Paul Fort, or Francis Jammes,
it was a definite issue in daily life, equal with the name of the
great statesmen in importance, you were being introduced into a
sphere of activities of the utmost importance, _that_ poetry was
something to be reckoned with.

It was not merely to hear oneself talk that artists like Mallarme held
forth with distinction, that artists like de Regnier and Fort devote
themselves, however secretly, or however openly to the sacred theme.
They had but one intention, and that to arrive at, and assist in the
realization of the best state of poetry, that shall have carried the
art further on its way logically, and in accordance with the
principles which they have created for their time; endeavoring always
to create fresh values, new points of contact with the prevailing as
well as with the older outlines of the classics. It was, then, a
spectacle, from our removed point of view, the gathering of the poetic
multitude around the cafe tables, over the Dubonnet, the grenadines,
and the cafe noir, of a Tuesday evening. It gave one a sense of
perpetuity, of the indestructibility of art, in spite of the obstacles
encountered in the run of the day, that the artist has the advantage
over the layman in being qualified to set down, in shapes
imperishable, those states of his imagination which are the shapes of
life and of nature.

We may be grateful to Amy Lowell for having assembled for our
consummation, in a world where poetry is not as yet the sublime issue
as it was to be felt at every street corner, much of the spirit of the
rue de Rome, the Cafe Novelles D'Athenes, and the Closerie de Lilas,
as well as the once famed corner of the Cafe D'Harcourt where the
absinthe flowed so continuously, and from which some very exquisite
poetry has emanated for all time. It is the first intimation we have
of what our best English poetry has done for the best French poets of
the present, and what our first free verse poet has done for the
general liberation of emotions and for freedom of form in all
countries. He has indicated the poets that are to follow him. He would
be the first to sanction all this poetic discussive intensity at the
curbside, the liberty and freedom of the cafe, the excellence of a
divine Tuesday evening.

EMILY DICKINSON

If I want to take up poetry in its most delightful and playful mood, I
take up the verses of that remarkable girl of the sixties and
seventies, Emily Dickinson, she