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. (This sounds like Sir Roger de Coverly) A single manner or mood thoroughly matured and exploited is that fresh thing … etc. One has to keep looking for poetry as Renoir looked for colors in old walls, wood-work and so on. Your place is —among children Leaping around a dead dog. A book of that would feed the hungry.… Well a book of poems is a damned serious affair. I am only objecting that a book that contains your particular quality should contain anything else and suggesting that if the quality were carried to a communicable extreme, in intensity and volume, etc.… I see it all over the book, in your landscapes and portraits, but dissipated and obscured. Bouquets for brides and Spencerian compliments for poets.… There are a very few men who have anything native in them or for whose work I’d give a Bolshevic ruble.… But I think your tantrums not half mad enough. (I am not quite clear about the last sentence but I presume he means that I do not push my advantage through to an overwhelming decision. What would you have me do with my Circe, Stevens, now that I have doublecrossed her game, marry her? It is not what Odysseus did). I return Pound’s letter … observe how in everything he does he proceeds with the greatest positiveness etc. _Wallace Stevens._