its composite form. Then the cocks begin to crow. I hear Mrs. S— begin to stir. She is the very elf of music, little wrinkled burnous wisp that can do anything and remembers so much! She reads Dante and falls to sleep, her cough has become so admirably imitated by the parrot that I often think her [in] two places at once.

I have made up a kind of friendship with that idiot boy, who is always on the road when I come into town for mail. He has gone so far as to answer my salutations. I was unexpected witness one day of the most astonishing spectacle; not that I was surprised.—A group of screaming children were shrieking about in a circle. I looked toward the house and saw the boy standing mostly hid behind the wooden shutters behind the grating; his huge limp phallus waved out at them from some opening; the only other part visible was his head, in a most gleeful grin, swaying above the lower division of the blinds.

When I saw him next he was talking to a blue little kite high in the afternoon. He is rendingly beautiful at times: I have encountered him in the road, talking again tout seul and examining pebbles and cinders and marble chips through the telescope of a twice-opened tomato can. He is very shy, hilarious,—and undoubtedly idiot. I have been surprised to notice how much the other children like him. —/—/

I’m glad to know that The Bridge is fulfilling your utmost intuitions; for an intuition it undoubtedly was. You didn’t need to tell me that [you] had “seen” something that memorable evening, although I was never so sure just what it was you saw, until now. But I have always carried that peculiar look that was in your eyes for a moment there in your room, it has often recurred in my thoughts. What I should have done without your love and most distinguished understanding is hard to say, but there is no earthly benefit for which I would exchange it. It is a harmony always with the absolute direction [I] always seek, often miss, but sometimes gain.

Your answer to G[orham Munson] on his essay was much more adept than any of my critical armament. It was complete. My greatest complaint against G— is (apparently) an incorrigible streak of vulgarity, arising no doubt from some distrust in experience. Sometimes it makes him personally dangerous when he doesn’t intend such. Not especially par example, BUT: when I last dined with G— much happened to be said about my “extravagances”—how I spent K[ahn]’s money, etc. Snowshoes, African sculpture, etc. I happened to mention how useful the snowshoes had been during the storms at Patterson, etc. G— recently visited the Tates and went up to my room, accompanied by Mrs. Turner, who writes me, most unwittingly of the circumstances, that the main thing G— quizzed her about was whether I used my snow shoes or not! Really, it [is] all so ridiculously small. You may think I’m wasting paper on such a silly story. But in any kind of friendship I like to have my honesty sometimes granted on my oath of it, and this is only one of many such little evidences of a real lack of perspective and innate taste on G.’s part. It does leak into his work, the vision of his world. He’d better memorize the last stanza of Baudelaire’s famous Epilogue to the Petits Poèmes en Prose; as, indeed, I may sometimes tell him to do. His definition of “knowledge” in that essay incorporates the savour of just such a mind as is preoccupied with such details as I’ve mentioned.

Yes, I read the whole of Spengler’s book. It is stupendous,—and it was perhaps a very good experience for ripening some of The Bridge, after all. I can laugh now; but you know, alas, how little I could at the time. That book seems to have been just one more of many “things” and circumstances that seem to have uniformly conspired in a strangely symbolical way toward the present speed of my work. Isn’t it true—hasn’t it been true in your experience, that beyond the acceptance of fate as a tragic action—immediately every circumstance and incident in one’s life flocks toward a positive center of action, control and beauty? I need not ask this, since there is the metaphor of the “rotted seed of personal will,” or some such phrase, in your Spain.

I have never been able to live completely in my work before. Now it is to learn a great deal. To handle the beautiful skeins of this myth of America—to realize suddenly, as I seem to, how much of the past is living under only slightly altered forms, even in machinery and such-like, is extremely exciting. So I’m having the time of my life, just now, anyway.

261: To Waldo Frank

[Isle of Pines]  Aug. 23

Dear Waldo: I feel rather apologetic about sending you so many photographs—but the last seemed to be more what I wanted you to think of me—than any others heretofore.

Work continues. “The Tunnel” now. I shall have it done very shortly. It’s rather ghastly, almost surgery—and, oddly almost all from the notes and stitches I have written while swinging on the strap at late midnights going home.

Are you noticing how throughout the poem motives and situations recur—under modifications of environment, etc? The organic substances of the poem are holding a great many surprises for me.... Greatest joys of creation.

