PRESERVATION PHOTOCOPY: ORIGINAL MATERIAL RESTRICTED

And yet, suppose some evening I forgot
The fare and transfer, yet got by that way
Without recall,-- lost yet poised in traffic:
Then I might find your eyes across an aisle,
Still flickering with those prefigurations--
Prodigal, yet uncontested now,
Half-riant before the jerky window frame.

There is some way, I think, to touch
Those hands of yours that count the nights
Stippled with pink and green advertisements.
And now, before its arteries turn dark
I would have you meet this bartered blood.
Imminent in his dream, none better knows
The white wafer cheek of love, or offers words
Lightly as moonlight on the eaves meets snow.

Reflective conversion of all things
At your deep blush, when ecstasies thread
The limbs and belly, when rainbows spread
Impinging on the throat and sides . . .
Inevitable, the body of the world
Weeps in inventive dust for the hiatus
That winks above it, bluet in your breasts.

The earth may glide diaphanous to death;
But if I lift my arms it is to bend
To you who tumbled away once, Helen, knowing
The press of troubled hands, too alternate
With steel and soil to hold you endlessly.
I meet you, therefore, in that eventual flame
You found in final chains, no captive then--
Beyond their million brittle, bloodshot eyes;
White, through white cities passed on to assume
That world which comes to each of us alone.

Accept a lone eye riveted to your plane,
Bent axle of devotion along companion ways
That beat, continuous, to hourless days--
One inconspicuous, glowing orb of praise.

(3)

## II

Brazen hypnotics glitter here;
Glee shifts from foot to foot,
Magnetic to their tremulo.
This crashing opera bouffe,
Blest excursion! this ricochet
From roof to roof --
Know, Olympians, we are breathless
While nigger cupids scour the stars!

A thousand light shrugs balance us
Through snarling hails of melody.
White shadows slip across the floor
Splayed like cards from a loose hand;
Rhythmic ellipses lead into canters
Until somewhere a rooster banters.

Greet naively -- yet intrepidly
New soothings, new amazements
That cornets introduce at every turn--
And you may fall downstairs with me
With perfect grace and equanimity:
Or, plaintively scud past shores
Where, by strange harmonic laws
All relatives, serene and cool,
Sit rocked in patent arm chairs.

O, I have known metallic paradises
Where cuckoos clucked to finches
Above the deft catastrophies of drums;
While titters hailed the groans of death
Beneath gyrating awnings I have seen
The incunabula of the divine grotesque.
This music has a reassuring way.

The siren of the springs of guilty song--
Let us take her on the incandescent wax
Striated with nuances, nervosities
That we are heir to: she is still so young,
We cannot frown upon her as she smiles,
Dipping here in this cultivated storm
Among slim skaters of the gardened skies.

III

Capped arbiter of beauty in this street
That narrows darkly into motor dawn, --
You, here beside me, delicate ambassador
Of intricate slain numbers that arise
In whispers, naked of steel;

religious gunman!
Who faithfully, yourself, will fall too soon,
And in other ways than as the wind settles
On the sixteen thrifty bridges of the city:
Let us unband our throats of fear and pity.

We, even,
Who drove speediest destruction
In corymbulous formations of mechanics, --
Who hurried the hill breezes, spouting malice
Plangent over meadows, and looked down
On rifts of torn and empty houses
Like old women with teeth unjubilant,
That waited faintly, briefly, and in vain:

We know, eternal gunman, our flesh remembers
The tensile boughs, the nimble blue plateaus,
The mounted, yielding cities of the air!

That saddled sky that shook down vertical
Repeated play of fire -- no hypogeum
Of waves or rock was good against an hour.
We did not ask for that, but have survived,
And will persist to speak again before
All stubble streets that have not curved
To memory, or known the ominous lifted arm
That lowers down the arc of Helen's brow
To saturate with blessing and dismay.

A goose, tobacco and cologne--
Three winged and gold-shod prophesies of heaven,
The lavish heart shall always have, to leaven
And spread with bells and voices, and atone
The abating shadows of our conscript dust.

Ellenville NY
Sunday 11:00 AM
30 Sept. 23

Dear Hart

A few notes on your Possessions.

The halting rhythm of the first four lines (especially when felt in contract to the firm and surging rhythm of the five that follow) is fine. A conscious state: uncent inty, suspension, a diffusion, a pause anticipating the sharp focusing of consciousness on a torturous reality. The following five lines definite this reality. An amazing definition, which, because of its energy, firmness, linear perfection, density, and stark images is great. Esthetically, it is surely one of the finest passages you've written.

In the second stanza you have the swaying motion of contraction and expansion...

In the third, the motion begins to wind about the center of an emerging purity...

