Publié chez Contact Publishing

What do they mean when they say : « I do not like your poems ; you have no faith whatever. You seem neither to have suffered nor, in fact, to have felt anything very deeply. There is nothing appealing in what you say but on the contrary the poems are positively repellant. They are heartless, cruel, they make fun of humanity. What in God’s name do you mean ? Are you a pagan ? Have, you no tolerance for human frailty ? Rhyme you may perhaps take away but rythm ! why there is none in your work whatever. Is this what you call poetry ? It is the very antithesis of poetry. It is antipoetry. It is the annihilation of life upon which you are bent. Poetry that used to go hand in hand with life, poetry that interpreted our deepest promptings, poetry that inspired, that led us forward to new discoveries, new depths of tolerance, new heights of exaltation. You moderns ! it is the death of poetry that you are accomplishing. No. I cannot understand this work. You have not yet suffered a cruel blow from life. When you have suffered you will write differently ? »

Perhaps this noble apostrophy means something terrible for me, I am not certain, but for the moment I interpret it to say : « You have robbed me. God,. I am naked. What shall I do ? » — By it they mean that when I have suffered (provided I have not done so as yet) I too shall run for cover ; that I too shall’ seek refuge in fantasy. And mind you, I do not say that I will not. To decorate my age.

But today it is different.

The reader knows himself as he was twenty years ago and he has also in mind a vision of what he would be, some day. Oh, some day ! But the thing he never knows and never dares to know is what he is at the exact moment that he is. And this moment is the only thing in which I am at all interested. Ergo, who cares for anything I do ? And what do I care ?

I love my fellow creature. Jesus, how I love him : endways, sideways, frontways and all the other ways — but he doesn’t exist ! Neither does she. I do, in a bastardly sort of way.

Is what I have written prose ? The only answer is that form in prose
ends with the end of that which is being communicated --- If the power to
go on falters in the middle of a sentence --- that is the end of the
sentence --- Or if a new phase enters at that point it is only stupidity to go on.

There is no confusion --- only difficulties.

Why should I go further than I am able ? Is it not enough for you that I am perfect ?

I realize that the chapters are rather quick in their sequence and that nothing much is contained in any one of them but no one should be surprised at this today.

THE TRADITIONALISTS OF PLAGIARISM

It is spring. That is to say, it. is approaching THE BEGINNING.

In that huge and microscopic career of time, as it were a wild horse racing in an illimitable pampa under the stars, describing immense and microscopic circles with his hoofs on the solid turf, running without a stop for the millionth part of a second until lie is aged and worn to a heap of skin, bones and ragged hoofs — In that majestic progress of life, that gives the exact impression of Phidias’ frizze, the men and beasts of which, though they seem of the rigidity of marble are not so but move, with blinding rapidity, though we do not have the time to notice it, their legs advancing a millionth part of an inch even, — fifty thousand years — In that progress of life which seems stillness itself in the mass of its movements — at last SPRING is approaching.

In that colossal surge toward the finite and the capable life has now arrived for the second lime at that exact moment when in the ages past the destruction of the species Homo sapiens occured.

Now at last that process of miraculous verisimilitude, that grate copying which evolution has followed, repeating move for move every move that it made in the past — is approaching the end.

Suddenly it is at an end. THE WORLD IS NEW.

Thus, weary of life, in view of the great consummation which awaits us — tomorrow, we rush among our friends congratulating ourselves upon the joy soon to be. Thoughtless of evil we crush out the marrow of those about us with our heavy cars as we go happily from place to place. It seems that there is not time enough in which to speak the full of our exaltation. Only a day is left, one miserable day, before the world comes into its own. Let us hurry ! Why bother for this man or that ? In the offices of the great newspapers a mad joy reigns as they prepare the final extras. Rushing about, men bump each other into the whirring presses. How funny it seems. All thought of misery has left us. Why should we care ? Children laughingly fling themselves under the wheels of the street cars, airplanes crash gaily to the earth. Someone has written a poem.