Forgive me for telling that anecdote about G—. I don’t want to seem stubborn or prejudiced, but you, on the other hand, are one who ought to know more or less why it is hard for me to maintain a steady sort of whole-hearted confidence and enthusiasm with such constantly recurring “obscurations,” if you will. I’m not saying that these ultimately or “aesthetically” matter, but they enter the moral picture of the personality.

Did I tell you that M. Moore has taken the Dedication?—needless to say, without alterations.

262: To Waldo Frank

[Havana, Cuba]  Sept. 3 ’26

Dear Waldo: I’m having my last bottle of “Diamante” before leaving for la Isla tonight. A pestulant[52] Abbe is gulping olives at the next table, and my waiter is all out of patience with him. But I cannot conceal my mirth—cheeks bulge and eyes strain at suppressions. “F—— la Cubana!” says the waiter who is Spanish. Well I never had such a fiesta of perfect food and nectar in my life. Furthermore, if you were St. Valentine—well, maybe you are! So here goes—even if you call my little story stale.

Perhaps you have also experienced the singular charm of long conversations with senoritas with only about 12 words in common understanding between you. I allude to A——, a young Cuban sailor (most of them are terrible but A—— is Spanish parentage, and maybe that explains it) whom I met one evening after the Alhambra in Park Central. Immaculate, ardent and delicately restrained—I have learned much about love which I did not think existed. What delicate revelations may bloom from the humble—it is hard to exaggerate.

So there have been three long and devoted evenings—long walks, drives on the Malacon, dos copas mas—and a change from my original American hotel to La Isle de Cuba, sine commotion, however.

I’m going back much relaxed. I got on a terrible tension—not a tennis court on the island! Just day after day in the heat and the house. Now I shall get a fresh view of what I have written and have still to write—and with an internal glow which is hard to describe. Silly of me to say so—but life can be gorgeously kindly at times. — — — —

263: To Waldo Frank

[Isle of Pines]  Sept. 5th

Caro Hermano: Estoy en casa ayer de madrugada. No dormaba la noche a bordo mar. Mucha calor, y pensaba en el carinoso A—— y los calles blancas Habaneros, de consigniente dulces con Mi Bien. Encontreremos de nuevo en Deciembre.... Busco en diccionario y gramatica, sudo, raspo pelo de suerte que el tierno Cubano-Canario (Parentela los Canarios) mi carta apprendera.

Tell me if any of it is sensible. I am now, more than ever anxious to learn the most beautiful language in the world. And I suddenly conceive it as a necessary preparation for my next piece of work just apprehended in the form of a blank verse tragedy of Aztec mythology—for which I shall have to study the obscure calendars of dead kings. If I have the leisure for this study I shall certainly go to Spain sometime in the next five years.... In fact I must manage this anyhow.

Your letter, awaiting my return, conveyed much goodness, the sense of “wholiness”—of a complete return to yourself, from which I hope much; in fact, I’m sure of much therefrom. I am so glad that my progress has meant so much to you. —/—/

264: To Charlotte Rychtarik

New York   Nov. 1

Dear Charlotte: —/—/ I have no idea of just what the situation is at present with my mother, but I have been terribly worried about it for many, many weeks. The result has been that there was only about four weeks on the Isle of Pines that I managed to accomplish any work at all; my mother’s unrestrained letters, the terrific heat and bugs, etc., nearly killed me.

But I’ve managed to come through, at least with my skin. What has been done of The Bridge is superb, according to what those few who have seen it say. The rest I hope to finish up here or in the country. I haven’t decided exactly where I am going to stay as yet.

I don’t want to do anything to hurt anyone’s feelings, but I think that unless I isolate myself somewhat (and pretty soon) from the avalanche of bitterness and wailing that has flooded me ever since I was seven years old, there won’t be enough left of me to even breathe, not to mention writing. If I could really do anything to help the situation it would be different. But it’s a personal problem, after all. I’m doing my best—and I’m grateful to you for appreciating it. I’ll write you more later.

I’ve wondered why I didn’t hear from you, but I discover that I’ve only got about half my letters in Cuba; the Havana post office is in the dirty habit of opening American mail to extract money, when it thinks there is any currency inside. Maybe you didn’t get what I sent you. White Buildings will be out in Dec. I’m having Laukhuff send you a copy.

265: To Waldo Frank

Patterson   Nov. 21st

Caro hermano: I am hoping that your country retreat is as pleasant to you as mine is to me.... It seems marvelous to sleep again, buried under the sound of an autumn wind—and to wake with the sense of the faculties being on the mend. Now I can look back and enjoy “every moment” of the summer Carib days,—so gracious is the memory in preserving most carefully the record of our pleasures, their real savor, only.

