Dear Waldo: --/--/ I don’t need to mention that it was great to shake hands and talk with you. This I must mention, however,--that we have not yet had a real meeting. My mind has been packed with things that must be talked over with you when conditions are opportune. I am not intending mysterious words. But I am looking forward to the time--perhaps the times--that we shall get together and (in the wonderful slang phrase) “spark.” Since reading _City Block_ I have not wavered in an enthusiastic conviction that yours is the most vital consciousness in America, and that potentially I have responses which might prove interesting, even valuable to us both. My statements are awkward, and I really do not know how to proceed about such conversations: they “usually,” as you know, “just happen.” All this leads to a very simple suggestion, however,--and that is that I hope you will let me know when you are next in town when we can lunch or dine together. -- -- -- -- 141: TO CHARLOTTE RYCHTARIK _New York City_ _April 13th, ’23_ Dear Lotte: I am glad that you can use the smock. Richard’s illustration of you using it is very effective, and the “covers the earth” drawing is exemplary and inspirational indeed. --/--/ I am glad that you like _Our America_. Frank says some very wonderful things in that book. It is coming out again next year and with new additions. This time, as I understand him, he intends to mention my work in it. Meeting some of the older poets and writers down here is an odd experience. Most of them are very disagreeable, and don’t talk the same language as we do, they are not concerned with the same problems. I read “Faustus and Helen” to a group of people last evening, and very few of them, of course understood anything that I was talking about. If it weren’t for the praise and understanding I have received from people like Frank and Munson and Allen Tate, etc., I would begin to feel that I might be to blame. But this “new consciousness” is something that takes a long while to “put across.” I want Richard to meet my friends, the Habichts, who have their apartment filled with lovely things to touch and look at, and who serve wonderful sherry and Benedictine. I have too many invitations to really enjoy. Your friends quickly turn into enemies here, unless you limit the time you give for social affairs. --/--/ 142: TO ALFRED STIEGLITZ [_New York City_] _April 15th, ’23_