The motion of the fourth is that surging, intense, still vibrancy which is pure, ecstatic. The cadence, the rise and fall, the breaks, the sweep to resolution - all sheer and masterful. I have but two reservations: first line - "who" - I am certain of this word. And, "The inclusive cloud Whose heart is fire shall come". Somehow I feel a let-down in "whose heart is fire shall come". "Shall come". The rhythm and words, too loose? not trenchant and dense enough? Something... But "the white wind rase All but bright stones wherein my smiling plays" is finely achieved. A fine line of winding, resolution, and equi-poise.

All in all, a deep, thrusting, dense, organized, strong, passionate, luminous, and ecstatic poem, old fellow.

My joy to you, and my love,

JEAN
TOOMER
COLLECTION

ED. 1

10/2/23

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JEAN TOOMER COLLECTION

Woodstock N Y
Monday eve.

Nov. 4th, '23

Dear Jean:

A roisterous time! Cider, belly dances and cake
walks over Sunday at O'Neils, and we didn't go to bed until
daylight. Got here at Brown's and Nagle's place last night
for dinner. Long walks today, wrestling matches and hide and
seek on the lawn. My biceps are certainly swelling. The house
is just right and the month promises very very much for me.
I shan't be able to get down to any ratiocination until the
Cowleys leave tomorrow, but I can see some sturdy days ahead,
even though no pen shall touch the paper and the typewriter
remains click-less. After all, it's been a good thing that I
haven't had the time or the privacy to give myself to the re-
collection of the sad and wondrous night before I left. It
keeps coming to me, though, in a kind of terrific rawness. And
as I said, it is nothing to be overcome or superceded - its
causes were outside of myself and its gift a broken thing.
It does cry for words, however, and I'm wondering if I am
equal to such an occasion, such beauty and anquish, all in
one.

Saw Gorham for a moment in the village this morning,
and expect to have a talk with him tomorrow. Matty J. is comi
to this house for a visit next week end! It doesn't especialy
disturb me if they don't stay too long. How is the Vic going,
and Margy?

Love,

hart

NOTICE

JEAN TOOMER COLLECTION

15 VanNest Pl
NYC

March 2nd, 1924

Dear Jean:

However much one must resent this mood we are
both more-or-less contained in at present - one must still
bow to it, however, without including a sense of fear.
My excesses have added to my strength, - I am sure of it,
but I feel the need of pausing for a little now and then
to accumulate these added but scattered perceptions, - to
draw them inward toward a reserve that must be a unity
if it shall ever conduce to a truly creative vision. I
think I understand, then, the feelings that your brief note
indicated. ONLY - the admission of "brokennes", or rather
the constant conviction of it in yourself I feel to be un-
necessary, not to say false, unless it is really desired.
This division between mind and spirit is only a matter of
will, desire, and I hope that some limited theories of
science, "advanced" or not "advanced" will not succeed in
subduing your faith in exactly "the miraculous" which you
doubt as a consistent basis for yielding pure contacts from
brokenness, I.E., your present state of uncertainty.

I am very tired . . . And you'll note by the above
address that I occupy a familiar room. Its comforts so extra
to the facilities at 45 Grove are having a good toning effect
on me already. Good bed: good sleep! good plumbing: hygiene.
And there is, at last, sunlight through my windows! So I hope
I shall not have to move again for a long while. Enough money
came from both sides of the family in Cleveland to keep me, I
think, until I can get new work, which, when I get it, I shall
pursue with vigor and without illusions, as you know.

Burke is back for three months work at the Dial: also
has some remunerative trans work to do. Said he wanted to look
you up in Washington, but had only an hour in the station
after all. Fitts and Wheelwright have practically agreed to
bring out his book. I have not been to any concerts. Tomorrow
is the opening of Stieglitz's and O'Keefe's exhibition at the
Anderson Galleries which Gorham and I'll probably attend.

Write me a word or so, now and then, just according
to your mood. My above "advice" was not reflective to our cor-
respondence, and the general slackness of this note of mine
is the best proof that I can give of agreeing with you that
there is little use in anything but a beck or a nod when the
pulse is slightly debile.

Affectionately,

110 Columbia Heights
Brooklyn, NY

May 28, 1984

Dear Jean!

I have not written - even an answer to your note of last - I don't know how many weeks ago. And I can't answer yet. Heaven and Hell has transpired in the meantime, but I hope to know them both better before I get through, and before I say good-bye to you.

I think some of your (not concerns, but) approaches have been either worded badly, or two willful. I refer to your letters solely to me. But that should be no cause for resentment either on your side nor mine. Life is running over me and destroying me. That I confess, and you can boast about indifferences or immunities or victories as much as you wish. I have not gone this far for any kind of victories.

I understand you wrote me at some old address. Therefore you must understand that nothing has reached me for some time; and while I am to blame anyway, I want you to know that, for your essential and pure self, I am as open and knowing as you once gave me credit for.

