Dear Mr. Braithwaite,

I have filled out the Questionnaire to the best of my ability, am sorry that I had to put in two omissions and destroy the looks of the page.

I am enclosing my order and when Clinton sends in his sketch in a day or so, he will enclose his.

We are both enthusiastic over the idea of such a reference work. Indeed I know what questions are always being put to those in such work as you and I do for poetry. It keeps one person busy to answer them.

All possible success with all your undertakins but don't work yourself to death over them.

As ever,

Most sincerely yours,

Kent, Conn.
May 23d.

Please don't trouble to acknowledge this, I know how busy you are.

Dear Mr. Braithwaite,

You will pardon the machine there is so much to say in a short time. All your queries about the Little Book are well taken and I do not wonder you make them. First about Amy Lowell, of course

I did not voluntarily put her in the book. When I sent the first prospectus to Houghton Mifflin and Co. after my original talk here in New

York with Ferris Greenslet, I had not thought of such a thing as including her, but when they returned it to me they asked particularly that I include something from her. I replied that I thought it would be preudicial to the book as I was leaving out so many poets better known.

I thought it would rest there but the next time Mr. Greenslet came over to New York he revealed to the matter and said it would embarrass them very much with the Lowells if all their other poets were included and she left out, and asked me as a special favor to the house to include something. I had therefore no choice but to do so, though I knew it would be misunderstood.

About Henry Van Dyke, both he and Joaquin Miller, then still alive, were in the original prospectus, but Mr. Greenslet thought they belonged to the group next earlier, to the Gilder and Steadman group, and that if I included them I should have to put in Robert Underwood Johnson, Gilder, since he had so lately died, S. Wier Mitchell etc. He felt that it opened up a new group whereas the book was to be of the younger generation. Of course I have Markham and Riley in it but they are so much of to-day, particularly Markham, and never were in the other group. It was purely a matter of chronology, the general idea being a twentieth

2

century book. You know Ferris Greenslet is a man of very decided opinions and his whole idea was to have the book strike the key-note of today, the group not in other anthologies, to any great extent. He constantly cautioned me to keep it small, they wanted a very choice little book illustrative of the period but not attempting the scope of an anthology. I have tried to make this clear in my foreword. I greatly wish now, however, when I see that the book could just as well have been larger and still come under the head of a small book, that I did not insist upon adding about ten people who should be in it. I had no idea but that the material I sent them would make a larger book, but the thin paper, small margins etc. make it small, when it has about seventy more poems than were in the Lyric Year and that was a bulky book. Mr. Greenslet's original idea was to have only about fifty poets in it, but I stretched it to seventy, if I remember correctly, and I now wish I had made it at least ten more.

Of course this is all confidential, as I would not want Ferris Greenslet who has been very kind to me and who is very enthusiastic about the book, to think I was criticising him, but as you know the inside history of working for publishers, I tell you the exact facts so that you will know why some people are omitted. For instance I had in the first prospectus four poems by K knowles, the same as Upson and the others who are dead, but Mr. Greenslet wrote me that he thought Knowles very didactic and wished I would use only Helen's Lips, I retained the ms. of the ms. to Helen Burns lines, and wish now I had kept the Keats etc. for I am sure when he saw the actual poems in their places he would have seen that they belonged there. It is so difficult to get publishers to do anything

3

at all with poetry that I had to be more guarded and make more con-
cessions than I should have done with anything else. Now they are
delighted with the book and as it is moving fast here in New York
and elsewhere they know they have a good thing, but it was then an ex-
periment and I had to pay some heed to Ferris Greenslet's own sugges-
tions. Letters are flowing in to me already about it and the fact
that one has in small compass a composite of the spirit of to-day,
that so much good poetry could be put out in what so many have though-
q a barren time, seems to have met with a response. Joyce Kilmer is to
review it Sunday in the *Times* and other reviews are coming soon. I
am just as sorry as you about Joyce's exquisite Trees, but the poem did
not come out until August and this was all printed. I had difficulty
in selecting from him as he had not done many things of the note I
cared about since his book, when I made up the prospectus.⁴ he has since
done a good many, but they came out in various places after I left
for Europe. He himself thought best to use Martin and the Ballade.

About Agnes Lee, you are quite right. I looked most carefully
through The Border of the Lake, and all the things she had sent me
from time to time for the Poetry Society and found nothing that seemed
to demand inclusion, but as I was away from America when "The Mother
of Judas" came out and did not see it at the time, it slipped my mind
that it was hers. You are certainly right, it should be in, and I should
be glad to have you say so.

Walter Malone's Planting of the Trees is another poem that must
have been published some time when I was abroad, for I never saw it
though he spoke to me about it when here a night or two ago. I thought

4

of using his reply to the sonnet Opportunity, but as I was obliged from
the scheme of the book to leave out better known poets than he, I
did not do so. Had I been making an exhaustive anthology I should have
had Katherine Lee Bates, Wm. Ellery Leonard, Harriet Monroe and many
others in the book, but they were certainly the least necessary to
include as their work has not the divine spark. As to Amelia Joseph-
ine Burr, it may well be that I should have included her. She has lately
done some lovely things, but I cannot agree with your enthusiasm about
her, that she could even be named with Christina Rossetti; she had sent
me various groups of poems to read at the Poetry Society and I never
had found one that could be called more than verse, so that I had not
the eagerness I usually have to get her book, The Roadside Fire. I
have since done so and it has some very lovely things, but when I made
up the prospectus of the Little Book, a year ago in October I think
the Roadside Fire had not yet been published, at least I had not seen
it.

I am more than sorry that I could not have included many other
poets, no one loves them better nor looks out more anxiously for
all that they do, but Houghtons would not have taken the book at all
had I made a large anthology of it, they were interested solely in
the scheme of a small, very closely edited collection. About Agnes Lee
I am a thousand times sorry, but I am in Europe so much of late years
that I miss some fine things that come out in the magazines, whereas
you have the good fortune to be all the time on the ground and par-
ticularly to be in touch with the magazines, doing your yearly list.

I spoke again to Mr. Gomme the other day about the subscrip-
tion I gave him a year ago for your magazine, and he said he would

5

send another one on to you, that he could not be positive he sent the
first one, but supposed he had. I certainly gave it to him and I hope
he will attend to it now. They are having a fine sale of the Little
Book, they take such an interest in poetry.

I am most anxious to see you and have a good visit,
if you do get over to New York try to spare an evening. I am anxious
to know all about your own work and plans. Of course I shall be
more than grateful for the Transcript Review and it will mean a
great deal to the success of the book about Boston, but I don't want to
trammel your criticism in the least, be perfectly free to say what you
will about it. I know that in the main it gives the pulse beat of to-
day without being heavy with the sociological note which killed the
Lyric Year. Wherever I have put in purely Time-Spirit poems they
have poetic value, and of course they are only one note in the book.

I have tried to make the book a unit by the arrangement, so that
one poem strengthens another.

I hope all the little family are well, and God bless your work
goes well, hoping too that I may see you, I am,

Always faithfully,

106 Morningside Drive

Nov. 12th