Memorial Court
Clare College
Cambridge
4 February 1937

Dear Mr Warren:

I hope you have not thought me, because I have not replied, unappreciative of the comment in your letter of last October. The truth is that I was last term in a most unsettled state in every way and had neither leisure nor effective peace. Returning this year after some weeks in Paris, I am better acclimated.

Your criticism of "Ritual at Arlington" is perfectly correct; Van Doren, Tate, and Rylands here, say substantially the same things. I am now very glad that you did not print it, too many pleasant failures are already floating about in ill-advised print. I ought probably to destroy the poem and forget; but it cost me much labor, the abstract plan I still think valuable, and parts of it are worth keeping. So I've put it away for a few months; then I shall re-work, and plague you again.

The enclosed cheque is for a two years' subscription. I have here the first four numbers, Volume I complete, but no others; will you have the subscription start with the following (Summer 1936) issue? I await impatiently these last three numbers. *The Southern Review* is decidedly now the best literary medium in English; a pity it is not better known on this side. I wish only that you could include chronicles on the film; competent recognition, in *The Southern Review*, of the film as a formidable and legitimate art-form would, it seems to me, be worth any trouble or breach of policy.

I've written since last summer a fair amount of verse, but have been waiting until I had a group I could respect, before sending you anything. Which looks to be never. On the chance, however, that my judgment is decaying, as friends have inferred, I'll select some poems when I have time and send them, confident in your expert opinion (you were, I remember, among other things, the first American critic to prefer Auden and deprecate Spender, for the right reasons—this is a sore point, for much is made here out of Spender's popularity in the United States). I am at present plunged in Yeats, preparing for a talk I've been asked to give. Would

34, Bridge Street
Cambridge

10 August 1937

Dear Mr Brooks:

Thanks for your note, glad you find the poems not hopelessly
I have begun to think they are, with three or four exceptions.
I'm sending four recent poems, one an hour old, which might
help you in making up a group, if one is to be made. Also
to indicate a change in Last Days of the City: the first line
of the tenth stanza reads

The barriers were down, they fell afraid
And 'deep' in the fifth probably ought to be 'strict'; I hope
you find that poem worth printing. (or 'exacting')

Delighted you printed Blackmur and Tate has written on him,
I was staggered by Jordan's Delight in Ms a year or so ago,
first-rate; also some sonnets. English poetry is incredibly
bad at the moment, even French is better; were I a literary
patriot I could be hated with just cause here.

Measure for Measure is taped for the first time in history,
I feel: would you be interested in an essay, and how long?
Cambridge indolence has not quite mastered me, not quite.

Very sorry about Tate's illness, please give him my regards.

34, Bridge Street
Cambridge

12 February 1938

Dear Mr Warren:

Thank you for your October letter, which I'm very sorry not to have answered earlier; put it down to my distressing inclination to spend two weeks on a comma. You chose well: with two exceptions, the other poems I sent are bad, but these five seem to stand up. I enclose final versions of them; the changes are mainly in pointing and titling, but I've excised a stanza from "Night and the City"; should I have kept 'contemptuous' in the eighth line?

I am sending ten other pieces as well, one you have seen before in a primitive state, the rest new. Although the two Songs from *Cleopatra* seem to reinforce each other, either can be printed separately as "A Song from *Cleopatra*"; C. being a blank verse play I wrote last year, the scene her villa in Rome at Caesar's return from the Spanish campaign in which he defeated and left to die in a cave Cneus Pompey, her first lover; you remember she was carried to Caesar first by stealth, in a flockbed (North's word and Pope uses it); the Narrator sings. Similarly, the first of the "Two Replies on Fame" can be printed alone as "Reply to a Friend".

More than anything else I appreciate your saying that you liked my verse. Before leaving America I'd written nothing respectable, and encouragement has been scarce; also criticism, since no one here is of any use. So if there are weak spots in poems here that seem to you in general good, I'd like you to tell me. This may be particularly true of "The Translation" (or "Toward Myth"?) and of "Meditation", which Van Doren says wants prolonged reading. And I hope you'll write as soon as you've formed an opinion.

Did Mr Brooks get the *Vision* I had sent to him? A mistake delayed it. I'll send you a few more poems next month. What restrictions, by the way, are there on English publications of this verse?

Robert Penn Warren, Esq.

41, Park Avenue
New York, N. Y.

10 October 1938

Dear Mr Warren:

Our accounts are not quite straight. Some
ten months ago, on your saying you wanted
to print a group larger than five, I sent
you about a dozen pieces, of which I have
heard nothing except from Mr Erskine, who
said they were there, at any rate, in July.
"Meditation", in which I am still interested,
was among them; what else I don't know.
Also, something seems to have happened to
"Film", which you said you were going to use
but which didn't appear. And you asked me
to send Mr Brooks a copy of _A Vision_, which
I did; I wonder whether he got it.

Mr Tate tells me you are exceedingly busy,
so I don't like to seem to harry you, par-
ticularly since I'm grateful for the good
appearance of my group in what I think is,
so far as essays are concerned, the best
issue of _The Southern Review_ so far. But
you will understand my perplexity.

