Your comments on my poems were so sharp, yet at the same time so pleasing to me, that I had to read them to Munson when he came in yesterday. “Possessions,” it gives me much joy to know, hit you squarely as you say: I cannot help thinking that more of “Recitative” will get over better at some later date if you happen to re-read it. It _is_ complex, exceedingly,--and I worked for weeks, off and on, of course,--trying to simplify the presentation of the ideas in it, the conception. Imagine the poet, say, on a platform speaking it. The audience is one half of Humanity, Man (in the sense of Blake) and the poet the other. ALSO, the poet sees himself in the audience as in a mirror. ALSO, the audience sees itself, in part, in the poet. Against this paradoxical DUALITY is posed the UNITY, or the conception of it (as you got it) in the last verse. In another sense, the poet is _talking to himself_ all the way through the poem, and there are, as too often in my poems, other reflexes and symbolisms in the poem, also, which it would be silly to write here--at least for the present. It’s encouraging that people say they get at least some kind of impact from my poems, even when they are honest in admitting considerable mystification. “Make my dark poem light, and light,” however, is the text I chose from Donne some time ago as my direction. I have always been working hard for a more perfect lucidity, and it never pleases me to be taken as wilfully obscure or esoteric. Your second version of “Light” was much improved, I think. But still I don’t like it as well as that charming [the rest of this letter is lost]. 179: TO CHARLOTTE AND RICHARD RYCHTARIK _New York City_ _March 5th, ’24_ Dear Charlotte and Richard: --/--/ This afternoon I went around to an exhibition of sculpture by Maillol (who is an honest workman, but not very creative), and in the same rooms were some large canvasses by Rousseau (le douanier) the first I have ever had the chance of seeing. Next door was a limited but splendid exhibition of Picassos, Braques, and Duchamps. This is a very active year in New York for painting, shows, etc. Modern painting seems to have come into its own here at last. Stieglitz’s wonderful new cloud photographs are also on show at the Anderson Galleries this week along with Georgia O’Keeffe’s work. And there is the Independents at the Waldorf and an exhibition of Marins which I have not seen yet. What with one’s work, one’s friends, books, writing, eating and sleeping, things are certainly rushed! It almost makes me long for quiet Cleveland. It really is good to be thoroughly bored once in awhile, don’t you think so?