
I send you by this mail my paper—"The New Ars Poetica"
I want you to read it, &, if you think best, ask McKay to bring it out for us.
I have a strong & even strange feeling of the educative and epoch-making nature
of your style (poetical); & I am confident that my essay will do great good. I
want all the chief American & especially the English poets to have copies.
Nothing in the world, I believe, stands so much in
the way of the
greater sale of yr "Leaves" as the idea among people that your style is ridiculous &
unpoetical. The laugh, I find, is always raised by this the first thing. If they cd have good authority or rendered reason & proof that the
style was true to nature & good in itself, other difficulties wd easily melt away.
I have examined all literary sources, but have had to work out the subject—in the main, by slow & painful original steps. What do you think of my performance? I wish the libret might even be bound. It ought to sell a small edition. Can you interest some moneyed fellow in it?
as ever yrs W. S. Kennedy.
Last p.
Can't you write me something yourself on the all important subject? Come: that wd sell the brochure sure. Write it to me, say, in the form of a letter which I then print by yr permission. Do you see?
Do exert yourself in the matter if you feel able. I believe it wd give you a money return. We shd get people to talking at a great rate. Especially if you are quoted as saying something philosophical on the subject; something new, in addition to that in preface & yr first quarto.
K.