Herbert Hoover Quote
What this country needs is a great poem. John Brown's Body was a step in the right direction. I've read it once, and I'm reading it again. But it's too long to do what I mean. You can't thrill people in 300 pages... The limit is about 300 words. Kipling's Recessional really did something to England when it was published. It helped them through a bad time. Let me know if you find any great poems lying around.
To Christopher Morley, quoted in Saturday Review Treasury (1957)