Helen McAfee (October 19 [1939]) | Willa Cather Archive

#1457: Willa Cather to Helen McAfee, October 19 [1939]

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⬩W⬩S⬩C⬩ Dear Helen MacAfee¹;

I am delighted by A.E.³'s remarks⁴, paragraph 2, page 81⁵ of the autumn Yale Review⁶. If all poetry and all criticism were like that (and like the product of the Poets Without Laurels⁷) I would never want "to read poetry any more in the world."

Yours Willa Cather October 19^th Miss Helen MacAfee¹ The Yale Review New Haven⁸ Connecticut NEW YORK N.Y. STA Y² OCT 20 1939 1—PM PersonalDrawer 1729

Information about this letter:

Source File:: cat.let1457.xml
Letter identifier: 1457
Contents: Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto only. Includes one handwritten envelope.
Person to whom letter was written: Helen McAfee ¹
Date letter was written: October 19 [1939]
Place letter was written: New York, New York, United States²
Location of original letter: Yale Review Records, 1911-1949 (YCAL MSS 145), Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, New Haven, CT

Individual Annotations

The article reported that Russell wrote: "It is the sensation of emptiness which frightens me here. The poets like Eliot and Spender have no light in their minds. They are the dead end, and when Eliot writes a volume of criticism of poetry the effect is to make me never want to read poetry any more in the world, the criticism is so dry and joyless. I think there is a revolt beginning against his influence. But what will the revolters do if they cannot intoxicate us with exhuberant imaginations themselves? It will be like ghosts erecting new leaders who are ghosts themselves. It really is a dead country, but there are very nice people among the dead, and if they were only alive, they would be the best people in the world."

The March 1935 Yale Review published an essay with this title by John Crowe Ransom, in which he describes the estrangement of modernist poets from the reading public because of their rejection of traditional poetic forms and values.

Person Annotations

0286

McAfee, Helen Flora (1884-1956). American editor. McAfee was born in Marblehead, CT, and in 1903 graduated from Smith College, where she and Edith Lewis belonged to the same literary society. She taught English in New Haven, CT, from 1903 to 1909, taking graduate courses in English at Yale University from 1908 to 1909. She served as head of the English department of the American College for Girls in Constantinople, Turkey, from 1909 to 1912. On returning to graduate studies at Yale, she worked as editorial assistant at the Yale Review. She earned her A.M. in 1914, and Yale University Press published her thesis Pepys on the Restoration Stage in 1916. She continued as assistant editor of the Yale Review under Wilbur Cross and later became managing editor. She corresponded widely with authors, including Willa Cather, seeking contributions, and also wrote articles and reviews.

1856

Russell, George William (1867-1935) (“AE”). Irish writer, painter, editor, nationalist. Born in County Armagh, Ireland, son of Thomas Russell and Mary Armstrong Russell, George Russell grew up in Dublin, Ireland, where he met William Butler Yeats when they were students; the two men had a long and sometimes contentious relationship. Russell adopted the pseudonym AE in 1888. He became best known as a poet, while spending many years organizing Irish agricultural societies and editing the Irish Homestead and its successor, the Irish Statesman. His home in Dublin was a meeting place for members of the Irish literary revival of the early twentieth century. Becoming disillusioned with the Irish Free State, he moved to England in 1932, but he was buried in Dublin.

Place Annotations

New York, New York, United States

New Haven, Connecticut, United States

Work Annotations

"Two Friends: Yeats and AE," Yale Review (September 1939), by Frank O'Connor

Yale Review