"
The desire to "quintessentialize", to head-up an emotion
until it burns white-hot, seems to be an integral part of the modern temper,
and certainly "unrhymed cadence" is unique in its power of expressing this.
Three of these poems are written in a form which, so far as I know,
has never before been attempted in English. M. Paul Fort is its inventor,
and the results it has yielded to him are most beautiful and satisfactory.
Perhaps it is more suited to the French language than to English.
But I found it the only medium in which these particular poems
could be written. It is a fluid and changing form, now prose, now verse,
and permitting a great variety of treatment.
But the reader will see that I have not entirely abandoned
the more classic English metres. I cannot see why, because certain manners
suit certain emotions and subjects, it should be considered imperative
for an author to employ no others. Schools are for those
who can confine themselves within them. Perhaps it is a weakness in me
that I cannot.
In conclusion, I would say that these remarks are in answer to many questions
asked me by people who have happened to read some of these poems
in periodicals.
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