Box 1

Scope and Contents "It pleases me that you have interest in what I have conveyed to you in one way and another, of my thinking. As to agreement and disagreement: I think that, where some perception is had of the general character and implicit intent of my thinking, the problem of agree-disagree-ment dissolves, since it is as a whole, in its entire tenor, that what I have to say or tell matters, or not for people. My judgement of Mr. Auden, for instance, is not a separate a literary, opinion, but an incident...

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"...For you do two things in your letter that call for immediate protest from me. In the case of the first, you do me an injustice, attributing to me a position I have not in any letter presented myself as being in, towards you or anyone else. I know something about having erroneous notions about oneself held by others; such notions do a spreading injury to truth, about whomever they are held."

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"If a person were to accept all that I have said on the failure of poetry he could not without butchering the content of what I said bring into argument a concept of poetry as an operation to approach without high expectations. You must go elsewhere with such argument. Find someone who has not approached poetry with high expectations of it (per its own inherent promise as what has long been with us), and you need not argue at all; that person would have no thought of renouncing poetry."

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"As I have written to you preliminarily, there is question with me (first) as to what I might usefully say about Wyndham Lewis in my recounting of my literary-world experiences (in a book for which I have a good deal in preparation.)"

Scope and Contents "A friend who knows something of my language-studies but is only slightly acquainted with my other work, early and later, has sent me a copy of Mr. Paul Auster's review of my books Selected Poems: In Five Sets and The Telling published in your issue of August 7th, commenting on it as "a rather nice review". It is not a nice review, as my friend would know if he had better acquaintance with my work in the whole, and experienced sense of the procedures followed by poets, poet-critics,...

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"...Mr. Paul Auster's review of two books of mine in your issue of August 7th: Communicated views of it of friends, communicated to me., impressed on me the need of comment. One thought it 'rather nice'."

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"I pause over one of Mr. Auster's historical touches, reference to Robert Graves telling of Auden for his imitations of me. That is retrospective self-preening. Auden's takings from me were Gargantuan, rather comically assiduous."

Scope and Contents "Mr. Virgil Thomson, in his review of Published in Pairs by Hugh Ford, in your issue of February 19th, improves, in his patronizing reference to me in it as among those who took on 'siz'-'not only as warriprs but artists', from their Paris associations on the wilful perversion of literary, historical, and personal actualities that Mr. Ford commits in my regard in his book."....."...he wanted this projected book to include an authoratative account of The Seizin Press....

Scope and Contents "Mr. William Meredith, in his review of The Blue Estuaries by Louise Bogan in your issue of October 13th, posits "an ambivalent prejudice that a woman artist must face", and then describes Miss Bogan as having got along very well by, simply, disdaining the challenge of the prejudice and declaring herself to be a human being, of good endowments. The posited prejudice is, according to Mr. Meredith, a 'culture' that limits the woman artist to being either "a poetess or a goddess, a little lady...

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"Our Editor has asked me to send you a galley of your letter (somewhat condensed, because of lack of space), which we would like to run in an early issue."

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"Be not dismayed by the accompaniment of six pages of comment: they merely check on, and explain, my changes - so that all can be clear between the Editor and myself."