Don’t be confident, as Mr. Arthur J. Eddy said at the “Poetry” dinner, that no good thing is ever lost. Ask Mr. Eddy, who is a lawyer, to prove that no good thing is ever lost. Don’t expect poets to refrain from writing about one another—even in praise. If you don’t enjoy the feast, don’t eat it. When the poets tear one another to pieces, don’t you enjoy it? But if, like most critics of poetry, you are a poet also, take warning. Be prepared! Don’t wait until a poet is dead before you discover him. Don’t gnash your teeth and expect the public to take it as a sign of force and insight. Don’t forget that prosody is derived from poetry, not poetry from prosody. Don’t waste your time trying to squeeze exceptions into the rule. Remember that exceptions in poetry, as in music, are the variations that give life. Don’t measure English poetry by English poetic standards alone. Consider the sources of English poetry, and don’t begin with Chaucer, or stop with Tennyson. Don’t think that English or American poetry may not assimilate as much new beauty and richness from foreign sources in the future as it has in the past. Don’t consider rhyme as the be-all and end-all of poetry. Rhyme is sometimes as beautiful as the reflection of trees in water; it is sometimes as monotonous as a stitch in time. Don’t substitute vituperation for the “critique raisonné”—almost an unknown quantity in this country. Don’t look first at the publisher’s imprint. Don’t cling to convictions that you fear to have upset. Don’t, because you fail to share the convictions of a fellow critic, think that he is a bigger fool than you are—unless you can prove it. Don’t imagine that printing a poem as prose makes it prose. A musical masterpiece may be distorted by unrhythmic playing, yet the composer’s rhythm remains intact in the score. Don’t object to conceptions in poetry that you might find striking and powerful in bronze or plaster. “The Hog Butcher of the World” is one picturesque attitude of Chicago.... Is the truth unbearable? One may still love Chicago in spite of its dirty face. Don’t try to establish even a distant kinship between poetry and ethics. The relation is illicit. Don’t tell the poet what he must, or must not, write about—he doesn’t hear you. Don’t be tedious. Don’t take ten times as much space as the poet to prove that he is a bad poet. Your sin against the public is more grievous, and your art less, than his. Don’t make up your review from the publisher’s advance notice. The poet might like to know what you think about his work—not what he told the publisher to tell you. Don’t expect a poet to punch a time-clock, or record only the emotions of his fellow townspeople. Don’t limit a poet to primary emotions, or find decadence in a refinement that may exceed your own. Don’t fancy that brutality is strength, or delicacy weakness. Don’t fancy that the poem that gives up its meaning quickest gives most, or lives longest.