really be any poetry in my own outdronings, no one but another cndrogyne could recognize the fact, since it is next to impossible for anybody to appreciate any literature unless they can make its sentiments their own and identify themselves with one of the characters. And the sexually full-fledged, who constitute more than ninety-nine per cent of the reading public, are obsessed by an irrational horror of androgynes.
I therefore beg the reader, in judging the following verse, to bear in mind that it is not written by a man about men, as the reader first thinks; but about men by a pseudo-man; by a physical "man" who is psychicly a woman, and even physically a woman at least thirty-three per cent.
I have read some of Mary Baker Eddy's verse, which her disciples place on a level with the Psalms of David. But I think the former weak and the latter perfect. Here again we see that to judge verse to be good, one has to imagine it one's own outpouring. I therefore do not expect any sexually full-fledged person to declare of my verse (even if it were the best ever written) anything else than that it is "far beneath the worst doggerel. The mere thought of it is painful!"
For—I repeat—it is impossible for any one to judge poetry objectively—only subjectively: that is, not according to the merits of the verse, but according to whether the reader can make the sentiments his own.
A sexually full-fledged literary confidant, who has read the first two books of my trilogy, declared of my verse: "If you publish it, it will cast ridicule and contempt on your whole book. In the book, you have claimed culture, but when your readers come to this verse, they will say that no one with the culture of a longshoreman would try to pass off such stuff as verse even in fun, and that if you had the slightest tincture of literary taste, you would realize this. You will go down to posterity in ridicule, and destroy all the good your books might otherwise do."
But I persist in including the verse. If the quoted verdict is correct, than I have "a screw loose" intellectually, as well as being sexually and anatomically "a freak of Nature." The published pieces show the psychologist what ultra-androgyne verse is like. Besides, possible androgyne readers may be able to appreciate this verse.
As three out of the four following "attempts" were first conceived only in January, 1922—after The Female-Impersonators had gone to press—it has been impossible that they benefit by the author's judgment after they have grown cold.