I should very much appreciate some advice.
It is possible that the two poems I am send-
ing you offer, because of their subjects,
barriers to even Quarterly publication;
though I hope irony in each case so controls
the tone that from a good reader there will
be no irrelevant responses. Should you want
them, they are yours; if not, would you mind
telling me what you think of them, roughly?
In either case, as soon as you conveniently
can. And thank you.

41, Park Avenue
New York, N.Y.

20 January 1939

Dear Mr Warren:

Thank you for your letter. I am sending you
seven poems,—"Heritage", "The Outcast",
"Father and Son", "Elegy", "Parting as Descent",
"The Second Cactus", "The Trial",—and will
send more when I can; I am in bed with 'flu at
present. If you like "Heritage", I want it to
head whatever group you decide on.

I am very sorry to have to tell you that "The
Translation" has been published in New Directions
1938. Laughlin took it in Cambridge after so
long a time had elapsed that I had entirely
forgotten you had it. I must apologise for this,
although in any case I should not have wanted
you to print it. I am dissatisfied with the
poem and, but for an error, it would not have
appeared at all.

"The Trial" was printed, badly mangled, in
*Twentieth Century Verse* (London) several months
ago. I am very anxious that it appear (a) here,
(b) correctly. In this connection, will you
tell me whether I am now free to publish in
England the poems the *Southern Review* used last
summer?

Thank you for the comments on "Meditation";
I have known for some time that it wanted
revision. I will return it to you as soon as
I am able to work on the poem again.

JB:BE

Robert Penn Warren Esq.

Fountain Valley,
Reisterstown, Maryland

26 May 1939

Dear Mr Warren:

Thanks for your letters. I'm glad you now like
"Meditation"; please add it to the two pieces you
accepted earlier.

Since you neither return nor mention a group of
four poems I sent you two months ago, I must assume
you did not receive them, though something like this
has happened before. Three of them, "Winter Land-
scape", "The Councillors" and "Vigil in the Lakes",
I am sending you again. Also "Conversation", in
which you expressed some interest; four changes have
been made in the last atanza. And four new poems.

I confess I am amazed by your rejection of all of
the last fourteen poems I have sent you. I am told
and know that my verse is improving, and I select
with some care what I send you. I don't know what
to think. If you don't like "Winter Landscape" or
"The Disciple", I think I had better retire and try
archery.

Robert Penn Warren, Esq.
The Southern Review
University, Louisiana

FRANK CODY
President

CHARLES L. SPAIN
Executive Vice-President

WAYNE UNIVERSITY

BOARD OF EDUCATION

DETROIT, MICHIGAN

COLLEGE OF LIBERAL ARTS
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH

27 November 1939

Dear Mr Brooks:

I hope the group you and Mr Warren have selected is better than I think it is; however, since I once committed the poems and you are kind enough to want to print them, I daresay I should hold my tongue. When do you think of using them?

I am sending corrected versions of the two oldest poems. I'd like the group called FIVE POEMS and arranged thus: DESIRES OF MEN AND WOMEN, CONVERSATION, HOMAGE TO FILM, SONG FROM CLEOPATRA, MEDITATION. The DESIRES poem, by the way, was sent privately to Warren, but eventually I should have submitted it to the REVIEW, so its being printed is all right.

Since I have been regularly mis-represented, even lied about, in various Notes on Contributors, I wonder if I may make a suggestion. I wish you'd say this, or something like this: "J.B. is Poetry Editor of THE NATION. Since his first group of poems in THE SOUTHERN REVIEW (Summer, 1938), his poems have appeared in THE KENYON REVIEW, PARTISAN REVIEW, THE NEW REPUBLIC, NEW DIRECTIONS 1938 and 1939." Doubtless this is too long, and I know it looks the public gesture of a private satisfaction; but it seems to me very important that any interested readers be told where other poems can be found, if the writer has not yet published a book, as I have not.

I am grateful for your invitation; I should of course very much like to see you. It is just possible that I may come to New Orleans at Christmas, perhaps with Schwartz and Laughlin; I'll let you know. I must be in New York for a bit and I may be too poor to go anywhere else.

Will you tell Mr Erskine that I have not received the Autumn number.

II

From Pharos I have seen her white
Standing with Pompey while the moon
Twice turned and made a silver noon
Upon the Alexandrian night.
When air was olive, she but young,
Ambition died into delight.

A bird there was that died and then
Struck from its ashes into life.
Resentment got continual strife
And blood upon the marsh and fen.
Limp in the antique arms of one
She found her hatred for all men.

That Queen insulted Cicero,
Lucan and Horace threw a gibe,
But Antony and all his tribe
Cut out the hearts that called her so.
Wandering upon her terrace
They go and ask not where they go.

What symbol of degraded death
Will now sustain what she has been?
Not a Tanagra figurine
From out the tumult and the wrath.
Perhaps the sensual eye, the pride
That spent itself before her breath.

39

FILM

This night I have seen a film
That might have startled Henry James
From his massive calm
Of discipline or sent Donne
Into passion, perhaps all names
Of crafty men kindled as the sun.

The sun of another medium
Comes up the east, mechanical
As any art, slow, but it will come
Faster and at last find
Its noon an Argus brain that shall
Centre all complexities in mind.

Idiom and reference are but
Statistics of catastrophe,
Intensity is the lever that
Releases vehemence in the bone
Of all men always, in city,
Hills or in a wilderness of stone.