POETRY BY MAX EASTMAN ་་་ FORMERLY ASSOCIATE IN PHILOSOPHY AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, AUTHOR NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS Published April, 1913 Reprinted August, October, 1913 December, 1913; December, 1914 PREFACE AND SUMMARY THE purpose of this book is to increase enjoyment. That the poetic in every-day perception and conversation should be known for what it is, and not separated from the poetic in literature, is to my mind essential to the full appreciation of either. And that poetry in general should be cut off from those unhealthy associations that a leisure-class decadence has given to the word, is of value to the enterprise of enjoying life. I have drawn the distinction between the poetic and the practical as it appears in my own experience, with little respect for academic or literary classifications. In this way I believed I should stay closer to my chief purpose; I should also be more likely to contribute to scientific truth. It seems to me that a study of books must be either science—that is, the chemistry and physics of their make-up, and the psychology of their author and his readers-or else history, an account of the general conditions and consequence of their production. Otherwise it is practically nothing at all. And most of what we call "lit |