With love,

JEAN TOOMER COLLECTION

JEAN TOOMER COLLECTION

Dear Hart,

Your letter of May 28th received just after I had sent that note
to the city for mailing. And there also came a note from Allen Tate,
saying that he would be Washington, and would like to see me, asking
that I write him and send my phone number. But his letter came too
late for me to act on. When you see him, will you explain that I'm
really not in Washington, but some distance out, in the backwoods,
whenever is no mail delivery? And I enclose a brief note to him,
care of you.

Nay, dear fellow; those letters of mine were not willful, and I doubt
that they were worded badly. They were, perhaps, a too accurate
expression of my state, which was one of flat rejection. Not a rejection
of you, though your resistance to certain of my efforts and
directions did meet a similar energy in me. But the rejection of a
certain aspect of life, in which a part of you, as well as a portion
of myself, was included. Because you were an object in relief, shots
were aimed at you. It is the old story of fighting for some segment
of oneself, which, ironically enough, the other fellow has to pay
for. I hope, and I was not without the hope at that time, that those
letters justified themselves, somewhat, in terms of yourself. They
have been servicable to me, in as much as they units of the lever
which broke, and is now binding me. I have indeed pulled together,
in a way, and on a life-plane, measurably in advance of anything
I've known before. I have no victory as yet, but I must posit one,
for the reason that I vision an individual end. But this, now, is
not the point. I write now to bury bones in their merits of defects,
to welcome an intuitive exchange between us.

my love,

110 Columbia Heights
Brooklyn

Monday, June 16th '24

Dear Jean:

Inasmuch as you have asked me for such a 'large order' I shan't think of trying to make a final definition of my own in reply during my present weakened condition. My last note to you was perhaps rather ill advised; I do not even remember my precise statements. It was written and mailed in a state of almost hysterical despair. What I am much more able to appreciate now is your admirable reply. I have had other spiritual reassurances, also, since then, and while I am suffering much from almost chronic acidosis and am subsisting on milk and water, I feel very much at peace with experience, so-called, which at present I feel inclined to believe, is an effort to describe God. Only the effort, - limitless and yet forever incomplete. But I want to elaborate my ideas a little longer before I admit that as complete. It is so much a matter of terminology, after all. I try to make my poems experiences, I rather don't try, when they are good *they are* - like "Possessions". And bright stones - in the end.

I shall probably never be able to be very personal about it, eyt sometime I'll have more to say to you than now and here, about the maelstrom of the last three months, - what unbelievable promises it has not only fulfilled, but what complications, also, it has placed and replaced again and again between such beautiful realizations as it has, in the end, accomplished. And to *know* that such a love would forever be impossible again - that it would never be met with again, if only because one knew that one would never have the intensity to respond to a repetition of such even though it seemed worthy enough! I have not the initial exaltation (which you may see in the poem enclosed) but at least as much in some other way - which is new to me. I have never been given the opportunity for as much joy and agony before. The extreme edges of these emotions were sharpened on me in swift alternation until I am almost a shadow. But there is a conviction of love - that is the only way I can name it - which has somehow arrived in time, and which has (now so much has proved it) an equal basis in the both of us.

Allen Tate is enjoying himself very much, and is situated at 65 - just below me. He seems to admire CANE very much. He had some other friends to see in Washington, so your absence didn't mean complete disappointment.

Love, from
Hart

No. 375

Sunday

Aug 19th

1924

Dear Jean:

Your little note was on the table when I came roistering in with Burke and the Cowley's after much to drink. The evening was dull, however, and I'd much better have talked it out with you!

There's nothing to tell except that I had a very doleful tired reaction to my western trip which I'm just pulling out of -- into the merest static acceptance of things on a physical plane. For a while I want to keep immune from be@ckonings and all that draws you into doorways, subways, sympathies, rapports and the City's complicated devastations. Besides, the new copy-writing work at the office is a strenuous spending. A fine lot of dross to write to you about! But it will serve to accent somewhat, I hope, your chrysalis in the mountains.

I want words from you without reciprocal anticipations till I am solider. Just had breakfast with Gorham and Liza -- with eggs of the usual sculptural perfection!

JEAN TOOMER COLLECTION

Woodstock, N.Y.

