And now after working through unbelievable aridness _The Little Review_ has at last arrived at the place from which I wanted it to start. At last we are printing stuff which is creative and inventive, and, thank heaven, not purely local. The audience mentioned above, in the aggregate, resents it. We no longer interest that audience. The layman says that we are now given over to the bizarre and the “aesthetic” (that adjective which in America means something vaguely inconsequential, if not something shameless and immoral). People who like to “help” magazines with “artistic” leanings are not to be allured by Art. People who can’t prove that they know anything about good letters dare to tell us that we don’t know anything about them. Editors who make it a point of honor to discover artistic value in the work of their contemporaries feel that we are meticulous and too “arty”. And the writers themselves are the most absurd. Maxwell Bodenheim writes that he “knows” Ezra Pound judges poetry on the basis of his personal dislikes. That is as necessarily untrue as anything can be. Any one who is unwilling to praise what seems to him unworthy of praise, anyone whose interest in a poet’s work abates when the work shows no signs of further progress—any such critic will come in for this kind of slander. Any such critic will get himself talked about the way people love to talk in New York: if you try to discuss a man’s work with them they say “that man is my enemy”, or “that man is my friend”. It’s very puzzling: they seem to think their remarks have something to do with literature. Another remarkable thing that happens in New York: if you walk upon the street with a sensitive and rare and distinguished person you will find that he attracts more curious and resentful attention than the most badly-made, the most atrociously dressed, or the most grotesquely deformed human beings who surround him. But this is the attitude of all America. I have made several thoughtless statements about “Help us to make _The Little Review_ a power”, etc. I know that nothing on earth will do that except our own contents. They tell me that Henley was a power in England with _The National Observer_ when its circulation had shrunk to eighty subscribers. I should be willing to pursue dominion even to that point, but it will probably not be necessary. Our circulation grows in spite of criticism and misunderstanding. You can help us to give you more each month by subscribing for your friends who are interested in a magazine which is not interested in the public taste. Orientale Louis Gilmore Wil’t thou listen To the voices of peacocks; Or would’st thou prefer that the cats Perform a nocturnal serenade? This is no common Entertainment That I have prepared for thee, Indifferent one. The columns are smeared With fire-flies, And the glow-worms shed a light Among the dishes....