When are you coming back to town? Will you for a moment consider coming out here for a week-end (or longer) sometime before you leave for Europe? It would be pleasant and quiet, and the country is still interesting if one doesn’t demand too much tropical splendor. We could have the good deliberate talk that we couldn’t get in NY, of course.

Haven’t got my book yet, but expect it next week. Nor am I at work yet on The Bridge again.... But I’m not worried. I know too well what I want to do now, even if it doesn’t spill over for months and months. It must “spill,” you know. The little thing above I did yesterday.[53] Write me when you have time. Aunt Sally sends you her best (sometimes “love”!) in her every letter.

Williams’ American Grain is an achievement that I’d be proud of. A most important and sincere book. I’m very enthusiastic—I put off reading it, you know, until I felt my own way cleared beyond chance of confusions incident to reading a book so intimate to my theme. I was so interested to note that he puts Poe and his “character” in the same position as I had symbolized for him in “The Tunnel” section.

266: To Mrs. T. W. Simpson

Patterson, N.Y.   December 5th, 1926

Dear Aunt Sally: From hurricane to Blizzards—all in six weeks! The fates sure do give me immoderate changes. It’s “two below naught” outside, as they say in Hicksville; snowdrifts on the hills and windows, and my room isn’t so warm but what tickling the typewriter keys is a stiff proposition. My nose got so cold last night it kept me awake, besides I could hear the congealing water click into ice in the pitcher on the washstand, ticking, ticking—every few moments. But my kerosene stoves are doing better than last winter—better oil, and I think with considerable economy I’ll be able to finish the winter here, if I’m not called back to Cleveland.

Utter silence, by the way, from that quarter. It will make it a month since I heard from mother, who evidently is displeased. It certainly is too bad that she doesn’t write you; I guess she is in a pretty disorganized state of mind.

I should have known when they said that my book would be out “in two weeks” that it meant a month; but it’s promised for certain late this week. I’ll be glad when it’s over—for though it, or rather the prospect of its appearance doesn’t give me such a thrill after all, yet it does keep me a little distracted. I’m sure I shall be better able to work on the new stuff once this first book is really launched and off my mind. Work is going very slowly on The Bridge, but I’m not worried. Eventually it’s going to be done, and in the style that my conception of it demands. Winters continues to write me most stimulating criticism; his wide scholarship not only in English literature but in Latin, Greek, French and Spanish and Portugese—gives his statements a gratifying weight. I have heard nothing whatever from Waldo since I reached Patterson (a month now), but he was going away to some country retreat himself for awhile. Is very busy writing a play of some kind.

Got a letter from A—— (you remember the Havanese sailor?) yesterday. The second since I got back. I have a great time translating his Spanish—without a dictionary of any size. Once he got his niece to write me a letter in (broken) English. One of the statements ran, “Maximo Gomez, my ship—him sink in ciclon. All my clothes drowned.” When I was going through Havana I asked another “Gomez” mariner if he knew anything about the fate of A—— in the storm. I gathered from his signs and contortions that A—— was badly laid up with a broken arm and a smashed shoulder. But later learn that he escaped at least as whole as the Adonis Crane referred to in your last letter. I’m still bent on learning Spanish as soon as my fortune or inheritance permits. With enough Spanish and enough reputation as a poet,—someday I might be appointed to sell tires or toothpaste in Rio de Janeiro!

I was amused to hear about the drunken outbreak of the very red, butter-faced hurricane friend of “ours”—who was looking for an Isle of Pines retreat for his mother—among the ruins. Certain of the actors in the melodramatic episode of wind, rain, lightnin’, plaster, shingles, curses, desperation and sailors—never will leave my mind. Especially our little one-step together the morning after, to the tune of “Valencia”! And pillows wobbling on our heads!

I’m glad you have got under a good roof again. You’re such a good brick, you ought to get dried before some of the rest. I hope you got my letters, especially the one containing the check. The other was self-explanatory, of course, in case anything circumvented the registered letter. I mailed it a day later on purpose. One has to be sly with the Havana post office.

