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Kapaa, Kauai, Hawaii
October 9, 1939

Editor: Poetry Magazine
232 East Erie Street
Chicago, Illinois

Dear Editor:

I am sending you four poems.

Two years ago when you returned some poems I had sumitted, you wrote: "Not these. Let us see more." In the meanwhile I have been writing--more--and have also found a job teaching English and art, and have done much painting. (My oil represented Hawaii in the National Exhibit of American Art in New York, 1938, was named "one of the best' by the New Yorker; last year I won the grand prize in the annual show of Honolulu artists.

To tell you about my record in the field of verse writing, I mention first of all: my verse has never appeared in any national magazine, although the North American Anthology of Verse managed to print two of my sonnets written "years ago" in college. At the University of Hawaii I was twice awarded the Clarke prize for poetry. And,while on the subject of my youth, I might as well add that my verse used to win badges, etc. in St. Nicholas Magazine.

I am an American citizen of Chinese ancestry, born in Hawaii on the northeast island of Kauai where I have lived all my life except for a period of five years when I attended the University of Hawaii on the island of Oahu, a hundred miles away. I was graduated from the U in 1937.

Please give the enclosed poems your kind attention. 

Yours truly,
Reuben Tam

[[Bottom margin]]
Artist at the Headland 
night for the Islander House with Background [[crossed out]] By the Sea