|JOAQUIN MILLER has just published a new book called "The Shadows of
Shasta." It is based on the Hiawatha, Blue Juniata romance, which the
average poet seems competent to yank loose from the history of the
sore-eyed savage at all times.
Whenever a dead-beat poet strikes bedrock and don't have shekels enough
to buy a bowl of soup, he writes an inspired ode to the unfettered
horse-thief of the west.
It is all right so far as we know. If the poet will wear out the
smoke-tanned child of the forest writing poetry about him, and then if
the child of the forest will rise up in his death struggle and mash the
never-dying soul out of the white-livered poet, everything will be O.K.,
and we will pay the funeral expenses.
If it could be so arranged that the poet and the bright Alfarita
bug-eater and the bilious wild-eyed bard of the backwoods could be shut
up in a corral for six weeks together, with nothing to eat but each
other, it would be a big thing for humanity. We said once that we
wouldn't dictate to this administration, but let it flicker along alone.
We just throw out the above as a suggestion, however, hoping that it
will not be ignored.