I’m eating like a horse, losing my becoming tan, and getting fat, I fear. How I would like—at the present moment—to step into a grove of royal palms, doff these woolens—and have a good glass of Cerveza with you! The storm is increasing, howling loudly. It looks as though we were to be snowed in for the rest of the winter. Really!—And I may be a good time getting this letter to the PO if mail delivery is delayed, as usual under such circumstances. Don’t work too hard! —/—/

267: To ——

Patterson, N.Y.   Dec. 16 [1926]

Dear ——: I’m laid up with tonsilitis—but must somehow thank you for your pleasant N.Y. letter and wish you as amusing a New Year as possible. As for myself—I don’t expect much.

Nothing but illness and mental disorder in my family—and I am expected by all the middle-class ethics and dogmas to rush myself to Cleveland and devote myself interminably to nursing, sympathizing with woes which I have no sympathy for because they are all unnecessary, and bolstering up the faith in others toward concepts which I long ago discarded as crass and cheap.

Whether I can do it or not is the question. It means tortures and immolations which are hard to conceive, impossible to describe. There seems to be no place left in the world for love or the innocence of a single spontaneous act. Write me here.

P.S.—have you read Norman Douglas’ South Wind? It almost makes one jolly—

268: To His Mother

Patterson, N.Y.   Dec. 22 ’26

Dear Grace: — — — — Yes—it is a very melancholy Christmas for all of us.... I am certainly anything but joyful.

Insomnia seems now to have settled on me permanently—and when I do “sleep” my mind is plagued by an endless reel of pictures, startling and unhappy—like some endless cinematograph.

Am making as much effort as possible to free my imagination and work the little time that is now left me on my Bridge poem. So much is expected of me via that poem—that if I fail on it I shall become a laughing stock and my career closed.

I take it that you would not wish this to happen. Yet it may be too late, already, for me to complete the conception. My mind is about as clear as dirty dishwater—and such a state of things is scarcely conducive to successful creative endeavor. If it were like adding up columns of figures—or more usual labors—it would be different.... Well, I’m trying my best—both to feel the proper sentiments to your situation and keep on with my task. The Bridge is an important task—and nobody else can ever do it.

My White Buildings is out. A beautiful book. Laukhuff has been instructed to send you out a copy as soon as he receives his order. —/—/

I’m glad you have taken up C[hristian] S[cience] again. You never should have dropped it. But it seems to me you will have to make a real effort this time—with no half-way measures. It isn’t anything you can play with. It’s either true—or totally false. And for heaven’s sake—don’t go to it merely as a cure. If it isn’t a complete philosophy of life for you it isn’t anything at all. It is sheer hypocrisy to take it up when you get scared and then forsake it as soon as you feel angry about something. Anger is a costly luxury to you—and resentment and constant self-pity. I have to fight these demons myself. I know they are demons—they never do me anything but harm. Why look at yourself as a martyr all the time! It simply drives people away from you. The only real martyrs the world ever worships are those devoted exclusively to the worship of God, poverty and suffering—you have, as yet, never been in exactly that position. Not that I want you to be a martyr. I see no reason for it—and am out of sympathy with anyone who thinks he is—for the real ones don’t think about themselves that way—they are too happy in their faith to ever want to be otherwise. —/—/

1927

The company that R. is lined up with [is] called Wishart & Co., address same as Calendar, which is continuing, by the way, as a quarterly. A new publisher just starting business in the Spring. You ought to send them something. Garman has gone to Russia for a period, but Wishart is bringing out a book of his poems. As for the preface—your foreword is entirely good enough both here and there. Besides, it would destroy all the economic advantage in buying sheets from L. if they had much extra printing to add over there. I therefore made no mention of the idea in my letter. Hope to God, though, that Schneider had sent the copy of W[hite] B[uildings] to them that I put on my review list. As I understood from you all review copies were sent out some time ago. A detention of the book much longer is going to ruin all chance of sales from Waldo’s article. Lord! is there anything else that can happen to that book! How long will it take them to put in those new title pages, I wonder. All of my friends have got tired of asking for the book in Cleveland and I expect there will be a record of less than the famous Stevens-35 to my credit.

Your comments on Gorham’s shrine and gland-totemism convince me that Orage talked as vaguely and arbitrarily in your presence as he did in mine on a similar occasion. Some great boob ought to be hired as a kind of heckler and suddenly burst out in one of those meetings held each year to attract converts,—“Come on now, do your stuff—there’s millions waiting!” Or some such democratic phrase.

