Warm, Human, Sensitive
Sir:
TIME'S Oct. 9 cover story on Robert Frost is a masterpiece. The article on the great poet is itself blank verse. The quoted poems, and everything in the feature, give a thrill and warm the heart.
LESLIE MILLER
Coffeyville, Kans.
Sir:
Congratulations on a superb and timely study of Robert Frost, who is unquestionably America's greatest living poet.
AUGUST DERLETH
Sauk City, Wis.
Sir:
. . . Congratulations to TIME for having established an alltime high for lodging the pebbles of American literary biography where future slingshooters cannot dislodge them.
J. ALMUS RUSSELL
State Teachers College
Bloomsburg, Pa.
Sir:
A magazine that in these days of worry stops for a second to pay homage to a poet deserves the respect of all its readers.
OSCAR SCHWARTZ
Schenectady
Inasmuch as the only things a civilization is ever remembered by ... are the artistic (materialistically worthless) doings of a small group, I feel it is particularly fitting that a realistic, and if you will a materialistic, organization such as TIME should take a short detour from its news reporting to laud Robert Frost for his contribution to future generations. You have done a fine job . .
KENNETH B. BRUCKART
Washington
Sir:
. . . I assigned the reading of this admirable article ... to 103 college juniors and seniors in my classes . . .
I am happy to ... point out to them that a magazine of TIME'S circulation and influence in these critical war days has served literature and the finer cultures wonderfully by featuring so prominent a living American poet . . .
FRANKLIN TRENABY WALKER
Mississippi College
Clinton, Miss.
Sir:
In your appraisal of Robert Frost you say "other contemporary poets have had greater influence--T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, W. H. Auden."
By those who feel this "influence," I assume you mean the army of obscure versifiers who pretend to write poetry but rarely come close.
MELY TASKER
New York City
Sir:
. . . Frost is outstandingly the greatest living American poet, and his works will appear in anthologies of English poetry when the ridiculous stuff of the Eliots and the Audens has been relegated to the literary rubbish heap where it belongs.
MARC T. GREENE
London
Sir:
Bravo on your discerning write-up of Robert Frost, the world's most gifted toiler in his particular vineyard.
Bravo also to Boris Chaliapin for his very warm, human and sensitive cover portrait . . .
THOMAS L. HARRIS
Scarsdale, N.Y.
Sir:
It was a pleasure to read your excellent article on Robert Frost . . .
However, as one who has published a book on Frost [Intervals of Robert Frost], and for 20 years has been working almost every day on a life of the poet, such fine articles have great disadvantages . . . They give away too many excellent facets and incidents of one's subject. But there's no copyright on truth
LOUIS MERTINS
Redlands, Calif.
Sir:
Your cover story on Robert Frost recalled for me a spring day in 1935 when Mr. Frost visited the small State Teachers' College at Glassboro, N.J. . . .
He held us spellbound for more than an hour, despite the sounding of buzzers signifying the period's end, and while the next class came quietly in and stood listening at the back of the room . . .
Thank you for bringing back so vividly what was certainly a red-letter day in many young lives.
RUTH D. YOUNG
Salem, N.J.
Sir:
. . . He is an example of that rare talent among men, to stand off and talk to us as if he were right among us. He has always been the warmth by my hearth . . .
SEBASTIAN IVAR
Albuquerque
The Communist Religion
Sir:
... I was astounded to see a letter, signed C. L. Janik, in your Oct. 9 issue which states: "The great majority of people both in the Soviet Union and particularly in the enslaved countries are violently opposed to Communism." I have never read a more gross misstatement. . .
Take it from one who has been there--the great majority of people in the Soviet Union are 100% sold on Communism, for the simple reason that it is their religion . . . They are taught from the cradle that it is their mission in life to free all the workers of the world from the slavery of capitalism . . .
ALFRED T. BENTON
Los Angeles
Indian Hero, Unhappy Ending
Sir:
In your Oct. 9 review of Devil's Doorway, you say that it is "an old-fashioned western at heart, disguised with an unhappy ending and an Indian dubbed in as the hero." For your information, substantially the same story (Indian hero returns home after winning thanks of white man in battle, is later driven out of home by federal troops) happened at least once in real life.
In the winter of 1838 the Cherokees were rounded up by the U.S. Army and driven from their ancestral homes in the Smoky Mountains over the Trail of Tears to the Oklahoma Territory . . . Some 4,000 of them died because of exposure and hardship . . .
At the battle of the Horseshoe, Chief Junaluska [of the Cherokees] had saved the life of Andrew Jackson by driving his tomahawk into the skull of a Creek warrior who had Jackson at his mercy. When Andrew Jackson became President ... he repaid this debt by ordering the Cherokee removal. So you see that even celluloid cliches have their counterpart in real life.
GRADY L. McMURTRY
San Francisco
Unconscious Bigotry?
Sir:
The attitude of the Chicago City Club toward identification of Negroes as such in news reporting [TIME, Oct. 9] reveals a patronizing sort of bigotry of which the civic-minded members themselves probably are unaware.
Would they object to being called white by a newspaper writer who considered the fact worth reporting? If not, why do they feel that members of any other race should take exception to the same journalistic treatment?
Apparently the Chicago City Club unconsciously believes that being a Negro is something to be ashamed of--or at least that to call a man one is insulting--for why else should it advocate concealment of the fact?
JAMES W. GUERIN
Menlo Park, Calif.
Quakers' Decision
Sir:
The outrageously courageous decision of Dairyman Hubert Mendenhall and 25 other Quakers to leave the U.S. and settle in peaceful Costa Rica [TIME, Oct. 9] should make Americans stop and think. Or at least think--if we can't stop . . .
If we, by gearing our entire economy, even dairy-farming, to our military effort, have become unfit for such men as these . . . hadn't we better examine ourselves and see if we haven't, without knowing it, developed the contagious moral leprosy of those we claim we are fighting against? . . .
ELMIRA GROGAN
New York City
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