Dear Comrade:

Yes, the letter should be sent to Lovett, but I think you should leave off that last about my work either being or not being the epic. Instead, you should take the positive side, for very few men are capable of individual opinion forme as a result of first hand investigation. Lovett, who is within the Eastern clique psychosis, whether he knows it or not - and it is a terrific power for those who are in the whirl - should have something positive to think about. You should point out how my work has forged ahead steadily all over the country in spite of the attitude in New York, and you should emphasize the class of people with whom it has won. Then you should draw attention to the article by Wm. Rose Benet in his Phoenix Next column in the Saturday Review of Literature last week 9 (the 14th, I believe), in which the judges of the Pulitzer Poetry Award are taken to task for ignor ing my Collected Poems. If you can not get this, I'll send it to you as soon as my mother returns the copy I sent her.

Now as to the Pulitzer Award: the morning the news came here, both Ralph and Joseph Pulitzer rushed into my office and seemed flabbergasted that I had been ignored. it was taken for granted, apparently, that I'd win. Even Louis Untermeyer wrote to friends here in St. Louis that the award would undoubtedly, and should, to go me. There were preparations here to honor me as the winner.

The [point?] is that I'll win anyway beef or no beef from N.Y. Is The New Republic intelligent & fair enough to come out & give my work its right?
You'll find the New Republic is run by gangsters too, They dare not go against the local fashion.
The prize went to Leonora Speyer, a very wealthy society woman, for a slight thing called "Fiddler's F are well". Ralph Pulitzer said: "Of course, it is wholly arbitrary". The point is that John Erskine, head of the committee, is a close friend of the Speyers. You can not, of course, quote the Pulitzers. But I want you to know.

As for my work, it is truly surprising how it grows without any clique influence, and even without genuine loyalty from Macmillan's publicity department. When good things are said of my work, someone in the publicity department Kills them, I have tried and tried to get such things used in publicity. Someone in that department is a cliquester. You know, the petty, worse than [ward?] politics of the poetry group in N. Y. is a scandal.

The point for Lovett is this: Here is admittedly great work. Is he tied up with local influences. Does he think the New Republic should stultify itself by holding back. Is that in keeping with the policy of the New Republic? Many all over the country are asking why N. Y. tries to hold me down.

Remember that Macmillans are eager to publish anything I can give them. They are not philanthropists. Tell about the thousands of schools using my work. There are thousands, and also tell what effect the work has on students.

Endless love,

Jno.

Tell him, too, that no N.Y. cliquester should be asked to do the review.

One reviewer outside of N.Y. has said that probably no poetry since Browning will last as long as mine.
The Middle West can not win a Pulitzer Award. One catty reviewer in the East demolished [?] the West wing of American poetry"
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Dr. Julius T. House, New River State School, Montgomery, West Virginia.