As I seem to be going through an extremely distrustful mood in regard to most of my own work lately, perhaps some of my present temper may unduly limit my perspective in regard to your Ode.[54] I have a kind of perpetual dull cold in the head, however, which may better account for my reaction. But if you can bear to listen awhile to Aunt Harriet then here goes....

The obscurities bother me. Stanza I, OK; and I get along very well until I come to “ambitious” Novembers in II. Why this special epithet—this particular designation for the whole season in relation to the headstones, in fact? As it is stressed so much one chafes against the stubborn dullness that blocks one’s apprehension of your precise intention. The last 6 lines are particularly fine and The last—!

There is no doubt that you make the theme of the poem a living continuity with the exception of the several places where, I admit, I find it difficult to follow you. The theme of chivalry—a tradition of excess (not literally excess, rather, active faith) which cannot be perpetuated in the fragmentary cosmos of today—“those desires which should be yours tomorrow” but which, you know, will not persist nor find way into action.... Your statement of this is beautiful, and the poem is a POEM with splendidly controlled rhythms and eloquence. But when you come to such lines as “From the orient of the sublime economy/Remember the setting sun” I suddenly feel the thread cut. Sublime economy misses its aim with me, I suddenly seem to see a little of Laforgue’s mannerism too wittily on the scene. What is meant here?

I fancy that you could go much better directly from Bull Run to “You hear the shout,” etc. The next verse is superb. The last 7 lines are the climax of the poem. The intensity of this “meditation” gives the lie, of course, to all previous factual statements regarding the impermanency of your grief.... But you are, of course, speaking throughout less from a personal angle than a social viewpoint. Or are you? Both, of course. It was fatuous to have raised this point....

Then you go back to speculation in the next stanza. You go too far in the succeeding, I think. And it, again, is rather obscure—exactly what you mean. The capitalization of sentiment, I take it. A good dig at certain people, but I think the sarcasm is over-bitter, marring the beauty of the poem as a whole. The fierce resignation at the last is beautiful, that irony will sell, if you get what I mean.

Carolyn [Gordon] said you sent it to The Nation. I hope they have sense enough to reward you; on the other hand, though, how can they take such a chance with their average reader? Hang crepe on your door and wait.... The sonnet makes me merry, though it’s the lovely last four lines that I like best. They’re almost too good for the rest. The rest is too complicated. I’d chop it apart and put the lovely windows in another room. —/—/

Further readings may reveal to me the folly of some of my objections.... Take issue with me meanwhile wherever you feel justified.

270: To Edgell Rickword

Patterson, New York   January 7th, 1927

Dear Mr. Rickword: —/—/ I enclose three poems: “O Carib Isle,” “Cutty Sark” and “The Harbor Dawn.” There is a general emphasis on the marine in all of them, and if you should care to use them all I suggest that the sequence in which I have named them above would chart an interesting curve of the underlying element. I must risk a presumption on your interest in the poems in order to emphasize the necessity of printing “Cutty Sark” as closely as possible to the form as typed herewith, especially in regard to the third page, which is a “cartogram,” if one may so designate a special use of the calligramme. The “ships” should meet and pass in line and type—as well as in wind and memory, if you get my rather unique formal intentions in this phantom regatta seen from Brooklyn Bridge.

Probably no one should be “thanked” for taking an interest in poetry, but your kindness and interest in what little I’ve so far accomplished are much appreciated. It is re-assuring to me—especially from the fact that a couple of years ago I found so much in your Rimbaud volume which was sympathetic and critically stimulating. — — — —

271: To His Mother

Patterson, NY Jan. 23, ’27

Dear Grace: —/—/ I had heard nothing about the death of Frances [Crane] until Grandmother’s letter reached me, last Friday, I think. CA [Crane] did not trouble to answer the letter I wrote him in November, and though I shall probably not hear from him, even now, until God knows when—I wrote him a short note of condolence as soon as I heard.

I liked the pictures, especially the one with the hat, and the frame is beautiful. I shall take them with me into NY when I get the job (whatever it shall turn out to be) that I’m at present fishing for. I am trying to get a line on something before going in, as I have scarcely any money left, and I would like to avoid any charities from my friends on this occasion if possible.

Meanwhile I am doing what writing I can, and studying Spanish.

