Author, Author!

David McCullough in his article “Why I Love Washington” in the April/May 1986 issue wrote: “Not everyone, 1 realize, cares for Washington as I do. ‘Neither Rome nor home,’ somebody once said.” I am that “someone.”

My complete quotation (“How shall you act the natural man in this/Invented city, neither Rome nor home?”) is in granite in Western Plaza on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington. Attached to the quotation is my name, as well as the year, 1952, which was the publication date of my book Cape Horn and Other Poems . I am the only living author among the thirty-six quoted in Western Plaza, and 1 am writing to insist on the unwritten law that when quotations are used in an article, it is a sin not to furnish the name of the author.