In the dusty stacks of a Wisconsin library, I was reading a 1921 copy of The Little Review, captivated by its early modernist edginess, its primitive type, when I came across a blank rectangular space in the midst of columns of copy. Above it, the editor's note said something like this: We had intended to publish here the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven's review of William Carlos Williams' Kora In Hell. Due to editorial disputes, which could not be resolved at the time of printing, the editors have decided to postpone its appearance.
It was easy to understand the editors' trepidation. The actual review, which, after some searching, I discovered in the following issue, was a fragmented experimental poem, entitled "Thee I Call Hamlet of the Wedding Ring." In the beginning, the Baroness von Freytag-Loringhoven calls Williams a "wobbly-legged business satchel-carrying little louse," and the piece goes on to attack not only his poems, but also his marriage and his virility. This was only one of numerous poems by the Baroness that The Little Review published. Despite angry readers' letters calling her "mad," despite Harriet Monroe and Poetry's snickering digs, the editors defended her. Jane Heap wrote, "Madness is her chosen state of consciousness. It is this consciousness she works to produce art."...