To Miss Bilqis Abu Khaddoud

Your letter is quite charming; we thank you for your sincerity and your confidence in the magazine. Your poem "Fragments of a Heart" has feeling in it, and tenderness, but it lacks style; taken as a whole it is disjointed, its meters faulty. Feeling alone is not enough in poetry.

Nor is the desire to compose verse enough, either...

You write prose better than verse—so why not write us prose??

We do not wish to dampen your ardor; but it is more to your advantage not to think of publishing what you compose today..