I do not overlook De Gourmont’s plea for a meeting of the nations, but I do believe that when they meet Paris will be more than slightly abashed to find parodies of the middle ages, Dante and Langue D’Oc foisted upon it as the best in United States poetry. Even Eliot, who is too fine an artist to allow himself to be exploited by a blockheaded grammaticaster, turns recently toward “one definite false note” in his quatrains, which more nearly approach America than ever La Figlia Que Piange did. Ezra Pound is a Boscan who has met his Navagiero. One day Ezra and I were walking down a back lane in Wyncote. I contended for bread, he for caviar. I become hot. He, with fine discretion, exclaimed: “Let us drop it. We will never agree, or come to an agreement.” He spoke then like a Frenchman, which is one who discerns. Imagine an international congress of poets at Paris or Versailles, Remy de Gourmont (now dead) presiding, poets all speaking five languages fluently. Ezra stands up to represent U. S. verse and De Gourmont sits down smiling. Ezra begins by reading, La Figlia Que Piange. It would be a pretty pastime to gather into a mental basket the fruits of that reading from the minds of the ten Frenchmen present; their impressions of the sort of United States that very fine flower was picked from. After this Kreymborg might push his way to the front and read Jack’s House. E. P. is the best enemy United States verse has. He is interested, passionately interested—even if he doesn’t know what he is talking about. But of course he does know what he is talking about. He does not, however, know everything, not by more than half. The accordances of which Americans have the parts and the colors but not the completions before them pass beyond the attempts of his thought. It is a middle aging blight of the Imagination. I praise those who have the wit and courage, and the conventionality, to go direct toward their vision of perfection in an objective world where the sign-posts are clearly marked, viz., to London. But confine them in hell for their paretic assumption that there is no alternative but their own groove. Dear fat Stevens, thawing out so beautifully at forty! I was one day irately damning those who run to London when Stevens caught me up with his mild: “But where in the world will you have them run to?” * * * * * Nothing that I should write touching poetry would be complete without Maxwell Bodenheim in it, even had he not said that the Improvisations were “perfect,” the best things I had ever done; for that I place him, Janus, first and last.