“It is the superficial belief of some critics that American poetry has its ideal and embodiment in Walt Whitman.”

Warning against reducing a national poetic tradition to a single representative figure · Introduction, Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1921

• Criticism
• Poetry
• Tradition

“These new talents were new roots in a soil not too richly fertilized by the chemistry of original song.”

Using organic imagery to describe the emergence of new American poets · Introduction, Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1924

• Growth
• Originality
• Poetry

“I come to no conclusion as to what is to-day, or what may be to-morrow, American poetry.”

Accepting that literary traditions remain unsettled and continually evolving · Introduction, Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1921

• Change
• Humility
• Poetry