I’m very much amused at what you say about the interest in my book among relatives and friends out there in Cleveland. Wait until they see it, and try to read it! I may be wrong, but I think they will eventually express considerable consternation; for the poetry I write, as you have noticed already, is farther from their grasp than the farthest planets. But I don’t care how mad they get—after they have bought the book! —/—/

Yvor Winters, who is a professor of French and Spanish at the Moscow University, Idaho, writes me the following: “Your book arrived this evening, and I have read it through a couple of times. It will need many more readings, but so far I am simply dumbfounded. Most of it is new to me, and what I had seen is clarified by its setting. I withdraw all minor objections I have ever made to your work—I have never read anything greater and have read very little as great.” Etc. So you see what kind of a review he is apt to write.

Waldo Frank ends his article in The New Republic by saying: “At present Hart Crane is engaged in a long poem that provides him with a subject adequate for his method: the subject indeed which Mr. Tate prophesies in his introduction. Yet already White Buildings gives us enough to justify the assertion, that not since Whitman has so original, so profound and—above all, so important a poetic promise come to the American scene.”

In a way it’s a pity that none of the Crane family are readers of anything more important than such magazines as The Saturday Evening Post and Success. —/—/

The delay in the divorce proceedings may mean that Charles [Curtis] is reconsidering—and it might be just as well all around if he did. I have the idea that you both care for each other more than you thought you did. Such thoughts are neither here nor there, however, and I’m in no position to form judgments or advise. I’ve never been able to figure out what the quarrel was “all about”—i.e., the issue involved. I think you had probably better keep your mind off the subject as much as possible, assuming the issue as closed. But you must get something to do as soon as you are physically able.... I mean—that without some kind of activity you’ll remain in a morbid condition—and your viewpoint will become more warped all the time. People just have to have some kind of activity to remain healthy-minded.

But you seem to [be] already much better; and I’m enormously glad. Don’t think I don’t care for you,—I can’t help it, no matter how I feel about some things. —/—/

272: To Waldo Frank

Patterson, NY   January 28th

Querido hermano Waldo: Just a little note to say hello. It’s sixteen below and the sun brightly shining. I’m living in practically one room—the kitchen—with the old lady these days—to keep warm. Writing a little again on The Bridge and studying Spanish.

Thank you so much for having The Menorah [Journal] people send me out your review of Spengler. It’s a magnificent rebuttal of the man’s psychology. I don’t need to know your philosophical references well enough to check up on them to feel that. I’ve sent the paper on to Tate who was somewhat bowled over by Spengler—as wasn’t I?—thinking it will prick him a bit.

WB’s is getting—or is going to get—wonderful reviews. Not to mention yours, there’s a great explosion coming from Yvor Winters in The Dial; another from Mark Van Doren (of all the unexpected!) in The Nation this week. Seligmann has written a sincere and just estimate in the Sun; Josephson in the Herald-Tribune; MacLeish in Poetry; etc. I don’t know any further, but there may be other surprises. I certainly feel myself very fortunate, considering the type of stuff in WB.

—/—/ But I’ll be glad when all reviews and arrangements are over—so I can put the book definitely behind me. Present preoccupations tend to “exteriorize” one entirely too much. Winters has a lovely book of poems coming out this spring, by the way,—and Ford Madox Ford has recommended Allen’s poems highly to Duckworth, his London publishers. I hope they take it; Allen needs some encouragement very much.

Remember me in your mugs—though I guess you never get in far enough to become as sentimental as I do. Mrs. Simpson isn’t very well, has overworked since the hurricane. Will you drop her a postcard from some hofbrau? It would tickle her to death. I’ve an amusing story to tell you sometime about one instance of the “mysticism of money”—it refers to Kahn and the “gift.” It seems I have to pay $60 odd the rest of my mortal term on life insurance to the Kahn estate, which, of course I was dumb bell enough not to understand when he proposed it. Not that I especially mind nor that I’m at all embittered, but I think I have discovered a new way to avoid income taxes and become heroic—both at once, if you get what I mean. — — — —

273: To —— and ——

Patterson,   Feb. 16th

Dear —— and ——: I left town last Sunday—so there was no time to see you again—and (already) scarce enough cash left to tip the conductor. The last two nights in town were mainly spent on the Hoboken waterfront, where you want to go (though it’s for men only) if you want the good old beer, the old free-lunch counter and everything thrown in—for 15¢ a glass. Whiskey and gin are also much superior to the other side of the River and cheaper. Take the Christopher St. ferry. Walk up past Front St. There are three in a row. Begin with McKelly’s—or some such name.

