A Letter of Ballast
Dear Pearsall Smith:
All things, however minute, have their origin; and these fragments, now dedicated to you without your knowledge or permission, were in genesis both hazardous and humble. They were born in a rolltop desk. In 1918, as you know, I was working on the Philadelphia Evening Ledger—where I had charge of a column whose most genuine source of pride was that it first gave printers' ink to some of your prose butterflies now framed and mounted as More Trivia. At that time I used to write what I called Synthetic Poems, which began as a mild burlesque of the vers libre epidemic. But I also had a feeling that free verse, then mainly employed as the vehicle of a rather gaudy impressionism or of mere eccentricity, might prove a viable medium for humorous, ironic and satiric brevities. I experimented by including a few of the Synthetic Poems in a book which was in general of quite a different kind. (To gratify the publisher I will mention its title, The Rocking Horse.) I must admit that no one noticed them.
About the same time there arose an access of interest in Oriental poem-forms. You yourself sent me from London a volume of Arthur Waley's delightful Chinese translations. Miss
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