I am in accord with the stand you take in your recent letter regarding Miss Harriet Monroe and her magazine, POETRY, though the subject does not interest me greatly. It does not interest me greatly because I see that the movement represented by Miss Monroe and others is only one of many minor symptoms of a universal social disease, the diagnosis of which is a matter for the sociologist and economist rather than for the literary critic. My views on this subject are suggested in my Laureate Address, where I have undertaken to show that impressionism in the arts is the inevitable intellectual reflex of economic individualism. Individualism is doomed because of its centrifugal tendency; and all of its symptoms will go with it. It is the course of this virulent social disease in the industrial world that interests me, and not its comparatively unimportant symptoms in the realm of the arts. Also, I have spent too much time in the study of world literature to be greatly excited by the vagaries of one silly season. There have been many.
Miss Monroe has never refused to publish anything of mine any of my work. The whole number of POETRY for May, 1913, was given to a little drama of mine of mine. Since then I have written only one lyric, which appeared in CENTURY. nothing for magazine publication. I am told that at various times Miss Monroe has found occasion to criticise my work me unfavorably, though I have not seen the articles. With her views, she could scarcely be expected to commend my work, nor would I be it pleased me to know that she had done so.
Miss Monroe has undoubtedly rendered a valuable service to society, in that she has preserved, for ten years, such material as some philosopher of the future will need in writing the history of twentieth century illusions. tendencies
Time and the sane minority may be trusted in such matters as this you discuss.
Jno. G. Neihardt
