To Archibald MacLeish, 9 December [1931]

Summary

Dec 9

Riviera Apartments

229 Ward Parkway

K.C.

Mo.

Dear Archie:—

I’m so glad the poem is finished. Max wrote me to tell me how great he thought it was and how you thought you might have to stay with H.M. He wrote me in great detail putting me on my honor not to write you as he felt you must make your own decision— I was pretty sore at being put on my honor about something I would have advised about but as the Spinnish admiral said when the fleet was sunk—mas vale honor sin buques que buques sin honor”— And I suppose you can call buques books as well as warships— Had he told me by word of mouth would have refused to accept the honor racket— Anyway I went to Piggott for a week—great shooting every day—and am back and find your letter and Maxs that you decided to stay with H.M. so that lets me out of the honor racket (it being decided) and can tell you he said the Poem was one of the grandest he’d ever read and that it made publishing books seem worth doing and that he wanted to publish it more than any thing in the world.

I’d have been glad to pay Mssers Houghtons and Mifflins fees myself and would have considered it money well invested—

Anyway as the other, military this time, authority said never discuss casualties—and the publisher is the smallest part of writing—except Max is so white to deal with and I had promised you to him as a great gift to make up for how tough I’ve been with him very often—

You are a great poet—having become one slowly, gradually and as solid as the earth—and it makes no damned difference who publishes you except in the pleasantness or unpleasantness of your relations—