Nov. 23rd

Dear Jean:

Your letter voiced a mood that is still rather matching my own.
I am rather dissatisfied with the dormant state of my faculties, yet not
enough so to make excuses even to myself. I really am happy to hear the
wind in the boughs, use the axe and saw and even enjoy the bit of cooking
which I share in doing. There is not much time for other things except on
rainy days like the last, when I sat reading the Golden Bough and alter-
nating black cat "Jazz"-for tiger, "Chauncey Depew" (on account of his
dinner visits across the fields to neighboring plantations) in my lap,
now well protected with cordoroy. The three of us got drunk on the wine
filched last night from the private cellar of the owner of this house.
Great defense of the MACHINE by Brown opposed by Crane and Nagle. Went
furious to bed. The night before it was Marinetti, John Brown, KKK ajd
Jesus Christ. Thanksgiving brings out Dod Passos and a couple of women
of good fame from the big city. Three days of revelry are promised, and
then I shall settle down to something constructive as I'm due now to stay
out here all next month. Burke wants to rent my room and I'm tickled to
death to have some more calm and exercise and perfect my mustache which
makes me look very Breton, so B says. Every day I have a walk and talk
with Gorham into town for the mornings mail and marketing. I am trying to
get him out of the fixed ideas relevant to the Broom rumpus, dual and
personalities. I think the whole business has preved upon his work long
enough and deserves to be dismissed in favor of more worthy pursuits on
his part - regardless of any actions on the part of his opponents.

JEAN-TOOMER COLLECTION

The boat for Antwerp and Jerry still haunt me. Aside from the three briefers I have done for the Dial, that poem has been my only immediate concern. It is growing very slowly. I doubt the possibility of ever printing it, but don't care. Significances gradually lift themselves from the trial laines. I send you some of the poem as it stands at this hour, as you are fine enough to be concerned. It was great to have your inquiry about it. I think I shall call it "White Buildings" perhaps. Certainly it is one of the consciously written things I have ever attempted, whether or not it has any sense, direction or interest to anyone but myself. Let me know if anything in it gets through at all to an outsider.

Brown and Nagle made the suggestion recently that they very much hope you would feel like coming out here sometime in December for a few days. I've no idea how it strikes you, but you will get a real welcome from us all. I'll be back in town for better or worse around Jan. 1st. I don't think I can afford a trip before. How is Margey? I shall try to write her, but there have been entirely too many letters forced upon me here and I won't get around to it as soon as I should like. Give her my love.

As always, your

Hart

Sue Light wrote me that she was very sorry she had missed you when you called, and wants your address for a personal expression as soon as I can send it.

Woodstock

Saturday, Dec. 14th

Dear Jean--

Someone sent Brown a Boston Transcript some time ago, and I meant to write you before about my pleasure in seeing your companions in photographs at the top of the page announcing the 123 Best Short Stories (O'Brien) awards, etc. Mainly, of course I mean, because it ought to help sell Cane faster. (If B and I would advertise it a bit more, as we agreed, that would be best of all.) But enough of such disturbing thoughts! I am much more interested in what you are writing now, or have on your mind to write. I suspect that something is brewing these days. God knows I'm in a sterile state to imagine myself surrounded with whirlwinds. And meanwhile the time is drawing near for my quite penniless return to NY at the first of the new year.

I have been seriously thinking about taking a job as keeper of a lodge on top of the mountain in whose shadow we live here, (2500 ft.) Perhaps I could milk a cow, feed chickens and two horses and keep myself from freezing with enough time left over for some uninterrupted reading and writing, provided hurricanes didn't blow us all off the cliff some night. The present caretaker was frightened enough to fairly beg me to replace him one day when I walked up there, and one gets paid 40 a month with all expenses paid. But I have heard nothing as yet from the man who owns the property and so believe I shall have to give it up. Maybe next spring I might take it provided no one else has by that time. Certainly I am not at all anxious to return to the hectic life of NY or any other settlement for awhile. How I would

JEAN TOOMER COLLECTION

like to plough through some philosophy and metaphysics - have time
to derive a terminology for some of my potentialities up there!
For I have really just reached that physical and nervous equilibrium
necessary for clear absorption and analysis. I've been through
enough passions and frustrations, too, out here to have slowed up
this reinstatement of myself, - delayed it much beyond the pace of
more ordinary circumstances. But I won't go into that now.

I have a book to recommend to you as successive to your
direct study of Plato V: Pater's 'Plato and Platonism', than which
no other book of Pater's is better and which I think is one of the
best experiences I have ever had. I have also been reading Lucretius and The Golden Bough, the latter rather tiresome from an ove r
load of detail and analogy, but an amazing compendium. Certainly
I have been much fooled, however, in respect to the amount of study
and writing time I should have out here. There has been altogether
to much physical work to do, nine tenths of the time having been
filled with wood chopping, sawing, feeding fires, sweeping and
cooking. And then there has been only one typewriter (with two
ambitious writers) and BROOM to be served, and much personal cor-
respondence!)

Well, well! I didn't mean to write you a mere record of defi-
ciencies, and this certainly sounds like one. Together with you in
The Roma there would be more relief to these megger sorrows, and
indeed, I have a great yearning, Jean, to see you now. You give m e
back myself so purely! Your hands are like the lines of these worn
fine mountains 'round me here; so I think sometimes,

- and my love to Margaret, too -