LETTERS
255
tion" which appear on page 136 of my
article "The Poet on Capitol Hill." The
lines were correctly quoted in my MS.
and in the galley proof sent me, but ap.
pear to have become disarranged when
the magazine was put to press. I shall
not take space here to quote the poem
correctly (it may be found in Mr. Mac–
Leish's
Poems, 1924·1933,
pp.
76·7)
but
may say that the fifteen lines which ap·
pear at the top of page 136 should stand
in this order:
1, 2, 8, 4, 5, 3, 6, 7, 9, 10,
11, 12, 13, 14, 15;
and there should be a
space between the last two lines.
I
take this opportunity to make also
these minor typographical corrections:
unstahie
in line
6,
page
128,
should be
unstable; meanginless
in line
24,
page
135,
should be
meaningless;
and
express
in line
36,
page
145,
should be
exercise.
Yours,
Chicago, Ill.
MoRTON DAUWEN ZABEL
"VIEW" OBJECTS
Sirs:
Clement Greenberg writes of
View
in
a manner misleading to anyone unac–
quainted with
View,
slanderously toward
Surrealism, and in shocking distegard of
certain of his privately expressed opin·
ions:
(1)
It
is not true that
"View
is issued
by a group of American Surrealists."
Charles Henri Ford, its editor, does not
describe himself as a Surrealist and
publishes mostly non-Surrealist contribu–
tions.
View's
lone surrealist literary ani–
mator, Nicolas Calas, attacked Mr. Green–
berg in its pages; thus Calas has been
inflated into a group, or perhaps even,
subconsciously, into a "gang."
{2)
Mr. Greenberg says: "The gossip
is
good if you know the names.
If
you
know the people
I
imagine it might get
to be a little too much. Sometimes it is
a
little too much even for plain stran·
aers."
Mr. G. may be plain to some of
these people but he certainly is no stran–
ger to them. He may have felt strange
after learning in
View
and through me
that he had been duped by Calas and
Kurt Seligmann into believing they hold
bis
non-serious painting in respect. Mr.
Greenberg was very friendly to a "name"
constantly in Yiew-the undersigned-
and thought enough of him to write him
about an unpublished essay he was
shown : "Your description of the poetic
muse is wonderful, even though
I
might
be inclined to disagree with it.... There
is an irresistible temptation to steal your
ideas."
{3)
Mr. Greenberg says regarding an
anonymous correspondent's news item
published in
View
as a prank:
"I
am for
the extinction of the milieu whiclr pro·
duced this creature." A most creditable
thought-if the wholly false implication
were not that the item is characteristic
of
View
and of Surrealism.
If
Mr. G.
were aiming simply at what happened to
strike him in
View,
why did he not re–
peat his unsolicited opinion which I sug–
gested he communicate to Mr. Ford about
the latter's interview with Wallace Stev–
ens in
View
No.
1:
"a model of what an
interview should be."
I am less interested in defending
View
or my connection with it than in request–
ing Mr. Greenberg and the other editors
to explain the presence in PARTISAN RE·
VIEW of words so betraying to social re–
sponsibility and so lacking in a genuine
sense of critical proportion.
Yours, etc.
New York City
PARKER TYLER
Dear Parker: I still think Forrfs inter–
view was wonderful-especially for what
it
told me about Ford-as I wrote him in
the next sentence of the note you quote.
- C.
G.
POETS, ATIENTION
Sirs:
The
Providence Sunday Journal
an–
nounces a weekly column of hitherto un–
published poetry and solicits work of
high literary quality, whether traditional
or experimental. The column is designed
as a newspaper experiment and does not
desire the "homey" type of verse.
Payment will be at space rates: $1
minimum,
$6
maximum, per poem.
Manuscripts should be addressed:
W. T.
Scott,
New Verse,
Providence Sunday Journal,
Providence, Rhode Island.
Yours very truly,
WINFIELD T. SCOTT