The last night went flying back to Brooklyn with a wild Irish red-headed sailor of the Coast Guard, who introduced me to a lot of coffee dens and cousys on Sand Street, and then took me to some kind of opium den way off, God knows where. Whereat I got angry and left him, or rather Mike Drayton did. Returning here to the home roost I found six cards from J—— the Incomparable with much more than the usual brief greetings, so Caramba!

Mrs. Turner was laid up all day Monday from an excess of oatmeal eaten at breakfast in celebration of my return. Went up to Tory Hill yesterday and found everything just as I left it. Encountered Mrs. Powitzki at the Jennings and think she is marvelous. Did you ever talk to her? I never heard such locutions. I should love to tickle her. Since which I’ve been reading the Cock also Rises (sent me by a Cleveland friend) and have developed a perfect case of acidosis. No wonder the book sold; there isn’t a sentence without a highball or a martini in it to satisfy all the suppressed desires of the public. It’s a brilliant and a terrible book. The fiesta and bullfight best. No warmth, no charm in it whatever, but of course Hemingway doesn’t want such.

274: To Isidor Schneider

Patterson, NY   Feb 19th, ’27

Dear Isidor: I like your Anthony very much. The theme is as basic as the best of Anderson, by which I don’t mean that it’s derivative in any sense whatever,—only that Anderson has thrusts toward a similar hygiene of the local soul, though never with such control and comprehensiveness. Forgive me too, for bringing in Jeffers, whom it seems to me you’ve got beat on a number of counts. He has poignance, but little of the sustained intensity and still less of the metrical ingenuity that I marvel at—the way you interweave action and emotion with precepts and generalities, and manage to make what is, after all, a simple plot,—a glowing canvas alive with irony and illumination.

The rugged-smooth drive of your lines is quite novel. I venture to say that your previous struggles with prose in Dr. Transit have helped you here, for many of the best passages have all the weight and definition of fine prose with the additional sharp, leaping movement of the liveliest hexameters in Chapman’s Homer.

Here and there I think you are too didactic. Your “saint” is sometimes a little too consistent—though this latter reaction is so personal merely to me, probably, that it’s valueless as comment. The beautifully measured opening lines create a fine abstraction of time and space: out of the clouds the sudden and dramatic introduction of the theme, the earthly conflict. Will you forgive me for echoing something you recently wrote me? I think this beats any and all of what previous verse of yours I’ve seen. I suppose that it’s a case—with all of us—of having to find the right theme. Much of your earlier poetry (and please don’t unconsciously include Doc Transit here) seemed diffuse to me, and sometimes obscure. This long poem has the amplitude and self-contained movement that I can’t seem to find in any recent narrative poetry. I wish I had the facility for mingling fact and inference so neatly—into so organic a rhythm. I’m so hugged and restricted by a single-track, iambic metronometer these days!

Somebody sent me Hemingway’s Sun Also Rises to read. It certainly does what he evidently intends it doing—I’ve had a case of acidosis just reading the list of drinks that clutter every page. He certainly knows what dry-throated Americans want; no wonder the book sells. To me it seems brilliant enough (the fiesta and the bullfight are splendid) but horribly cold. A novel to read if you want a slant at one aspect of the age, but without any of the engraciating qualities that makes Ulysses, even that bitter book, a thing to keep and enjoy many times.

I’m still on the watch for a job, so let me know if you hear of anything. — — — —

275: To Allen Tate

Patterson   Thursday Feb 24

Dear Allen: I wish I could keep up with Winters. I already owe him several letters, besides comment on the ms. of his “Fire Sequence,” which awaited me when I returned from town. All his work is so genuine that it takes close attention, meditation and blood and bone to answer.... At present it’s too much for me, so I’ve sent the manifesto on with a brief note to the effect that I agree with most of your marginalia, i.e., where I differ with him. Though I go further than you do in qualification of the Loeb-physics-etc. recipe.... Pure hocus-pocus for the poet. Just one out [of] a five-thousand other scientific similes, equally good to go by (regardless of their veracity)—and I venture to say that Winters’ work suffers already from such arbitrary torturings—all for the sake of a neat little point of reference. What good will it do him to go on repeating in the background of every poem, that “life is some slight disturbance of the balance,” etc., etc?! But we all must have some kind of incantation, I suppose. Though I’d rather adopt some of Blake’s aphorisms. They’re abstract enough. And a lot truer than the latest combination of scientific terms.

Glad you liked the Joyce lyrics. I make the following choice from my own work. If they seem to fit your requirements let me know, and I’ll send you copies: