Full text of "Poetry"
POETRY
A MAGAZINE OF VERSE
VOLUME XV III
ME
oetru
VOLUME XVIII
April -September, 1921
Edited by
Harriet Monroe
543CASSSTT2EET
CHICAGO
Copyright, 1921,
by
Harriet Monroe
Ps
A Magazine of \ferse
Editor
Associate Editors
Business Manager
Advisory Committee
Administrative Committee
HARRIET MONROE
ALICE CORBIN HENDERSON
MARION STROBEL
MILA STRAUB
HENRY B. FULLER
EUNICE TIETJENS
WILLIAM T. ABBOTT
CHARLES H. HAMILL
TO HAVE GREAT POETS
THERE MUST BE GREAT AUDIENCES TOO
Whitman
SUBSCRIBERS TO THE FUND
Mr. Howard Shaw
Mr. Arthur T. Aldis
Mr. Edwin S. Fetcher
Mrs. Charles H. Hamill
Mrs. Emmons Elaine (4)
Mr. Wm. S. Monroe
Mr. E. A. Bancroft
Mr. C. L. Hutchinson
Mrs. Wm. J. Calhoun
Mrs. P. A. Valentine
Mrs. Bryan Lathrop
Mr. Martin A. Ryerson
Hon. John Barton Payne
Mr. Thomas D. Jones
Mr. Charles Deering
Mrs. W. F. Dummer
Mr. Arthur Heun
Mr. Edward F. Carry
Mr. Cyrus H. McCormick (2)
Mr. F. Stuyvesant Peabody
[i]
Mr. Horace S. Oakley Miss Dorothy North
Mr. Eames MacVeagh Mrs. F. Louis Slade
Mr. Charles G. Dawes Mrs. Julius Rosenwald
Mr. Owen F. Aldis Mrs, Andrea Hofer Proudfoot
Mr. Albert H. Loeb (2) Mrs. Arthur T. Aldis
The Misses Skinner Mrs. George W. Mixter
Misses Alice E. and Margaret D. Mrs. Walter S. Brewster
Moran Mrs. Joseph N. Eisendrath
Miss Mary Rozet Smith Mrs. Simeon Ford
Mr. John Borden Mrs. Thomas W. Lamont
Mrs. Clarence I. Peck Mr. Henry J. Patten
Mr. John S. Miller Mr. Charles H. Dennis
Mr. Edward P. Russell Mrs. Frank Gates Allen
Mrs. Frank O. Lowden Mrs. Otto Seiffert
Mrs. Frederic Clay Bartlett Mr. Frank Gates Allen
Mr. Rufus G. Dawes Mrs. E. C. Chadbourne
Mr. Gilbert E. Porter Mrs. Richard T. Crane
Mr. George A. McKinlock Mrs. William M. Lybrand
Mrs. Samuel Insull Mr. Charles H. Swift
Mr. A. G. Becker Mr. S. T. Jacobs
Mrs. Roy McWilliams Mrs. Jacob Baur
Mr. Benjamin V. Becker Mr. A. D. Lundy
Mr. George F. Porter Mrs. Robert N. Montgomery
Mrs. Charles A. Chapin Miss Joanna Fortune
Mr. S. O. Levinson
Others besides these guarantors who testify to their appreciation of the mag-
i by generous gifts are:
Mr. Edward L. Ryerson, Miss Amy Lowell and Mrs. Edgar Speyer.
Two annual prizes will be awarded as usual in November for good work of the
current year. To the donors of these prizes, as well as to the above list of guaran-
tors, the editor wishes to express the appreciation of the staff and the poets:
To Mr. S. O. Levinson, for the Helen Haire Levinson Prize of two hundred
dollars, to be awarded for the eighth time; and to the anonymous guarantor who
will present, for the seventh time, a prize of one hundred dollars.
We feel that these prizes are a most valuable service to the art.
CONTENTS OF VOLUME XVIII
VERSE
PAGE
Bishop, John Peale:
The Hunchback 131
Bodenheim, Maxwell:
SAPPHO ANSWERS ARISTOTLE:
Impulsive Dialogue 61
Emotional Monologue 64
Feminine Talk 67
Philosophical Dialogue 69
Banner, Amy:
PAGEANTRY :
Revelations, Poise 82
Booth, Edward Townsend:
To a New England Girl 26
To an Authentic Priest 26
Boutelle, Grace Hodsdon:
It Vanished 245
Campbell, Nancy:
Innocent Sleep 247
Ciolkowska, Muriel:
TONIGHT:
Snow, Presence 80
Coates, Grace Stone:
The Intruder '....... 27
Conkling, Grace Hazard:
Pnmaveral 144
Crawford, John:
NIGHT:
Nadir 308
Sumac 308
Brackish Well 309
Endymion 310
DeLaughter, Margaret :
IN THE NIGHT WATCHES:
Invocation, Pierrot and Columbine 252
Requiem, Toward Evening 253
Deutsch, Babette:
SEMPER EADEM:
Fourth Dimension 190
Overtones 191
Reflections, Knowledge 192
Dismorr, Blanche:
Charlotte Bronte 83
Dodd, Lee Wilson:
Age and Youth . 22
Riddle 23
Edgerton, Gladys:
Love's Passing . 254
My Sepulchre 255
Fenton, Carroll Lane:
"E Be Than" 24
Ficke, Arthur Davison:
THREE SONNETS:
Perspective of Co-ordination, World Beyond World .... 28
[Hi]
Leaf-movement 29
THREE Son NETS:
Old Wives' Talk, Holy Writ 72
The Book of Lu T'ang Chu 73
Fort, Paul (See John Strong Newberry)
Freeman, Mason A., Jr.:
POEMS ORIGINAL AND DERIVED:
The Triple Shroud, The Way, Once More 256
Epigrams 257
From the Vedic 258
Fujita, Jun:
TANKA:
To Elizabeth, Spring, May Moon, Storm 128
November, A Leaf, December Moon, Echo 129
Gessler, Clifford Franklin:
THE VILLAGER:
Your Horses 132
Nevertheless 133
Concentric Circles, Prayer 134
Golding, Louis:
Numbers 198
Hall, Hazel:
REPETITIONS:
Two Sewing 86
Instructions . 87
Three Songs for Sewing I-III 88
Cowardice 89
Flash 90
Hamilton, David Osborne :
HOOFS AND HALOES:
Te Deum, The Idiot 239
Beauty on Fourth Street I-II 240
Our Time 241
Hey ward, DuBose :
The Mountain Graveyard . 246
Houston, Margaret Belle:
Memory 241
Hughes, Richard:
Dirge 248
Huntingdon, Julia Weld:
Off the Highway 81
Kilmer, Aline:
THREE POEMS:
Charmian's Song, For All Ladies of Shalott 74
The Heart Knoweth its own Bitterness 75
Kwan, Moon (Translator):
Goodfellowship — A Fragment, by Li Po 130
Lonely, by Wang Wei, Eighth Century, A. D 130
Lemont, Jessie (Translator):
Charles the Twelfth of Sweden Rides in the Ukraine
(From the German of Rainer Maria Rilke) 319
Lowell, Amy:
Twenty-four Hokku on a Modern Theme I-XXIV 124
McVickar, Dorothy:
Long Days, Heaphy Herself 84
Mixter, Florence Kilpatrick:
POEMS :
All Soul's Eve, Chinese Epitaph 242
PAGE
Alchemy . 243
Invocation '-. 244
Lullaby . . 245
Morris, Gilbert :
FROM THE NEAR EAST:
Cape Helles 140
The Boulghar Dagh 141
Murphy, Charles R.:
GROWTH :
Advent 235
Sown, To Earth 236
Winter, Spring 237
Humility, Mid-May 238
Newberry, John Strong (Translator):
POEMS BY PAUL FORT:
Louis Eleventh, Curious Man 293
The Miraculous Catch 294
Lament of the Soldiers 299
The Return 300
The Little Silent Street 301
Eternity 302
Nicholl, Louise Townsend:
Timelessness 249
N orris, William A.:
0 Changing One 201
Patterson, Antoinette DeCoursey:
Folk-song — from the Danish 250
Lucrezia Borgia's Last Letter 251
Pennell, Elizabeth Hart:
Youth and Age 85
Pinckney, Josephine:
FOUR POEMS:
In the Barn 194
Strange 195
The Outcast, Swamp Lilies 196
Po, Li (See Moon Kwan)
Rice, Ruth Mason :
Trailing Arbutus 83
Rich, H. Thompson:
Song 25
Rilke, Rainer Maria (See Jessie Lemont)
Roberts, Elisabeth Madox:
UNDER THE TREE:
The Cornfield, The Pilaster 185
The Star, Water Noises 186
Crescent Moon, Strange Tree 187
A Child Asleep 188
My Heart 189
Sabel, Marx G. :
ANNOTATIONS:
Jeremiad 146
No Good Thing 147
The Strange Load 148
Safford, Muriel:
God-lover 135
Sapir, Edward :
BACKWATER:
A Childish Tale 76
[v]
PAGE
The Old Town 77
Overlooked 78
She Sits Vacant-eyed 79
Sarett, Lew:
THE Box OF GOD:
I: Broken Bird i
II: Whistling Wings 7
III: Talking Waters 16
Seiffert, Marjorie Allen:
GALLERY OF PAINTINGS:
The Shop 177
Dingy Street 178
Interior, Cubist Portrait J79
Two Women, Portrait of a Lady 180
Dream-kiss 181
Shadow, As You Are Now 182
Nocturne 183
Suckow, Ruth:
BY HILL AND DALE:
Prayer at Timber-line, Beauty 142
The Odd Ones, Grampa Schuler 143
Swift, Ivan:
Descent 312
Taggard, Genevieye:
Boys and Girls 119
Thanhouser, Marian:
At Night 3i3
Turbyfill, Mark:
VOLUNTARIES :
The Intangible Symphony 136
The Power of Nothing 137
Repletion, The Sea Storm 138
Things Not Seen 139
Vinal, Harold:
Forgotten 197
Walton, Eda Lou:
BEYOND SORROW:
So It Befell 260
Without Grief, I would be Free 261
Crisis, Despair, Now More than Ever Divided 262
In Recompense 263
Wei, Wang (See Moan Kwan)
Wescott, Glenway :
STILL-HUNT:
Ominous Concord, Without Sleep 303
The Chaste Lovers 304
To L. S. MI 305
The Poet at Nightfall 306
The Hunter 307
Williams, Oscar:
GOLDEN DARKNESS:
There Was a Time, Clouds and Waves 202
Cobwebs, Grey 203
Rains 204
The Golden Fleece 205
Because, Motes, The Subway is Lit 206
The Bubble, The Return 207
[vi]
Wilson, Anne Elizabeth:
Recompense, The Sweet Lady MS
Wylie, Elinor:
STILL COLORS:
Velvet Shoes 18
"Fire and Sleet and Candle-light" 19
Silver Filagree 20
Atavism 21
Zaturensky, Marya:
SPINNERS:
She Longs for the Country 3*4
The Spinners at Willowsleigh 3*4
Song of a Factory Girl 3*5
A Song for Vanished Beauty 3*6
An Old Tale 3*7
Memories 3*8
PROSE
Drinkwater on Abercrombie H. M. 30
REVIEWS:
Nectar and Syrup E. Carnevali 36
Collected Poems, by Walter de la Mare (2 vols.)
One Poet Isidor Schneider 39
Advice, by Maxwell Bodenheim. The Forerunner: His Parables
and Poems, by Kahlil Gibran. Neighbors, by Wilfrid Wilson
Gibson. The Birds and Other Poems, by J. C. Squire. Songs
While Wandering, by A. Newberry Choyce
Teacher-poets Nelson Antrim Crawford 44
The Roomer and Other Poems, by George Edward Woodberry
Sonnets from a Prison Camp, by Archibald Allen Bowman
Two Books of Refuge E. Carnevali 46
Black Marigolds, translated by E. Powys Mathers. The Dark
Mother, by Waldo Frank
Celtic Fairies H. M. 49
Visions and Beliefs itf the West of Ireland (2 vols.), collected
by Lady Gregory, essays and notes by W. B. Yeats
Irish Fairy Tales, by James Stephens
The Boy Apprenticed to an Enchanter, by Padraic Colum
A Little School for the Elect N. A. C. 50
The Little School, by T. Sturge Moore
Homespun A. C. H. 51
Rhymes of a Homesteader, by Elliott C. Lincoln
Mr. Bynner's Skit H. M. 52
Pins for Wings, by Emanuel Morgan
OUR CONTEMPORARIES:
Bond or Free? 53
CORRESPONDENCE:
Concerning Kora in Hell Robert McAlmon 54
Southern Shrines H. M. 91
The Death of "B. L .T." H. M. 97
The Poet and Modern Life R. A. 99
[vii]
REVIEWS:
Pastels Laura Sherry 101
Poems, by Haniel Long
Silence Awakening R. A. 103
Terra Italica, by Edward Storer
Country Sentiment Nelson Antrim Crawford 105
Fairies and Fusiliers, and Country Sentiment, by Robert Graves
Recent Anthologies H. M. 106
The Oxford and Cambridge Miscellany: June, 1920. A Queen's
College Miscellany. A Treasury of War Poetry; Second Series,
edited by George Herbert Clarke. Dreams and Voices, com-
piled by Grace Hyde Trine. Joyful Sorrow, compiled by L. H.
B. Lillygay: an Anthology of Anonymous Poems. American
and British Verse from the Yale Review. Modern British
Poetry, edited by Louis Untermeyer. Contemporary Verse An-
thology, edited by Charles Wharton Stork.
French Poets in English Agnes Lee Freer in
Fleurs de Lys, translated and edited by Wilfred Thorley
Symbolists and Decadents A. L. F. 113
La Melee Symboliste, by Ernest Raynaud
OUR CONTEMPORARIES:
Two New Magazines H. M. 115
A Word about Keats H. M. 150
The Sub-conscious Cliche B. T. 153
REVIEWS:
From New Mexico Carl Sandburg 157
Red Earth: Poems of New Mexico, by Alice Corbin
Mr. Aiken's Bow to Punch E. T. 160
Punch, The Immortal Liar, by Conrad Aiken
A Contrast H. M. 162
In America, by John V. A. Weaver
The Well of Being, by Herbert Jones
Still a Soul to Save Nelson Antrim Crawford 166
Before Dawn, by Irene Rutherford McLeod
Coleridge and Wordsworth H. B. F. 167
Coleridge's Biographia Literaria, with Wordsworth's Preface and
Essays on Poetry
CORRESPONDENCE:
A Letter from Paris Jean Cat el 168
The Winter's Publishing in England R. Hughes 172
OUR CONTEMPORARIES:
Kreymborg's Millions • 174
Here in Cass Street H. M. 208
The Nebraska Laureate H. M. 212
REVIEWS:
A Census Spiritual H. M. 214
Domesday Book, by Edgar Lee Masters
Little Theatre Rhythms Laura Sherry 218
Plays for Merry Andrews, by Alfred Kreymborg
Nightmare Fingers Marion Strobel 222
Resurrecting Life, and Clair de Lune, by Michael Strange
The Silver Stallion Oscar Williams 223
Young Girl and Other Poems, by Hildegarde Planner. Poems for
,,... _ T-t._ A .....-_ o, ^.-^ ,_ 3dan Padraic Q'Seasnain.
Moods of Manhattan, by
'ue Crane, by Ivan Swift.
High Company, by Harry Lee. A Music-teacher's Note-book,
by Henry Bellamann
oung (jiri ana uiner roems, oy nuaegai
Men, by John Austin. Star-drift, by Br:
Poems and Essays, by Alfred Hitch. A
Louise Mallinckrodt Kueffner. The Blue
[viii]
PAGE
Who Writes Folk-songs? A. C. H. 227
Poetic Origins and The Ballad, by Louise Pound
CORRESPONDENCE :
Professor Phelps and Rostand Jean Catel 232
Midsummer Delite H. M. 264
Brazilian Dance Songs Evelyn Scott 267
Aboriginal Tasmanian Poetry H. W. Stewart 271
REVIEWS:
Robinson's Double Harvest H. M. 273
The Three Taverns and Avon's Harvest, by Edwin Arlington
Robinson
The Poet of the War A. C. H. 276
Poems, by Wilfred Owen, with an Introduction by Siegfried Sas-
soon
Mr. Masefield's Racer N. Howard Thorp 279
Right Royal, by John Masefield
Songs and Splashes H. M. 281
Morning, Noon and Night, by Glenn Ward Dresbach
Modern and Elizabethan H. M. 283
The Poet in the Desert, by Charles Erskine Scott Wood. Maia—
a Sonnet Sequence, by Charles Erskine Scott Wood, with two
sonnets by Sara Bard Field
Classics in English Glenway Wescott 284
Sappho, by Henry Thornton Wharton. The Golden Treasury of
the Greeks, by Alexander Lothian. Medallions in Clay, by
Richard Aldington. The Poet's Translation Series: Second Set
OUR CONTEMPORARIES:
The Dial's Annual Award 289
New Magazines 290
Dante — and Today .......... Emanuel Carnevali 323
John Adams' Prophecy H. M. 327
REVIEWS:
Gerard Hopkins Edward Sapir 330
Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins
Unity Made Vital Nelson Antrim Crawford 336
New Poems, by D. H. Lawrence
Youth and the Desert H. M. 339
The Bitterns, by Glenway Wescott
The Immobile Wind, by Yvor Winters
Two English Poets Marion Strobel 343
The Waggoner, by Edmund Blunden
Kaleidoscope, by Sherard Vines
CORRESPONDENCE:
Concerning Awards *4rthur T. Aldis 347
Notes 59, "7, '75, ^33, 291, 348
Books Received 60, 118, 176, 234, 292, 350
[ix]
POETRY
A MAGAZINE OF VERSE
VOLUME XV 111
DEAR POETRY: I always feel that I ought to renew my thanks for your
enterprise and faith, which are so ceaselessly at work on the task
of renewing me.
Ferdinand Schevill
Vol. XVIII No. I
POETRY for APRIL, 1921
PAGE
The Box of God Lew Sarett i
I: Broken Bird— II: Whistling Wings— III: Talking
Waters
Still Colors Elinor Wylie 18
Velvet Shoes — "Fire and Sleet and Candle-light" — Silver
Filagree — Atavism
Age and Youth— Riddle Lee Wilson Dodd 22
"E be Than" Carroll Lane Fenton 24
Song H. Thompson Rich 25
To a New England Girl — To an Authentic Priest ....
Edward Townsend Booth 26
The Intruder Grace Stone Coates 27
Three Sonnets Arthur Davison Ficke 28
Perspective of Co-ordination — World beyond World — Leaf-
movement
Drinkwater on Abercrombie H. M. 30
Reviews :
Nectar and Syrup E. Carnevali 36
One Poet Isidor Schneider 39
Teacher-poets Nelson Antrim Crawford 44
Two Books of Refuge E. Carnevali 46
Celtic Fairies H . M. 49
A Little School for the Elect N. A. C. 50
Homespun A. C. H. 51
Mr. Bynner's Skit H. M. 52
Our Contemporaries:
Bond or Free? * 53
Correspondence:
Concerning "Kora in Hell" . . . Robert McAlmon 54
Notes and Books Received 59, 60
Manuscripts must be accompanied by a stamped and self-addressed
envelope.
Inclusive yearly subscription rates: In the United States, Mexico,
Cuba and American possessions, $3.00 net; in Canada, $3.15 net; in all
other countries in the Postal Union, $3.25 net. Entered as second-class
matter Nov. 15, 1912, at the post-office, at Chicago, 111., under the Act of
March 3, 1879.
Published monthly at 543 Cass St., Chicago, 111.
Copyright 1<>21 bv Harriet Monroe. All rights reserved.
VOL. XVIII
No. I
A Magazine of \ferse
APRIL 1921
THE BOX OF GOD
I: BROKEN BIRD
O broken bird,
Whose whistling silver wings have known the lift
Of high mysterious hands, and the wild sweet music
Of big winds among the ultimate stars! —
The black-robed cures put your pagan Indian
Soul in their white man's House of God, to lay
Upon your pagan lips new songs, to swell
The chorus of amens and hallelujahs.
In simple faith and holy zeal, they flung
Aside the altar-tapestries, that you
Might know the splendor of God's handiwork,
The shining glory of His face. O eagle,
They brought you to a four-square box of God,
Crippled of pinion, clipped of soaring wing;
And they left you there to flutter against the bars
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
In futile flying, to beat against the gates,
To droop, to dream a little, and to die.
Ah, Joe Shing-6b — by the sagamores revered
As Spruce the Conjurer, by the black-priests dubbed
The Pagan Joe — how clearly I recall
Your conversion in the long-blade's House of God,
Your wonder when you faced its golden glories.
Don't you remember? — when first you sledged from out
The frozen Valley of the Sleepy-eye,
And hammered on the gates of Fort Brazeau —
To sing farewell to Ah-nah-quod, the Cloud,
Sleeping, banked high with flowers, clothed in the pomp
Of white man's borrowed garments in the church ?
Oh, how your heart, as a child's heart beating before
High wonder-workings, thrilled at the burial splendor !-
The coffin, shimmering-black as moonlit ice,
And gleaming in a ring of waxen tapers;
After the chant of death, the long black robes,
Blown by the wind and winding over the hills
With slow black songs to the marked-out-place-of-death ;
The solemn feet that moved along the road
Behind the wagon-with-windows, the wagon-of-death,
With its jingling nickel harness, its dancing plumes.
Oh, the shining splendor of that burial march,
The round-eyed wonder of the village throng!
And oh, the fierce-hot hunger, the burning envy
That seared your soul when you beheld your friend
Achieve such high distinction from the black-robes!
[2]
Lew Sarett
And later, when the cavalcade of priests
Wound down from the fenced-in-ground, like a slow black
worm
Crawling upon the snow — don't you recall? —
The meeting in the mission? — that night, your first,
In the white man's lodge of holy-medicine ?
How clearly I can see your hesitant step
On the threshold of the church; within the door
Your gasp of quick surprise, your breathless mouth;
Your eyes round-white before the glimmering taper,
The golden-filigreed censer, the altar hung
With red rosettes and velvet soft as an otter's
Pelt in the frost of autumn, with tinsel sparkling
Like cold blue stars above the frozen snows.
Oh, the blinding beauty of that House of God!—
Even the glittering bar at Jock McKay's,
Tinkling with goblets of fiery devil's-spit,
With dazzling vials and many-looking mirrors,
Seemed lead against the silver of the mission.
I hear again the chanting holy-men,
The agents of the white man's Mighty Spirit,
Making their talks with strong, smooth-moving tongues:
"Hear! Hear ye, men of a pagan faith!
Forsake the idols of the heathen fathers,
The too-many ghosts that walk upon the earth.
For there lie pain and sorrow, yea, and death !
[3]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
"Hear! Hear ye, men of a pagan faith!
And grasp the friendly hands we offer you
In kindly fellowship, warm hands and tender,
Yea, hands that ever give and never take.
Forswear the demon-charms of medicine-men;
Shatter the drums of conjuring Chee-sah-kee —
Yea, beyond these walls lie bitterness and death!
"Pagans! — ye men of a bastard birth! — bend,
Bow ye, proud heads, before this hallowed shrine!
Break! — break ye the knee beneath this roof,
For within this house lives God! Abide ye here!
Here shall your eyes behold His wizardry;
Here shall ye find an everlasting peace."
Ah, Joe the pagan, son of a bastard people,
Child of a race of vanquished, outlawed children,
Small wonder that you drooped your weary head,
Blinding your eyes to the suns of elder days;
For hungry bellies look for new fat gods,
And heavy heads seek newer, softer pillows.
With you again I hear the eerie chants
Floating from out the primal yesterdays —
The low sweet song of the doctor's flute, the slow
Resonant boom of the basswood water-drum,
The far voice of the fathers, calling, calling.
I see again the struggle in your eyes —
The hunted soul of a wild young grouse, afraid,
Trembling beneath maternal wings, yet lured
[4]
Lew Sarett
By the shrill whistle of the wheeling hawk.
I see your shuffling limbs, hesitant, faltering
Along the aisle — the drag of old bronzed hands
Upon your moccasined feet, the forward tug
Of others, soft and white and very tender.
One forward step . . . another ... a quick look back! —
Another step . . . another . . . and lo! the eyes
Flutter and droop before a flaming symbol,
The strong knees break before a blazoned altar
Glimmering its tapestries in the candle-light,
The high head beaten down and bending before
New wonder-working images of gold.
And thus the black-robes brought you into the house
Wherein they kept their God, a house of logs,
Square-hewn, and thirty feet by forty. They strove
To put before you food, and purple trappings —
Oh, how they walked you up and down in the vestry,
Proudly resplendent in your white man's raiment,
Glittering and gorgeous, the envy of your tribe:
Your stiff silk hat, your scarlet sash, your shoes
Shining and squeaking gloriously with newness!
Yet even unto the end — those blood-stained nights
Of the sickness-on-the-lung ; that bitter day
On the Barking Rock, when I packed you down from camp
At Split-hand Falls to the fort at Sleepy-eye;
While, drop by drop, your life went trickling out,
As sugar-sap that drips on the birch-bark bucket
[5]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
And finally chills in the withered maple heart
At frozen dusk: even unto the end —
When the mission doctor, framed by guttering candles,
Hollowly tapped his hooked-horn finger here
And there upon your bony breast, like a wood-bird
Pecking and drumming on a rotten trunk —
Even unto this end I never knew
Which part of you was offering the holy prayers —
The chanting mouth, or the eyes that gazed beyond
The walls to a far land of windy valleys.
And sometimes, when your dry slow lips were moving
To perfumed psalms, I could almost, almost see
Your pagan soul aleap in the fire-light, naked,
Shuffling along to booming medicine-drums,
Shaking the flat black earth with moccasined feet,
Dancing again — back among the jangling
Bells and the stamping legs of gnarled old men —
Back to the fathers calling, calling across
Dead winds from the dim gray years.
O high-flying eagle,
Whose soul, wheeling among the sinuous winds,
Has known the molten glory of the sun,
The utter calm of dusk, and in the evening
The lullabies of moonlit mountain waters! —
The black-priests locked you in their House of God,
Behind great gates swung tight against the frightened
Quivering aspens, whispering perturbed in council,
[6]
Lew Sarett
And muttering as they tapped with timid fists
Upon the doors and strove to follow you
And hold you; tight against the uneasy winds
Wailing among the balsams, fumbling upon
The latch with fretful fingers; tight against
The crowding stars who pressed their troubled faces
Against the windows. In honest faith and zeal,
The black-robes put you in a box of God,
To swell the broken chorus of amens
And hallelujahs; to flutter against the door,
Crippled of pinion, bruised of head ; to beat
With futile flying against the gilded bars;
To droop, to dream a little, and to die.
Ill WHISTLING WINGS
Shing-6b, companion of my old wild years
In the land of K'tchee-gah-mee, my good right arm
When we battled bloody-fisted in the storms
And snows with rotting scurvy, with hunger raw
And ravenous as the lusting tongues of wolves —
My Joe, no longer will the ghostly mountains
Echo your red-lunged laughters in the night;
The gone lone days when we communed with God
In the language of the waterfall and wind
Have vanished with your basswood water-drum.
Do you recall our cruise to Flute-reed Falls?
Our first together — oh, many moons ago —
[7]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
Before the cures built the village mission?
How, banked against our camp-fire in the bush
Of sugar-maples, we smoked kin-nik-kin-nik,
And startled the sombre buttes with round raw songs,
With wails that mocked the lynx who cried all night
As if her splitting limbs were torn with pain
Of a terrible new litter? How we talked
Till dawn of the Indian's Keetch-ie Ma-ni-do,
The Mighty Spirit, and of the white man's God?
Don't you remember dusk at Cold-spring Hollow ? —
The beaver-pond at our feet, its ebony pool
Wrinkled with silver, placid, calm as death,
Save for the fitful chug of the frog that flopped
His yellow jowls upon the lily-pad,
And the quick wet slap of the tails of beaver hurrying
Homeward across the furrowing waters, laden
With cuttings of tender poplar . . . down in the swale
The hermit-thrush who spilled his rivulet
Of golden tones into the purple seas
Of gloam among the swamps . . . and in the East,
Serene against the sky — do you remember? —
Slumbering Mont du Pere, shouldering its crags
Through the crumpled clouds, rose-flushed with after-
glow . . .
And dew-lidded dusk that slipped among the valleys
Soft as a blue wolf walking in thick wet moss.
How we changed our ribald song for simple talk! . . .
[8]
Lew Sarett
"My jrieri , Ah-deek, you ask-um plenty hard question:
Ugh! Were Keetch-ie Md-ni-do he live?
Were all dose Eenzhun spirits walk and talk?
Me — / dunno! . . . Mebbe . . . mebbe over here,
In beaver-pond, in t'rush, in gromping bullfrog;
Mebbe over dere, he's sleeping in dose mountain . . .
"Sh-sh-sh! . . . Look! . . . Over dere . . . look, my
frien!
On Mont du Pere . . . he's moving little! . . .
ain't? . . .
Under dose soft blue blanket she's falling down
On hill and valley! -Somebody — somebody's dere! . . .
In dose hill of Mont du Pere, sleeping . . . sleep-
ing. . . '
And when the fingers of the sun, lingering,
Slipped gently from the marble brow of the glacier
Pillowed among the clouds, blue-veined and cool,
How, one by one, like lamps that flicker up
In a snow-bound hamlet in the valley, the stars
Lighted their candles mirrored in the waters . . .
And floating from the hills of Sleepy-eye,
Soft as the wings of dusty-millers flying,
The fitful syllables of the Baptism River
Mumbling among its caverns hollowly,
Shouldering its emerald sweep through cragged cascades
In a flood of wafted foam, fragile, flimsy
As luna-moths fluttering on a pool . . .
[91
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
"Caribou, you hear dat? . . . somebody's dere! . . .
Ain't? . . . in dose hills of Mont du Pere . . . sleep-
ing.
Sh-sh-sh! . . . You hear-um? . . . dose far 'way
Flute-reed Fall? . . .
Somebody's dere in Mont du Pere, sleeping . . .
Somebody he's in dere de whole night long . . .
And w'ile he's sleep, he's talking little . . . talk-
ing. . . ."
Hush! — don't you hear K'tchee-gah-mee at midnight? —
That stretched far out from the banks of Otter-slide
To the dim wet rim of the world — North, East, West ? —
The Big-water, calm, thick-flecked with the light of stars
As the wind-riffled fur of silver fox in winter . . .
The shuffle of the sands in the lapsing tide . . .
The slow soft wash of waters on the pebbles . . .
"Sh-sh-sh! . . . Look, Ah-deek! . . . on K'tchee-gah-
mee! . . .
Somebody — somet'ing he's in dere . . . ain't? . . .
He's sleep w'ere black Big-water she's deep . . .
Ho! . . .
In morning he's jump up from hees bed and race
Wit' de wind; but tonight he's sleeping . . . rolling
little . . .
Dreaming about hees woman . . . rolling . . . sleep-
ing. . . ."
[TO]
Lew Sarett
And later — you recall? — beyond the peaks
That tusked the sky like fangs of a coyote snarling,
The full-blown mellow moon that floated up
Like a liquid-silver bubble from the waters,
Serenely, till she pricked her delicate film
On the slender splinter of a cloud, melted,
And trickled from the silver-dripping edges.
Oh, the splendor of that night! . . . The Twin-fox stars
That loped across the pine-ridge . . . Red Ah-nung,
Blazing from out the cavern of the gloom
Like the smoldering coal in the eye of carcajou . . .
The star-dust in the valley of the sky,
Flittering like glow-worms in a reedy meadow!
"Somebody's dere . . . He's walk-urn in dose cloud . . .
Look! . . . You see-um? . . . He's mak'-um for hees
woman
De w'ile she sleep, dose t'ing she want-urn most —
Blue dress for dancing! . . . You see, my frien'f . . .
ain't? . . .
He's t'rowing on de blanket of dose sky
Dose plenty-plenty handfuls of w'ite stars;
He's sewing on dose plenty teet' of elk,
Dose shiny looking-glass and plenty beads. •
Somebody's dere . . . somet'ing he's in dere. . . ."
The green moons went — and many many winters.
Yet we held together, Joe, until our day
Of falling leaves, like two split sticks of willow
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
Lashed tight with buckskin buried in the bark.
Do you recollect our last long cruise together,
To Hollow-bear, on our line of marten traps? —
When cold Pee-boan, the Winter-maker, hurdling
The rim-rock ridge, shook out his snowy hair
Before him on the wind and heaped up the hollows? —
Flanked by the drifts, our lean-to of toboggans,
Our bed of pungent balsam, soft as down
From the bosom of a whistling swan in autumn . . .
Our steaming sledge-dogs buried in the snow-bank,
Nuzzling their snouts beneath their tented tails,
And dreaming of the paradise of dogs . . .
Our fire of pine-boughs licking up the snow,
And tilting at the shadows in the coulee . . .
And you, rolled warm among the beaver-pelts,
Forgetful of your sickness-on-the-lung,
Of the fever-pains and coughs that wracked your bones —
You, beating a war song on your drum,
And laughing as the scarlet-moccasined flames
Danced on the coals and bellowed up the sky.
Don't you remember? . . . the snowflakes drifting down
Thick as the falling petals of wild plums . . .
The clinker-ice and the scudding fluff of the whirlpool
Muffling the summer-mumblings of the brook . . .
The turbulent waterfall protesting against
Such early winter-sleep, like a little boy
Who struggles with the calamity of slumber,
[12]
Lew Sarett
Knuckling his leaden lids and his tingling nose
With a pudgy fist, and fretfully flinging back
His snowy cover with his petulant fingers.
Out on the windy barrens restless bands
Of caribou, rumped up against the gale,
Suddenly breaking before the rabid blast,
Scampering off like tumbleweeds in a cyclone . . .
The low of bulls from the hills where worried moose,
Nibbling the willows, the wintergreens, the birches,
Were yarding up in the sheltering alder-thicket . . .
From the cedar wind-break, the bleat of calves wedged warm
Against the bellies of their drowsy cows . . .
And then the utter calm . . . the wide white drift
That lay upon the world as still and ghastly
As the winding-sheet of death . . . the sudden snap
Of a dry twig . . . the groan of sheeted rivers
Beating with naked hands upon the ice ...
The brooding night ... the crackle of cold skies . . .
"Sh-sh-sh-sh! . . . Look, my frien, . . . somebody's
dere! . . .
Ami? . . . over dere? . . . He's come from dose Land-
of-Winter! . . .
Wit' quilt he's cover-um up dose baby mink,
Dose cub, dose wild arbutus, dose jump-up- Johnny . . .
He's keep hees ch.il' ens warm for long, long winter . . .
Sh-sh-sh-sh / . . . Somebody's dere on de w'ite sa-
vanne! ,. . .
[13]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
Somebody's dere! . . . He's walk-um in de timber . . .
He's cover-urn up hees chil'ens, soft . . . soft . . ."
And later, when your bird-claw fingers rippled
Over the holes of your cedar Bee-bee-gwun
Mellowly in a tender tune, how the stars,
Like little children trooping from their teepees,
Danced with their nimble feet across the sky
To the running-water music of your flute . . .
And how, with twinkling heels they scurried off
Before the Northern Light swaying, twisting,
Spiralling like a slender silver smoke
On the thin blue winds, and feeling out among
The frightened starry children of the sky . . .
"Look! . . . in de Land-of- Winter . . . sotnet'ing's
dere! . . .
Somebody — he's reaching out hees hand! . . . for
me! . . .
Ain't? . . . For me he's waiting . . . Somebody's
dere! . . .
Somebody he's in dere, waiting . . . waiting . . ."
Don't you remember? — the ghostly silence, splintered
At last by a fist that cracked the hoary birch,
By a swift black fist that shattered the brittle air,
Splitting it into a million frosty fragments . . .
And dreary Northwind, coughing in the snow,
Spitting among the glistening sheeted pines,
[14]
Lew Sarett
And moaning on the barrens among the bones
Of gaunt white tamaracks mournful and forlorn . . .
"Sh-sh-sh-sh! . . . My Caribou! . . . Somebody's
dere! . . .
He's crying . . . little bit crazy in dose wind . . .
Ain't? . . . You hear-um? . . . far 'way . . . crying
Lak my old woman w'en she's lose de baby
And no can find-um — w'en she's running everyw'ere,
Falling in snow, talking little bit crazy,
Calling and crying for shees little boy . . .
Sh-sh-sh-sh! . . . Somet'ing's dere . . . you hear-um?
. . . ain't? . . .
Somebody — somebody's dere, crying . . . crying . . ."
Then from the swale, where shadows pranced grotesquely
Solemn, like phantom puppets on a string,
A cry — pointed, brittle, perpendicular —
As startling as a thin stiff blade of ice
Laid swift and sharp on fever-burning flesh:
The tremulous wail of a lonely shivering wolf,
Piercing the world's great heart like an icy sword . . .
"Look! . . . Quick! . . . Ah-deek! . . . Somebody's
dere! . . .
Ain't? . . . He's come — he's come for me — for me!
Me — me, I go! My Caribou . . .
Dose fire — dose fire she's going out — she's cold . . .
[15]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
T'row — t'row on dose knots of pine . . . Mee-
gwetch! . . .
And pull 'way from dose flame — dose pan of sour-dough,
If you want eat — in de morning — damn-good flap-
jack . . i
"Sh-sh-sh-sh! . . . Something's dere! . . . You hear-
umf . . . ain't? . . .
Somebody — somebody's dere, calling . . . calling . . .
I go ... I go — me! . . . me . . . I go. . . ."
III! TALKING WATERS
O eagle whose whistling wings have known the lift
Of high mysterious hands, and the wild sweet music
Of big winds among the ultimate stars,
The black-robes put you in a box of God,
Seeking in honest faith and holy zeal
To lay upon your lips new songs, to swell
The chorus of amens and hallelujahs.
O bundle of copper bones tossed in a hole,
Here in the place-of-death — God's fenced-in ground! —
Beneath these put-in pines and waxen lilies,
They placed you in a crimson gash in the hillside,
Here on a bluff above the Sleepy-eye,
Where the Baptism River, mumbling among the canyons,
Shoulders its flood through crooning waterfalls
In a mist of wafted foam fragile as petals
[16]
Lew Sarett
Of wfndflowers blowing across the green of April;
Where ghosts of wistful leaves go floating up
In the rustling blaze of autumn, like silver smokes
Slenderly twisting among the thin blue winds;
Here in the great gray arms of Mont du Pere,
Where the shy arbutus, the mink, and the Johnny-jump-up
Huddle and whisper of a long, long winter;
Where stars, with soundless feet, come trooping up
To dance to the water-drums of white cascades —
Where stars, like little children, go singing down
The sky to the flute of the wind in the willow-tree —
Somebody — somebody's there . . . O pagan Joe . . .
Can't you see Him as He moves among the mountains —
Where dusk, dew-lidded, slips among the valleys
Soft as a blue wolf walking in thick wet moss?
Look! ... my friend! ... at the breast of Mont du
Pere! . . .
Sh-sh-sh-sh! . . . Don't you hear His talking waters . . .
Soft in the gloam as broken butterflies
Hovering above a somber pool? . . . Sh-sh-sh-sh!
Somebody's there ... in the heart of Mont du Pere . . .
Somebody — somebody's there, sleeping . . . sleeping . . .
Lew Sarett
[17]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
STILL COLORS
VELVET SHOES
Let us walk in the white snow
In a soundless space;
With footsteps quiet and slow,
At a tranquil pace,
Under veils of white lace.
I shall go shod in silk,
And you in wool,
White as a white cow's milk,
More beautiful
Than the breast of a gull.
We shall walk through the still town
In a windless peace;
We shall step upon white down,
Upon silver fleece,
Upon softer than these.
We shall walk in velvet shoes :
Wherever we jgo
Silence will fall like dews
On white silence below.
We shall walk in the snow.
[18]
Elinor Wylie
For this you've striven,
Daring, to fail:
Your sky is riven
Like a tearing veil.
For this, you've wasted
Wings of your youth;
Divined, and tasted
Bitter springs of truth.
From sand unslaked
Twisted strong cords,
And wandered naked
Among trysted swords.
There's a word unspoken,
A knot untied.
Whatever is broken
The earth may hide.
The road was jagged
Over sharp stones:
Your body's too ragged
To cover your bones.
The wind scatters
Tears upon dust;
[19]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
Your soul's in tatters
Where the spears thrust.
Your race is ended —
See, it is run:
Nothing is mended
Under the sun.
Straight as an arrow
You fall to a sleep
Not too narrow
And not too deep.
SILVER FILAGREE
The icicles wreathing
On trees in festoon
Swing, swayed to our breathing:
They're made of the moon.
She's a pale, waxen taper;
And these seem to drip
Transparent as paper
From the flame of her tip.
Molten, smoking a little,
Into crystal they pass;
Falling, freezing, to brittle
And delicate glass.
[20]
Elinor Wylie
Each a sharp-pointed flower,
Each a brief stalactite
Which hangs for an hour
In the blue cave of night.
ATAVISM
I always was afraid of Somes's Pond:
Not the little pond, by which the willow stands,
Where laughing boys catch alewives in their hands
In brown, bright shallows ; but the one beyond.
There, when the frost makes all the birches burn
Yellow as cow-lilies, and the pale sky shines
Like a polished shell between black spruce and pines,
Some strange thing tracks us, turning where we turn.
You'll say I dream it, being the true daughter
Of those who in old times endured this dread.
Look! Where the lily-stems are showing red
A silent paddle moves below the water,
A sliding shape has stirred them like a breath ;
Tall plumes surmount a painted mask of death.
Elinor Wylie
[21]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
AGE AND YOUTH
How little wisdom in how many years —
How little wisdom and how much of pain!
And now the slack knees tremble, the eye blears,
And mist-wreaths blur the mirror of the brain.
And Memory, in her niche, with fumbling ringers
Plucks at old dreams mislaid which crumble soon;
And there is naught she touches now that lingers;
And her lamp smokes and dims, a clouded moon.
And Youth, a long way off, looks sidewise over
Into the place of shadow, and stops singing
The immemorial lay of Love's true lover;
While, for a space, Hope's hand grows tried of clinging
To his limp hand, and droops careless and cold
Along the grass — and even Youth seems old.
And even Youth seems old ? . . . But Youth is old,
Old as the springtide, as the April flowers.
Youth's infinite history is a tale thrice told —
Aeons but mask them in Youth's counted hours.
That rosebud, and the dew upon that rose,
Lack but the memory of all ages past;
The wavering snowflake knows not — but God knows
The winters it has lasted and shall last!
Yes, Youth is old . . . and Age is ever young —
A new thing in its season, a new thing;
New, and more terrible than ever tongue
[22]
Lee Wilson Dodd
Of fool or poet has dared to say or sing!
Yet not more terrible than Youth, that seems
A dreamer's dream of some dead dreamer's dreams.
RIDDLE
You would be free!
Would you be free
If you were free?
Is the wind free,
Or the wind-worn sea?
Or sun-tied earth,
Or the earth-tied moon?
Is Ariel?
Is Caliban?
Is Satan in Hell?
Or God in Heaven?
Riddle my rune,
Little man!
Lee Wilson Dodd
[23]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
"E BE THAN"
They come weeping,
They raise their voices,
Women meet them
As they ride from the plain.
The band is home,
But none rejoices —
For many men
Return not again.
The chief leads them;
Yet, heavy-hearted,
He slowly rides
From the wide, shining plain.
Warriors mourn
The friends departed —
For many men
Return not again.
Women follow;
The children, weeping,
Straggle along
Through the dust of the plain,
Many mourning
Friends or fathers —
For many men
Return not again.
[24]
Carroll Lane Fenton
Priests, chanting
The sacred death-song,
Raise dull grave-poles
High above the wide plain;
Men mourn
Sons and cousins —
For dead men's souls
Return not again.
Carroll Lane Fenton
SONG
Hills are all aflower,
Skies are all afire —
Fool was I to sorrow
For a dead desire!
Lo, the April marvel
Stirs the earth again:
Break, my heart, of beauty,
That would not break of pain !
H. Thompson Rich
[25]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
TO A NEW ENGLAND GIRL
Ah, you have taken my hot delight
In France and stripped it of its wings ;
Broken the swift Icarian flight
Of untoward imaginings
That sought a sun hardly my own.
And you have winged and brought me down
Through sudden ecstasy to rest
Upon your white New England breast,
Where love is fragrantly austere
As those deep-bosomed hillsides are
That slope down to Franconia,
Full-blossoming in early year.
TO AN AUTHENTIC PRIEST
He weighs me down, this Christ of yours.
He weighs me down — his arm is on
My elbow in the streaked dawn;
Oppresses he my evening hours;
Still he outshines the manifold
Bright rays that centre in my heart.
Much loveliness I knew grows cold
The while his threatening fires start
To gnaw at this old edifice
Of sturdy lusts. Outsavors he
[26]
Edward Towns end Booth
The savor of my ancient bliss.
He tempts me to apostasy.
Edward Townsend Booth
THE INTRUDER
Across my book your hand augustly reaches —
Thrusts it away.
I turn impatient to the window, watching
The tossed trees' play,
March sunshine glinting on a chilly rain-pool
That snow-banks frame.
A lusty wind comes gusting on its errand
And names your name.
Captive, defeated, having striven I yield me
To thought awhile;
Letting the sunlight on the roughened waters
Bear me your smile;
Hearing the mischief-making wind that named you
Question afresh
If spirit find in spirit full contentment
Only through flesh.
Grace Stone Coates
[27]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
THREE SONNETS
PERSPECTIVE OF CO-ORDINATION
The circles never fully round, but change
In spiral gropings — not, as on a wall,
Flat-patterned, but back into space they fall,
In depth on depth of indeterminate range.
Where they begin may be here at my hand
Or there far lost beyond the search of eye;
And though I sit, desperately rapt, and try
To trace round-round the line, and understand
The sequence, the relation, the black-art
Of their continuance, hoping to find good
At least some logic of part-joined-to-part,
I judge the task one of too mad a mood:
And prophecy throws its shadow on my heart,
And Time's last sunset flames along my blood.
WORLD BEYOND WORLD
Two mirrors, face to face, is all I need
To build a mazy universe for my mind
Where world grows out of world. I dizzily find
Solace in endless planes that there recede.
The fifth plane-world, soft-shimmering through the glass —
Surely it has a light more bland than ours.
[28]
Arthur Davison Ficke
And in the far ninth hides a whirl of powers
Unknown to our dull senses. I would pass
Down the long vista, pausing now and then
To taste the flavor of each separate sphere,
And with each vast perspective cool my eye.
Whom should I meet there ? Never living men !
What should I love there? Nothing I hold dear!
What would the end be? Endless as am I !
LEAF-MOVEM ENT
From its thin branch high in the autumn wind
The yellow leaf now sails in upward flight;
Hovers at top-slope; then, a whirling bright
Eddy of motion, sinks. The storm behind
With gusts and veering tyrannies would uphold
Even as it downward beats this gorgeous thing
Which like an angel's lost and shattered wing
Against the grey sky sweeps its broken gold.
Another eddy, desperate or in mirth,
Brings it to rest here on the crackled earth
Where men can see it better than on the bough.
What quite preposterous irony of wind's-will
Touches it where it lies, golden and still,
And once more lifts it vainly heavenward now!
Arthur Davison Ficke
[29]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
COMMENT
DRINKWATER ON ABERCROMBIE
MR. JOHN DRINKWATER, during his recent visit to
Chicago, threw out a challenge to the advocates of
the "new movement" by saying, during one of his club lec-
tures, "Lascelles Abercrombie is the most important poet
under forty-five now writing." To be sure, he expressed
the opinion tentatively, remarking on the futility of any
attempt at finality in contemporary criticism — on the im-
possibility of ranking an artist while he is still in active
career. And it must be admitted that to many of his hearers
the eminence decreed to Mr. Abercrombie was a convincing
example of this futility.
We all express opinions, but, unless blind egotists, we
do it with Mr. Drinkwater's modest reserve; offering them
as a passing and perishing comment, a stick thrown on the
current rather than a tree planted to outlast its violence.
And so, while agreeing heartily with Mr. Drinkwater as
to the unfinality — if one may coin a word — of contemporary
opinion, let us take up what we consider his over-praise of
Mr. Abercrombie, and try to justify a contrary point of
view.
Mr. Abercrombie is distinctly, even slavishly, in the Vic-
torian tradition. Tennyson and Swinburne are his imme-
diate progenitors, with such traces of remoter ancestry as
they have handed down. He loves to wander in the old
protected gardens, amid a lush overgrowth of verbal foliage,
[30]
Drlnkwater on Abercrombie
a heavy atmosphere of rank rhetorical perfumes. He repre-
sents the extreme of all those qualities of aesthetic motive
and style which the more progressive modern poets, from
Yeats and Robinson to Ezra Pound and Carl Sandburg, have
been leading us away from — qualities which express, not
the strength of "the tradition," but its feebleness and excess,
not its growth but its decay. Let us illustrate by quoting a
rather long passage from Emblems of Love. It is Sappho
who speaks, the brief and magic Sappho, who, though re-
membered for only thirty lyric lines, has tempted more poets
to platitudes than even Helen of Troy herself. We quote
three sentences — the first two-thirds of her monologue:
This bright earth
Maketh my heart to falter; yea, my spirit
Bends and bows down in the delight of vision,
Caught by the force of beauty, swayed about
Like seaweed moved by the deep winds of water:
For it is all the news of love to me.
Through paths pine-fragrant, where the shaded ground
Is strewn with fruits of scarlet husk, I come,
As if through maidenhood's uncertainty,
Its darkness colored with strange untried thoughts;
Hither I come, here to the flowery peak
Of this white cliff, high up in golden air,
Where glowing earth and sea and divine light
Are in mine eyes like ardor, and like love
Are in my soul: love's glowing gentleness,
The sunny grass of meadows and the trees,
Towers of dark green flame, and that white town •
Where from the hearths a fragrance of burnt wood,
Blue-purple smoke creeps like a stain of wine
Along the paved blue sea: yea, all this kindness
Lies amid salt immeasurable flowing,
The power of the sea, passion of love.
I, Sappho, have made love the mastery
[31]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
Most sacred over man ; but I have made it
A safety of things gloriously known,
To house his spirit from the darkness blowing
Out of the vast unknown: from me he hath
The wilful mind to make his fortune fair.
We hear a number of old favorites discoursing thus elo-
quently in Emblems of Love — Helen, Vashti, Judith and
Holofernes, a pair of warrior cave-men, and finally the
typical He and She of an achieved millennial world. In
this last of the dialogues, before the Marriage Song and
Epilogue, "She" clothes her passion in the following lofty
lines :
What hast thou done to me ! — I would have soul,
Before I knew thee, Love, a captive held
By flesh. Now, only delighted with desire,
My body knows itself to be nought else
But thy heart's worship of me; and my soul
Therein is sunlight held by warm gold air.
Nay, all my body is become a song
Upon the breath of spirit, a love-song.
To match this nobly rotund declaration of love, one must
go back to Tennyson's lover in The Princess, whose passion
so overwhelmed him that he cried:
Nay, but thee —
From yearlong poring on thy pictured eyes
Ere seen I loved, and loved thee seen, and saw
Thee woman through the crust of iron moods
That masked thee from men's reverence up, and forced
Sweet love on pranks of saucy boyhood; now
Given back to life, to life indeed, through thee,
Indeed I love.
It took twenty more lines to clinch the affair with Tenny-
son's princess, and Mr. Abercrombie's He and She are even
more expansive.
[32]
Drinkwater on Abercrombie
Mr. Untermeyer calls Mr. Abercrombie's type of product
"metaphysical poetry." Without inquiring whether this
phrase is a contradiction in terms, one might insist that
Emblems of Love contains very little of either poetry or
metaphysics, that it is merely a turgid, long-winded artificial-
izing of certain grand old tales which only genius of a high
order can touch to new beauty. To me the dullness of it is
not atoned for by magic of sound or phrase, or by that swift
breathless Tightness of imagery with which the true poet sur-
prises us. Mr. Abercrombie offers plenty of images — care-
fully thought out, elaborately wrought similes and metaphors
set forth in his heavy, slow-pacing iambics according to the
most approved classic rules; images which we follow at a
respectful distance and without a thrill. Here is one, from
the speech of a "tramp" in the dialogue Blind, in Interludes
and Poems, published in 1908:
Fool, I have been
One of the mutiny that attempts God
And to take landing on the side of Heaven,
For foothold on the slippery peril of wall
Reaching and tearing at God's sheer resentment,
Still to be thrown down by the towering glass
A litter of upturned faces, gesturing
Against the calm front of his Sabbath's wall,
The desperate height of shining builded scorn. .
Interludes and Poems, issued when the poet was only
twenty-four, might be excused as one of the solemn follies
of youth — youth over-educated and reeking with "meta-
physical" wisdom. The five dramatic Interludes have each
a large, profound, and usually tragic subject-motive, under
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POETRY: A Magazine of V -e r s e
which the pompous verse staggers, heavily overburdened.
One is hardly convinced when God himself utters a speech
of nearly fifty lines, beginning —
Simple this prayer is, smelling sweet to me,
Therefore I take it and begin my power:
Yea, I will largely let thee out of here,
Of being beautiful, otherwise tiring thee.
Nor does The Seeker persuade us when he says:
I have achieved. That which the lonely man
Spoke of, core of the world, that Self, I know.
with seventy lines more to explain the achievement.
At twenty-eight the poet should have matured somewhat,
but Emblems of Love shows him still more deeply involved"
in the tangled meshes of an intellectually theorized and
heavily artificialized art. He might have persisted in that
manner to the end if the "new movement'' hadn't begun
about that time; for even in England the new movement,
as expressed in Harold Monro's Poetry and Drama and the
Georgian anthologies, meant something simpler than Mr.
Abercrombie's style had as yet achieved. In the first
Georgian Poetry we find his dialogue — between a sea captain,
a doubting Thomas and a mysterious Stranger — a little
more tolerable, though it moralizes tediously; and in the
second his play, The End of the World, shows the beginning
of an effort at modern diction and a less involved style — a
necessary change, since the people are ordinary publicans
and sinners. The play is stiffly talky, however, and its motive
is too slight for all the pother of reflective or didactic
speeches.
[34]
Drinkwater on Abercrombie
Deborah j published in 1913, is another evidence of a change
of heart. Even though still clogged and rhetorical, the style
seems almost bare in comparison with the works above
quoted, as the following passage shows :
That was not wind!
That was a hound's tongue ! Deborah, you heard ?
The beagles out of hell are loose in the wind,
The Gabriel hounds are running wild tonight!
Oh now, God rest the little one's soul — he died
Unchristened, and the Gabriel hounds are out!
Here we two sit and warm us at the fire,
And yonder in the darkness and the wind
The little soul of Miriam's still-born child
Runs crying from the mouths of the Gabriel hounds !
Deborah is a good example of the tragedy deliberate,
descriptive and static, so to speak; tragedy which is willed
by the author rather than decreed by fate, in which the char-
acters are pulled by strings instead of impelled by their own
mysterious and unreasoning volition. The plot — or rather
the three plots, for the three acts fall apart — -is perfectly
reasonable, indeed too reasonable. But it lacks spontaneity,
the breath of life; and therefore we are not convinced when
Miriam and Deborah run out into the deadly marsh.
Mr. Abercrombie seems to the writer the extreme example
of the kind of thing that is the matter with much modern
English poetry. His over-intellectualized motives, and his
lush and leaden involved style have been admired too much
by the Georgians. And so we feel impelled to record our
divergence from Mr. Drinkwater's publicly announced
opinion. H. M.
[35]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
REVIEWS
NECTAR AND SYRUP
Collected Poems, by Walter de la Mare (2 vols.) Henry
Holt & Co.
A fit of admiration for de la Mare's works has upset the
U. S. A. and her newspapers. But every newspaper article
I have read is a weak jumble, done in a strange attitude of
self-defense. One of the last champions of rhyme is passing
— if this chance is lost, rhyme is to be an entirely lost proposi-
tion: this is what they seem to say.
This chance is not completely lost. Walter de la Mare
is a good rhymer, one of the very best of today. Indeed, he
is probably the sweetest rhymer of today. His Peacock Pie
poems and his Poems for Childhood are clever and darling.
They are not the drooling child-poems one often meets with.
They are good old-fashioned child-poems and a little more:
there is a naively mystical note in most of them, and bright
new humor.
And so Listeners, Motley and the previous book, Poems
1906, contain poems that have a hauntingly sweet music,
and others the mysticism of which is real, sweet and naive;
also landscapes delicately drawn, like this one:
Snow at break of day,
On fields forlorn and bare.
For shadow it hath rose,
Azure and amethyst;
And every air that blows
Dies out in beauteous mist.
[36]
Nectar and Syrup
But too many other poems strike us as Maxfield Parrish's
pictures do; they are at first sight lovely; but then, to more
scrupulous eyes, this loveliness becomes falsity. They are
embellishments rather than works of beauty. The naivete
of them is studied, and they are childish where they should
be simple. The truthfulness of the image is sacrificed for
the sake of vividness, with the effect that a short-lived vivid-
ness is attained which dies under scrupulous eyes. Thus the
famous moonlight poem, where everything is silver even to
the paws of the sleeping dog and the snout of the running
rat, is essentially a falsified picture. Stripped of truthful-
ness, all that remains of it is a sometimes pleasing jingle.
As for his much discussed use of hackneyed words, symbols,
colors, music — inasmuch as this is the age-old vice of poets
and scribblers, there is nothing to say in de la Mare's defense.
And inasmuch as our times have witnessed a quite wonderful
movement towards complete newness in poetry, Mr. de la
Mare, for this serious fault of his, may be called unoriginal.
It is extenuating that the quaint delightful music of some
of his poems gains in quaintness by the use of words which,
if hackneyed, have a certain traditional flavor. But the
worst of it is that this use of hackneyed language and forms
springs from a lack of faith in today; and moreover it is
made possible by the fact that nothing very actual concerns
Mr. de la Mare, for were he concerned in things that require
to be expressed in a modern language he would use it. Here
we find fairies and witches of the old type, we find knights
and damsels instead of guys and janes. Why not give us
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
today's witches? There are some. And why not give us,
if not guys and janes, today's knights and damsels? There
are some.
However, the critic should not say, "Why not?" He is
concerned in the work of art as it is and not as it should be.
Well, let us admit then that we have seen these witches,
these damsels, these knights before, in a hundred books of
the past. De la Mare is a repeater. Not a bad one, but
for that reason he is just so much less a poet. He is a poet
of abstract sentiment chiefly. And in this abstraction we
detect a lack of roots, a lack of force. Even most of his
landscapes are, as we have said, embellishments of old
models; and the only human beings in these books are some
characters from Shakespeare.
Like many poets, Walter de la Mare belongs in the class
of sentimental rejecters of reality and today. His mysticism,
what there is of it, is therefore a weak thing, a negation
rather than an exuberance. His music has the melodious
sweetness of a luxury, rather than of everyday song.
Among his best child poems we find this:
Ann ! Ann !
Come quick as you can !
There's a fish that talks
In the frying pan.
He put up his mouth
And moaned "Alas!"
Oh, most mournful —
"Alas, alack !"
Then turned to his sizzling,
And sank him back.
[38]
Nectar and Syrup
We must say it again, some of these child poems are as
delightful as Mother Goose's. E. Carnevali
ONE POET
Advice, by Maxwell Bodenheim, Alfred A. Knopf.
The Forerunner: His Parables and Poems, by Kahlil Gibran,
Alfred A. Knopf.
Neighbors, by Wilfrid Wilson Gibson. Macmillan Co.
The Birds and Other Poems, by J. C. Squire. George H.
Doran Co.
Songs While Wandering, by A. Newberry Choyce. John
Lane Co.
There are three Englishmen, one Syrian and one American
in this list; and patriots may stand up and cheer, since the
single American has written the only book among them that
is worth any serious consideration. I shall postpone my
comment upon it to the end.
Mr. Choyce sings some old songs while wandering. His
chief distinction seems to be that he was wounded in action,
and has just completed a lecture tour through our West,
South and Middle- west. The publishers themselves think
so, for they let these important matters take first place in
their wrapper description and add a few perfunctory words
about charm, lyric qualities, etc. To these casualties were
added a small gift for rhyming, and a grateful heart. So
we have variations on the theme of God's own country, rocky
mountains, peaceful valleys, descriptions of soulful meetings
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
with a Mormon maid and an Indian princess, and other
tender damsels, varied with nice longings for Home (Eng-
land, in the sheltering sea, etc.) and Mother. It is quite as
if the English Captain in Shaw's Great Catherine had trav-
eled here, and appreciatively burst into poetry. The only
comfort one can get is that Mr. Choyce is evidently quite
young and has years of self-awareness before him.
In language that is simple and apt, that even rises to a
quiet poignancy, a pervading suspense that is truly stirring,
Mr. Gibson's Neighbors is a gathering of those intimate
biographies that catch a life-time on one pivotal perception.
This, the larger part of the book, gives it some distinction.
If read too consecutively, impressions are dulled by a mo-
notony of theme and treatment. Mr. Gibson is skilful in
weaving his spell, but he cannot escape it himself ; one finds
the same emotions underlying, the same moods pervading
all the poems. In the end one rises from the book, having
fed upon fare touched with a faint savour of the bread of
Elysium ; and been made hungrier thereby. The other poems
are mainly occasional pieces of little importance.
We have had conductor-music, and now we have editor-
poetry. J. C. Squire presents charming, well worked, in-
telligent poems which show discrimination and taste. I have
the impression, in reading his book, of skilful parodies upon
some unknown and invisible poet. There is disproportionate
intellectuality, but it entertains and stimulates even if it
tends merely to wear a path around old emotions. It is,
after all, something to get the careful expression of a highly
[40]
One Poet
cultured, versatile man, whose words have restraint and
authority if not the compulsion of genius. The first im-
pression is of admiration for work well done, for the fault-
less architecture of his metaphors, and the unobtrusive
efficiency of his rhythms.
Parables and prose poems like those in The Forerunner,
by Kahlil Gibran, will have all the unpopularity of sermons
outside the pulpit. The form itself, that of free, self-respon-
sible utterance, gives an irritating finality to the content,
which a world grown skeptical is tempted to snub. There
is in this book neither the stark authenticity of prophecy, nor
the beautiful crystallizations of a creative imagination.
What we have here is pompous dramatizations of only half-
individualized platitudes; sounding sufficiently sad-true,
through a mist of fine language, to catch the attention with
mirages. The accompanying drawings, in dim shadow-shape
and vague lines, give a fine touch of completeness to the
book, supplying a somewhat needed justification for the text.
Incidentally, this volume should be praised as a specimen of
bookmaking. Mr. Knopf has been conscientious in making out
his list; and he has been careful, as other progressive pub-
lishers have not, to give each book an appropriate format.
Mr. Bodenheim's book is a garland of persistently new
flowers, so different that a myth might be made of the strange
sap in these short stems, of the new designs made by the
cluster of the petals, the new color, new flesh; and of the
truly terrifying fact that there are no roots — or at least
none that are visible or palpable or explicable.
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
We know that Bodenhefm's faith is an exaltation of form
." — out of his own mouth" if we were inclined to a polemic.
What philosophy has not been .enunciated a thousand times,
what beauty has not been celebrated over and over, what
sunrise, sunset, moon, sea, or mountain has not been pub-
lished into notoriety by a timeless following of rhapsodists!
Nothing that a man can touch but is mottled over ^with
fingerprints. The business of the poet then, if he is not to
add merely a new and more or less unrecognizable parody,
is to mold his material into a new shape, to give creative
individuality a play in fashioning an ultimate appearance.
Actually Bodenheim has done more. He has found new
themes, going to neglected or forbidden realms to find them.
And he has come to them with a new attitude, enabling him
to equip his foundry with new molds.
In doing this, in not making his poems a personal synthesis
of instinctively selective preferences, in seeming to have writ-
ten suddenly and on impulse, without drawing matter and
manner from confessed admirations or self-fertilizing mem-
ories, Bodenheim has actually proved himself an original
poet. He has broken through where so many others have
wandered in circles, have taken vague new paths and come
dishearteningly back to their starting-places; where so many
others, less self-sufficient, have fallen into impotent night-
radiances of disintegration.
A new attitude is a rare achievement, and originality an
enviable state of blessedness. One may well believe that
new words and new meanings are needed for its expression,
[42]
One Poet
and forgive the inversions, ellipses, forced embraces, ex-
aggerations and diminutions, of his vocabulary. But it has
its penalty. To what conflagration Mr. Bodenheim's fire
may lead to is impossible to say, but its flame is small and
illuminates a little space only. One misses in his work
exactly that contact with a literary evolution which enables
lesser poets over cleared fields to cover wider areas.
It is impossible to miss or fail to enjoy the exhilaration of
this verse. Like the composers who have transformed music,
who have swelled the orchestra with new instruments, who
have added to each section whole new gamuts, and in daring
new combinations have made the orchestra more articulate:
so Bodenheim is widening the scope of words; his verbs are
quivering with new gestures; his adjectives are suffused with
new and subtle colors; his nouns cry out new names; his
pronouns enter strange new relationships; and the juxtaposi-
tions of phenomenal contrasts and harmonies have added
new sounds, deeper and more sonorous, or shriller and more
piercing.
But just as the new composers as yet are finding it hard
enough work to utter the new sounds, and have hardly be-
gun to sing songs with them; so Bodenheim has, in my
opinion, found it hard enough work to fashion the new mean-
ings of words, without attempting to say much with them.
His poems, be they about grass-blades or men, have a final
common appearance; because their subjects are not inspira-
tions, but serve, like the string in the chemical precipitate,
merely to focus crystallization. Any string would do as
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
well; and to provide himself a store of strings we find the
poet tending to make catalogues; he gives advice impartially
to a large list of things and it occurs to me that he would give
the same advice to any fortuitous association of subjects; that
Bodenheim had to give advice, and it didn't matter to whom.
So we find him drawing a series of portraits. So we find
him wearily stretching out to the stock figures — to prosti-
tutes, Pierrots, etc.
There is no quarrel with this. It seems to be Mr. Boden-
heim's destiny to break the molecules of words into atoms
of meanings, and to indicate crudely the possible new associa-
tions. No doubt other poets will use them for greater
speech. Isidor Schneider
TEACHER-POETS
The Roamer and Other Poems, by George Edward Wood-
berry. Harcourt, Brace and Howe.
Sonnets from a Prison Camp, by Archibald Allen Bowman.
John Lane Co.
When one reads Dr. Woodberry's poems, the question
arises, why does this man's work occupy so high a place in
the minds of many supposedly discriminating people? There
is even a Woodberry Society — the only society dedicated to
a living American writer. Yet Dr. Woodberry's poetry is
merely the careful, well-wrought work of a cultivated gentle-
man, trained in literary traditions and familiar with the
world of books.
[44]
Teacher-poets
I wonder if the explanation is not to be found in the
prevalent American theory that because a man is successful
in one field he is necessarily to be treated with reverence in
every other field. The average citizen believes that because
Henry Ford has made millions of dollars building auto-
mobiles he is an authority on the single tax, the Jews, the
theory of relativity, the internal problems of Santo Domingo,
and the doctrine of transubstantiation. The relatively
learned gentlemen who comprise the Woodberry Society may
not swallow such bunk as that, but they share mildly in the
popular hallucination. Dr. Woodberry was a great, even a
delightful, university teacher. A census of the Woodberry
Society would probably show a comfortable majority im-
pressed originally with their hero's pedagogical ability and
personal charm. He was a great teacher ; ergo he is a great
poet.
Dr. Woodberry 's latest volume contains a long spiritual
narrative, The Roomer, in blank verse; a sonnet sequence,
Ideal Passion; and a number of other sonnets and lyrics.
Technical excellence a-plenty is found in all the poems; so
is conventional but sincere idealism. What is lacking is
intensity. There is about the emotions an unearthly pallor.
Austerity, the quality which the poems most nearly approach,
is just missed — and missed because they are lit not by the
consuming white flame of experience, but by the clear, cold,
steady light of intellectual reflection.
Sonnets from a Prison Camp is also the work of a teacher.
Dr. Bowman, now professor of philosophy in Princeton
[45]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
University, was an officer in the British army and was taken
prisoner by the Germans. The hundred or more sonnets
dealing with his experiences are too numerous unless ex-
ceedingly good, which these are not. They are interesting,
but they give an impression mainly of craftsmanship. There
is too much emphasis on ethical and esthetic theory — not
surprising in a professor of philosophy. Moreover, the son-
nets tend to form an explicit rather than an implicit nar-
rative, whereas the sonnet sequence, being a succession of
Jvrics, is best adapted to the opposite.
Nelson Antrim Crawford
TWO BOOKS OF REFUGE
Black Marigolds, translated by E. Powys Mathers.
The Dark Mother, by Waldo Frank. Boni £ Liveright.
There be two deluges, everlasting. One is the deluge of
new poetry, which one may witness at the POETRY office ; the
other is the deluge of new novels from England, aggravated
by the indigenous rain.
This month we, the lovers of poetry, stand on a rock out
of the one deluge; and on a raft over the second deluge.
The rock is a little yellow pamphlet, decorated with strange
black scrawls, Black Marigolds; the raft is a novel, The
Dark Mother, by the author of Our America.
Whoever thought of Sanskrit? Whoever heard of
Chauras? And who is E. Powys Mathers?
Here is one of the most beautiful poems I ever read. It
[46]
Two Books of Refuge
is the love poem of Chauras, a young man of nineteen hun-
dred years ago, dying for having loved the king's daughter.
If I see .... her body beaten about with flame,
Wounded by the flaring spear of love. . . .
Then is my heart buried alive in snow.
Seeing the stupendous wealth of expression in this ancient
poem, so beautifully rendered by Mr. Mathers, we dreamed
that in those days there were only poets living in a beautiful
world, only poetic words to be spoken. But the pitiful
struggle of the beautiful is eternal; and here too we have a
glimpse of it, where eternal love and death are sung:
They chatter her weakness through the two bazaars,
Who was so strong to love me. And small men,
That buy and sell for silver, being slaves,
Crinkle the fat about their eyes; and yet
No Prince of the Cities of the Sea has taken her,
Leading to his grim bed. Little lonely one,
You clung to me as a garment clings, my girl.
A delightfully quaint flavor is given to the poem by the
slightly ungrammatical expressions and punctuation. In the
translator's own words: "I have tried, by not letting my
verse become a coherent lyric poem in the English sense, to
keep its disjointed air."
This is one of those cases in which we cannot do better
than quote:
I see her — far face blond like gold,
Rich with small 'lights, and tinted shadows
Over and over all of her. . . .
Her scented arms
Lay like cool bindweed over against my neck.
When slow rose-yellow moons looked out at night,
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
To guard the sheaves of harvest and mark down
The peach's fall, how calm she was and love-worthy!
The salt of the whispers of my girl,
Murmurs of confused colors as we lay near sleep ;
Little wise words and little witty words,
Wanton as water, honied with eagerness.
We may recall, here, another beautiful love-death, that
of Wagner's Tristan and Yseult. The experience that be-
came song for Chauras cost him his young life.
A brief notice only of the other book. The reason why
we so much as mention The Dark Mother here is that we
have found in this book what is very seldom to be found in
a novel — poetry.
It is a book of sensitive health. The symbol for the first
fifty pages might be a tall-stemmed flower quivering in a
sweet even breeze. There is such delicacy, mixed with
such extreme health, that we are reminded of the antennae
of insects:
The air moved toward the mountain; the waves and the trees
and the earth moved toward the mountain. All the world moved
gently upward toward the mountain like a tide. The mountain
moved downward toward earth, spilled water and spread trees
in it.
This David is a man of perfect senses, perfect eyes :
And David saw the breathing of the woods, the warm comfort
of trees that had grown up together and knew their silences. They
were clothed in a sweet sanctity of resolve and repose. They
took the rain with faint bowed heads.
Lovers of poetry owe at least an acknowledgment to this
book of honest prose, which is full of beautiful words — a real
gardenful. E. Carnevali
[48]
Celtic Fairies
CELTIC FAIRIES
Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland (2 vols.) , collected
and arranged by Lady Gregory, with two essays and notes
by W. B. Yeats. G. P. Putnam's Sons.
Irish Fairy Tales, by James Stephens, illustrated by Arthur
Rackham. Macmillan Co.
The Boy Apprenticed to an Enchanter, by Padraic Colum,
illustrated by Dugald Stewart Walker. Macmillan Co.
Although the books here listed are not strictly in POETRY'S
province, their highly imaginative content places them so
near it that we must recommend them briefly to our readers.
Lady Gregory's beautiful and scholarly work presents
the raw material out of which the modern Irish poets, headed
by Synge and Yeats, have shaped masterpieces, and from
which their successors will continue to draw so long as
there are Irish poets. In setting forth thus the "Celtic con-
sciousness of an imminent supernaturalism," the distinguished
editor uses the names and the exact language of the in-
dividuals who tell the tales, giving thus to her book the
value of direct testimony, as well as the vigor and beauty
of that folk-diction which Synge has immortalized. The
scope of the work is indicated by such sectional sub-titles as
Sea Stories, Seers and Healers, The Evil Eye, Banshees and
Warnings, Friars and Priest Cures. Mr. Yeats' essays and
notes are of course not only competent but sympathetic.
Mr. Stephens' beautiful book is a poet's retelling of some
of the old Celtic folk-tales, tales handed down from long ago
in the manner Lady Gregory's collection makes us under-
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
stand. It goes without saying that the tales are shaped into
compact form by this close stylist without loss of simplicity
and charm. And Mr. Rackham's illustrations are a return
to his best manner and most imaginative mood.
This book and Mr. Colum's are for children in the sense
only that some of the world's best literature has been so
intended ; but no grown-up who loves imaginative and
poetic folk stories should deny himself the pleasure of such
work by poets at play. One is "apprenticed to an enchanter"
in reading Mr. Colum's book; and his paraphrases of the
classic epics — Homer, the Norse sagas, etc. — may also be
recommended to any child, young or old, as examples of
vivid and beautiful imaginative prose. H. M.
A LITTLE SCHOOL FOR THE ELECT
The Little School, by T. Sturge Moore. Harcourt, Brace
and Howe.
The little school for which Mr. Moore writes his lovely
book is obviously the sort of school that an artist like Mr.
Moore would plan. Its teacher would be a painter or en-
graver or poet, while the pupils would be girls and boys with
the vision and the appreciation of the developing artist.
Naturally this is not the kind of school or book that chil-
dren nourished on the red and yellow humor of Rudolph
Dirks or even the monotonous wholesomeness of The Youth's
Companion will greatly care for. It is too quiet, too re-
flective, too full of beauty. But this fact is not against it.
The child with parent or teacher of sense and apprecia-
[50]
Homespun
tion will find in the volume — perhaps not "realms of gold",
but at least places where blow the many winds, always
things of mystery to children and not to children alone;
where, as Mr. Moore himself says,
None comes, none goes,
But the wind knows.
And the man or woman will find in the poems as much*
as the boy or girl; indeed, to almost any child, without guid-
ance, the book is likely to be a bit recondite. N. A. C.
HOMESPUN
Rhymes of a Homesteader, by Elliott C. Lincoln. Houghton
Mifflin Co.
This is a book of western verse, much of it of the homely
familiar kind in dialect which passes current as good news-
paper verse. It is hard to establish a line by which one can
say of verse of this sort: This is a counterfeit of the genuine
homespun, and this, on the other hand, is the real stuff.
Several of the poems in this book rise above the counterfeit
and approach the real thing, but the majority are written
down with that careful colloquial carelessness which fails of
its effect just because of its too apparent condescension. The
naivete of genuine folk homespun is not assumed. An
author may achieve the folk quality because he is naive
really; or he may achieve it through conscious simplicity;
but not merely through rhyming dialect or colloquial non-
chalance.
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
One may be severe on this score, because Mr. Elliott's
best poems are so far beyond the rest. Wheel Tracks, The
Homesteader, The Sheepherder, Forty Below, The Chinook,
and The Third Year give promise of a much finer develop-
ment of the author's talent. A. C. H.
MR. BYNNER'S SKIT
Pins for Wings, by Emanuel Morgan. The Sunwise Turn,
New York.
Mr. Bynner must have had a beautiful time with him-
self working out these thumb-nail caricatures. There are
too many for them all to be clever, of course; but a few
have the delicate tang of wit.
"A hamadryad in the tree of knowledge" is not bad for
Miss Millay, or "Overalls rhyming" for Walt Mason. "A
cardinal on a merry-go-round" is still better, perhaps, for
Mr. Chesterton. "A graphophone in the morgue" is only
a half-success for Edgar Lee Masters, and "A colored post-
card as Hamlet" does not quite hit off adequately the cruelly
battered egoism of Cale Young Rice.
But the masterpiece of wit which would excuse a volume
of failures, the portrait complete and satisfying which leaves
nothing more to be said, is this of George Edward Wood-
berry :
Grape-juice
In the Holy Grail.
A word of praise also for Mr. Saphier's line-drawings,
and for one or two of Mr. Opffer's sketches. H. M.
[52]
OUR CONTEMPORARIES
BOND OR FREE?
They are still talking about free verse — both pro and con;
although the champions of both sides insist that the dis-
cussion is closed, and the poets continue to do as they please
and get their poems printed. We commend to Mr. Tom
Daly and other fulminators the following contribution to
the controversy from a recent number of the Mercure de
France. It is part of the theatrical review of Dec. 15, 1920,
by Maurice Boissard:
To say that rhyme is poetry, that there is no poetry where there
isn't rhyme, is to express the worst poetic routine. Let's take an
example — Jose-Maria de Heredia, if you will. You know the son-
nets of Trophees. God knows that those lines rhyme, but is it
poetry, in the true sense of the word ? Not in the least. It is versi-
fication— extremely brilliant, we admit, but still mere versification.
It is made for the eye, for the ear, not for the spirit or the soul.
It is a sequence of tours de force, a show of patience, suggestively
like certain complicated trinkets manufactured with tiny shells by
meticulous maniacs. Do you want a more general argument? You
certainly have read poems by foreign poets translated into French
line by line and without any rhyme because the translator had in
mind only the thought of being faithful to the significance of the
poem itself. Have you felt the penetrating charm of these trans-
lations?— a charm due solely to the feeling expressed, to the land-
scape described; charm that the lack of rhyme left untouched, or
even increased, by means of those essentially poetic elements: vague-
ness, imprecision, indecision, all that which is poetry itself. Rhyme,
with its dryness, its regularity, its monotony, its mechanical quality
and exterior brilliance, would have left nothing of that beauty;
or at any rate would have decidedly impaired it. Rhyme is nothing
but a poetic make-up, a way to look like poets for people who know
no better than to make verses; and it is high time to follow the
advice Verlaine gave, to tordre enfin le cou a ce bijou d'un sou.
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
Not only rhyme is not poetry, but moreover it is an encumbrance,
an obstacle to poetry; for its sake the poet falsifies his inspiration.
Probably Mr. Daly's favorite magazine is Scribners, for
we read in one of its recent advertisements:
The four or more poems contained in a representative number
of Scribner's are joyous, lyrical, and well-conceived. Such themes
as the bird on the bough, summer in Arcady, the little silver strip
of road, are preferred over grave or mournful subjects. Yet all
poems must conform to a high standard of dignity and distinctive-
ness.
CORRESPONDENCE
CONCERNING
Dear POETRY: — Writers, quite as much in the countries
of older art tradition as in America, may be divided into
two classes: one the professionals, whose concern is style,
technique, finished achievement ; the other, those who attempt
at least to explore and develop new experience. The former
class restrict themselves generally to quite conventional
themes; or, if they are very daring, develop for themselves
new themes — about which they write "verses" — ultimately
hardening into a manner, inherited or their own, and soften-
ing in so far as ability to penetrate deeply goes. Limiting
ourselves strictly to America, we may mention such poets
of the first class as Masters, Sandburg, Aiken — the list need
stop short of only a very few names. Particularly with
Sandburg may one be sure that he will take an image, and
consciously sustain and develop it, long after he has lost
poignant feeling for the validity of the image. He is a
[54]
Concerning "Kora in Hell''
professional writer. He has learned, in his own manner to
be sure, how to use the image, the metaphor, the brutal
truth, and the sentimental humanitarianism. So, starting
out with the statement that the moon is a pot of gold mud,
he must have that gold mud spread over worldly possessions,
and of course at last a love- woman. He, and many others,
seem to feel that it is necessary to write — if not an authentic
poem, to write anyway. Unless from an impulse to say
something keenly felt, writing is without justification.
Of this first group few pass from their adolescent re-
bellions and miseries into a more spiritual type of searching.
Their discovery of experience is limited to material en-
vironment— the corn-fields, the marching men, small-town
viciousness, the hog-butcher.s of industrialism. Outside, and
perhaps controlling the forces back of these externalities, are
more fundamental forces which they do not sense, forces
which have a universal application, while retaining also a
strictly local significance. The experience of the locality is
after all that of the universe. The history of any individual
relates itself with startling similarity to that of the age.
Today is a time of the breakdown of faiths amongst the
so-called "sensitized" and "intellectuals." With the coming
of the theory of evolution the more sublime metaphysical
theories were gradually abandoned; pragmatism, with its
doctrines concerning the usable realities, followed on to
lubricate the joints of a mechanistic universe. However,
where a few began to doubt the value of these "practical"
answers before the war, literally thousands now doubt. Why
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
should we believe in evolution which does not explain in-
volution, or the quite evident lack of progress? Have we
anything to prove that physically and Spiritually the human
species is not on the retrograde? What is morality? — is
non-morality a possibility? Dogmatized, it becomes at last
a degenerate morality — must all ethics be individualized
then? Many questionings, cynicisms, scoffings and doubt-
ings attack all former judgments, and demand that their
defenders prove their basis, and indicate clearly that it is
something other than blind faith, or inward hunger rhap-
sodized into a proclamatory religion made out of dream-
stuff. Ecstatic faith and prophetic exaltation are too prim-
itive to be explainable in the religious instinct — for, say
Whitman — to satisfy the diagnostic mind, and the psy-
chologist.
Whatever certain groups or individuals may think or feel,
the civilized peoples of the world are groping for some basis
of faith: a faith in the mere value of living out their lives
rather than a religious explanation of existence. But there
is a new difficulty in their groping: they no longer trust
logic, sequence, order — the intelligible, rational, deducible.
It is writers who are sensitive to this baseless way of
accepting life, or rather tolerating it because life is what
we have, who are developing the so-called "modern forms."
Both modern and form are words that signify too much tra-
ditionally, and too little actually. To qualify, let me say
I mean by modern that which is of the quality of today,
displaying sensitive consciousness of the age's attitudes and
[56]
Concerning "Kora in Hell"
philosophies. By form I mean method of expression and
conveyance, and I have no concern with any structural
form — metrical, rhythmic, or geometric.
James Joyce with his prose first indicated the modern
form. Possibly his style could be traced back to the often-
times incoherent Rimbaud ; the likeness here is purely a mode
— the texture, quality of perception, attitude, and substance
are quite different: the one has the mature detached mind;
the other tossed himself with the seething of adolescence
into the field of sophisticated discovery, and perhaps when
adolescence and its ragings were over he would have re-
lapsed into quite conventional or mediocre writing.
In America William Carlos Williams, and he beginning
only with his improvisations entitled Kora in Hell, is con-
scious of the new form in relation to the dubiety of the day.
Not agnosticism, for the agnostic will say "I can't know"
decisively; we are simply doubting, and doubting whether
we are right in doubting. There is in this book the spas-
modic quality of the active, imaginative, alternately fright-
ened and reckless, consciousness. One will search in vain
for sequential outline; it is incoherent and unintelligible to
— may I say the ordinary mind, though I dislike the superior
implication of self which the phrase carries with it? (Since
minds are so elusive, none is actually ordinary.) It is in-
coherent and unintelligible to those people with lethargy of
their sensing organs. They look for the order and neatness
of precise, developed thought. It is not there. Kora in Hell
is accepted as a portrait of Williams' consciousness — a sort
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
of retouched photograph. He is not distinctly located to
himself — it's a "Should I, or shouldn't I, and what if I
don't?" It's a conscientious sensitive mind, or life organ-
ism; trained in childhood to staid and tried acceptances and
moralities, trying to be open, and to think, sense, or leap
to a footing which more acceptably justifies the life-process
than any of the traditional footings seem to.
To me Kora in Hell is immeasurably the most important
book of poetry that America has produced. I find in Whit-
man a hardened exaltation, which proclaims rhapsodic dog-
matism— the result of physical well-being, of the freedom
of open air, space, and green fields. Admirable in its day,
but the day is by for those of us who live in cities such as
New York and Chicago, and who perhaps have never seen
a real prairie or the mountains of the Great Divide, and who
sleep in tenement-house bedrooms several stories up from
the soil which flavors Indian imagism and produces sweep-
of-the-corn-sap-flowing rhythms. And we will not accept the
statement that "it is regrettable we have never had these
things." Our situation is our situation, and by the artist
can be utilized as substance for art. There can be no turn-
ing back to the soil, to the Indians — literature is not thus
consciously developed. We are here, in the cities of smoke,
subways, tired faces, industrialism ; here with the movies and
their over-gorgeousness, and the revues and follies which
gradually inject their ultra-coloration into vaudeville; here
where it is deemed necessary to applaud "art things"-
Mozart and Schumann music, established classics which fall
[58]
Concerning "Kora in Hell"
dully upon our hyper-neurotic senses. Be the conditions
hectic, heated, artificial (are economic, political and social
forces then "not natural"?) they are the conditions of a
great portion of the country.
For those who wish poetry to create some sublime beauty,
which to others grows irksome since it is necessary to turn
from its sublimity to the reality of existence, William Carlos
Williams' Kora in Hell will mean little. To those however
who rather like to have the record of somebody else's con-
scious states by which to check their own, with which to
respond and commune, it will mean a great deal. The
writer, not caring for literature as literature; not knowing
what function it performs in life other than that of a men-
tal decoration if it does not get into, reveal, and sensitize
people to, new experience; believes, however, that no book
previously produced in this country has been so keenly, vivid-
ly aware of age conceptions, qualities, colors, noises, and
philosophies as Kora in Hell. It is a break-away from
poetry written by poets who set out to be poets. It is ad-
venturous exploration. Robert McAlmon
NOTES
Mr. Lew Sarett, whose interpretations of Chippewa life are
familiar to our readers, is now a resident of Evanston, 111., being
in the faculty of Northwestern University. His book, Many Many
Moons, was published last year by Henry Holt & Co.
Mr. Arthur Davison Ficke, of Davenport, Iowa, has recently
returned from his eight-months' sojourn in China and Japan. His
latest book of verse is An April Elegy, published by Mitchell
Kennerley in 1917.
[59]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
Mr. Lee Wilson Dodd, who lives near New Haven, Conn., is
the author of a number of plays and two books of verse. Of
these the later is The Middle Miles and Other Poems (Yale Uni-
versity Press, 1915).
Mr. H. Thompson Rich, of Rutherford, N. J., has contributed
to various magazines.
The other poets of this number appear for the first time in POETRY,
and none of them has printed a volume as yet, so far as the editor
is aware.
Elinor Wylie (Mrs. Horace Wylie), who lives in Washington,
D. C., has contributed to other periodicals.
Mr. Edward Townsend Booth, of New York, served with the
A. E. F., and later went to Ukrainia to do relief work.
Mr. Carroll Lane Fenton, whose specialty is paleontology, is
now working at the Walker Museum, University of Chicago. He
is a member of the U. of C. Poetry Club.
Grace Stone Coates (Mrs. Henderson Coates) lives in Martins-
dale, Mont.
BOOKS RECEIVED
ORIGINAL VERSE:
Punch: the Immortal Liar, by Conrad Aiken. Alfred A. Knopf.
Verses, by William Grant McCooley, Jr. Privately printed, Mil-
waukee, Wis.
Pools of Glass and Other Poems, by Cyrus Caswell Johnson. Pri-
vately printed, Los Angeles, Cal.
Cactus Center, by Arthur Chapman. Houghton Mifflin Co.
The Broads — 1919, by Hugh Money-Coutts. John Lane Co.
Forgotten Shrines, by John Chipman Farrar. (Yale Series of
Younger Poets.) Yale University Press, New Haven, Conn.
Star-dust and Gardens, by Virginia Taylor McCormick. Plimp-
ton Press, Norwood, Mass.
Borderlands, Kitchener of Khartoum and Other Poems, by Benj. C.
Moomaw. Privately printed, Barber, Va.
The Choice of Paris and Other Poems, by D. C. Chase. Privately
printed, Cedar Rapids, la.
The Attic of the Past and Other Lyrics, by Louis Ginsberg. Small,
Maynard & Co.
Outlaws, by Nancy Cunard. Elkin Mathews, London.
Breakers and Granite, by John Gould Fletcher. Macmillan Co.
Poems, by Mary Allen Keller. Privately printed, Yorba Linda, Cal.
[60]
DEAR POETRY: I always feel that I ought to renew my thanks for your
enterprise and faith, which are so ceaselessly at work on the task
of renewing me.
Ferdinand Schevill
Vol. XVIII No. II
POETRY for MAY, 1921
PAGE
Sappho Answers Aristotle .... Maxwell Bodenheim 61
Impulsive Dialogue — iEmotional Monologue — Feminine
Talk — Philosophical Dialogue
Three Sonnets Arthur Davison Ficke 72
Old Wives' Tale— Holy Writ— Book of Lu T'ang Chu
Three Poems Aline Kilmer 74
Charmian's Song— For All Ladies of Shalott— The Heart
Knoweth its Own Bitterness
Backwater Edward Sapir 76
A Childish Tale— The Old Town— Overlooked— She Sits
Vacant-eyed
Tonight (Snow — Presence) . . .v Muriel Ciolkowska 80
Off the Highway Julia Weld Huntington 81
Pageantry (Revelations — Poise) .... Amy Banner 82
Charlotte Bronte . Blanche Dismorr 83
Trailing Arbutus Ruth Mason Rice 83
Long Days — Heaphy Herself .... Dorothy McVickar 84
Youth and Age Elizabeth Hart Pennell 85
Repetitions Hazel Hall 86
Two Sewing — Instruction — Three Songs for Sewing I-III
— Cowardice — Flash
Southern Shrines H.M. 91
The Death of "B. L. T." H. M. 97
The Poet and Modern Life ....... R.A.^
Reviews:
Pastels Laura Sherry 101
Silence Awakening R. A. 103
Country Sentiment .... Nelson Antrim Crawford 105
Recent Anthologies H. M. 106
French Poets in English .... Agnes Lee Freer in
Symbolists and Decadents A. L. F. 113
Our Contemporaries:
Two New Magazines H. M. 115
Notes and Books Received 117, 118
Manuscripts must be accompanied by a stamped and self-addressed
envelope.
Inclusive yearly subscription rates. In the United States, Mexico,
Cuba and American possessions, $3.00 net; in Canada, $3.15 net; in all
other countries in the Postal Union, $3.25 net. Entered as second-class
matter Nov. 15, 1912, at the post-office, at Chicago, 111., under the Act of
March 3, 1879.
Published monthly at 543 Cass St., Chicago, 111.
Copyright 1921 J.v Harriet Monroe. All rights reserved.
VOL. XVIII
No. II
A Magazine of \ferse
MAY 1921
SAPPHO ANSWERS ARISTOTLE
IMPULSIVE DIALOGUE
Will you, like other men,
Offer me indigo indignities?
Undertaker. Indigo indignities!
The words are like a mermaid and a saint
Doubting each other's existence with a kiss.
Poet. The words of most men kiss
With satiated familiarity.
Indigo is dark and vehement,
But one word in place of two
Angers barmaids and critics.
Undertaker. Straining after' originality,
You argue with its ghost!
A simple beauty, like morning
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
Harnessed by a wide sparkle
And plodding into the hearts of men,
Cannot reach your frantic juggling.
Poet. I can appreciate
The spontaneous redundancy of nature
Without the aid of an echo
From men who lack her impersonal size.
Undertaker. The sweeping purchase of an evening
By an army of stars;
The bold incoherence of love;
The peaceful mountain-roads of friendship —
These things evade your dexterous epigrams!
Poet. A statue, polished and large,
Dominates when it stands alone.
Placed in a huge profusion of statues,
Its outlines become humiliated.
Simplicity demands one gesture
And men give it endless thousands.
Complexity wanders through a forest,
Glimpsing details in the gloom.
Undertaker. I do not crave the dainty pleasure
Of chasing ghosts in a forest!
Nor do I care to pluck
Exaggerated mushrooms in the gloom.
I have lost myself on roads
Crossed by tossing hosts of men.
Pain and anger have scorched our slow feet:
Peace has washed our foreheads.
[62]
Maxwell Bodenheim
Poet. Futility, massive and endless,
Captures a stumbling grandeur
Embalmed in history.
In my forest you could see this
From a distance, and lose
Your limited intolerance.
Simplicity and subtlety
At different times are backgrounds for each other,
Changing with the position of our eyes. . . .
Death will burn your eyes
With his taciturn complexity.
Undertaker. Death will strike your eyes
With his wild simplicity!
Poet. Words are soldiers of fortune
Hired by different ideas
To provide an importance for life.
But within the glens of silence
They meet in secret peace. . . .
Undertaker, do you make of death
A puffing wretch forever pursued
By duplicates of vanquished forms?
Or do you make him a sneering king
Brushing flies from his bloodless cheeks?
Do you see him as an unappeased brooding
Walking over the dust of men?
Do you make him an eager giant
Discovering and blending into his consciousness
The tiny parts of his limitless mind?
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
Undertaker. Death and I do not know each other.
I am the stolid janitor
Who cleans the litter he has left
And claims a fancied payment.
Poet. Come to my fantastic forest
And you will not need to rise
From simple labors, asking death
For final wages.
EMOTIONAL MONOLOGUE
A man is sitting within the enigmatic turmoil of a railroad
station. His face is narrow and young, and his nose,
lips, and eyes, carved to a Semitic sharpness,, have been
sundered by a bloodless catastrophe. A traveling-bag
stands at his feet. Around him people are clutching
farewells and shouting greetings. Within him a mono-
logue addresses an empty theatre.
I am strangling emotions
And casting them into the seats
Of an empty theatre.
When my lifeless audience is complete,
The ghosts of former emotions
Will entertain their dead masters.
After each short act
A humorous ghost will fly through the audience,
Striking the limp hands into applause,
[64]
Maxwell Bodenheim
And between the acts
Sepulchral indifference will mingle
With the dust upon the backs of seats.
Upon the stage a melodrama
And a travesty will romp
Against a back-drop of fugitive resignation.
Climax and anti-climax
Will jilt each other and drift
Into a cheated insincerity.
Sometimes the lights will retire
While a shriek and laugh
Make a martyr of the darkness.
When the lights reappear
An actor-ghost will assure the audience
That nothing has happened save
The efforts of a fellow ghost
To capture life again.
In his role of usher
Another ghost will arrange
The lifeless limbs of the audience
Into postures of relief.
Sometimes a comedy will trip
The feet of an assassin,
Declaring that if ghosts were forced
To undergo a second death
Their thinness might become unbearable.
At other times indignant tragedy
Will banish an intruding farce,
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
Claiming that life should not retain
The luxury of another laugh.
The first act of the play will show
The owner of the theatre
Conversing with the ghost of a woman.
As unresponsive as stone
Solidly repelling a spectral world,
His words will keenly betray
The bloodless control of his features.
He will say: "With slightly lowered shoulders,
Because of a knife sticking in my back,
I shall trifle with crowded highways,
Buying decorations
For an interrupted bridal-party.
This process will be unimportant
To the workshop of my mind
Where love and death are only
Colorless problems upon a chart."
The ghost of the woman will say:
"Your mind is but the rebellious servant
Of sensitive emotions
And brings them clearer dominance."
And what shall I mournfully answer?
I am strangling emotions
And casting them into the seats
Of an empty theatre.
[66]
Maxwell Bodenheim
FEMININE TALK
First Woman. Do you share the present dread
Of being sentimental?
The world has flung its boutonniere
Into the mud, and steps upon it
With elaborate gestures!
Certain people do this neatly,
Using solemn words for consolation:
Others angrily stamp their feet,
Striving to prove their strength.
Second Woman. Sentimentality
Is the servant-girl of certain men
And the wife of others.
She scarcely ever flirts
With creative minds,
Striving also to become
Graceful and indiscreet.
First Woman. Sappho and Aristotle
Have wandered through the centuries,
Dressed in an occasional novelty —
A little twist of outward form.
They have always been ashamed
To be caught in a friendly talk.
Second Woman. When emotion and the mind
Engage in deliberate conversation,
One hundred nightingales
And intellectuals find a common ground,
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
And curse the meeting of their slaves!
First Woman. The mind must only play
With polished relics of emotion,
And the heart must never lighten
Burdens of the mind.
Second Woman. I desire to be
Irrelevant and voluble,
Leaving my terse disgust for a moment.
I have met an erudite poet.
With a northern hardness
Motionless beneath his youthful robes.
He shuns the quivering fluencies
Of emotion, and shifts his dominoes
Within a room of tortured angles.
But away from this creative room
He sells himself to the whims
Of his wife, a young virago
With a calculating nose.
Beneath the flagrant pose
Of his double life
Emotion and the mind
Look disconsolately at each other.
First Woman. Lyrical abandon
And mental cautiousness
Must not mingle to a magic
Glowing, yet deliberate!
Second Woman. Never spill your wine
Upon a page of mathematics.
[68]
Maxwell Bodenheim
Drink it decently
Within the usual tavern.
PHILOSOPHICAL DIALOGUE
First Man. We gaze upon a negro shoveling coal.
His muscles fuse into a poem
Stifled and sinister,
Censuring the happy rhetoric of morning air.
Some day he may pitch his tent
Upon the ruins of a civilization,
Playing with documents and bottles of perfume
Found in deserted corridors.
Second Man. Listen to this song
Dipped in the Negro South of America.
She brought me collars and shoes.
She brought me whiskey and tea.
She brought me everything that I could use
But the jail-house key!
Time inserts the jail-house key
Into a succession of rusty locks,
Straining until they open.
Do you hear, beneath the rattling strut
Of this city, an imperceptible groan?
Time is turning the jail-house key.
They build larger jails for Time:
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
He makes larger keys of blood and iron,
But often the labor is delayed
By pausing squeals of freedom.
First Man. An insignificant jest
In the wider life of Time.
He has dropped to this earth
To play a barbarous comedy.
Philosophers loudly explain the scenes;
But poets, with greater restraint,
Tender them a masquerade.
Second Man. Once I sat and watched
A scientific philosopher
Place white lines on a black-board,
Diagraming his mighty system of logic.
While he worked, the wind outside
Squandered its derision
And offered him a cup he dared not drink.
Afterwards, in the open air,
The slash of rain on my face
Mockingly baptised his words.
First Man. To him the wind and rain
Were trivialities against a brick wall.
Second Man. To me they were tormented wanderers
Quarreling above a doll's house
Whose intricate patterns
Waited to be kicked aside.
I changed myself to a height
That made them whimpering pygmies,
[-o]
Maxwell Bodenheim
And gave them grotesque costumes,
Enjoying the insolence of imagination.
First Man. The scientific philosopher
Raised his umbrella against the rain,
And communed with venerable argument.
Second Man. He was interested in improving
The lustre of a doll's house
In which I had left my small body.
Walls are enticing black-boards to some
And neglected prisons to others.
I prefer the second
Of tenuous bravado
That turns the prison into a threshold
And jests with the wind and rain that survive it.
Maxwell Bodenheim
[71]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
THREE SONNETS
OLD WIVES* TALE
I saw my grandmother's shadow on the wall
In firelight; it danced with queer grimaces
As if her serious soul were making faces
At me or life or God or at us all.
And I, an urchin lying at her feet,
Then caught my first glimpse of the secret powers
That stir beneath this universe of ours,
Making a witches' carnival when they meet.
Across the firelit dusk my sensitive mood
Dreamed out to mingle with the waifs of Time
Whose unsolved stories haunt the poets' rhyme
And in dark streets of ancient cities brood —
Like sudden ghosts rising above the grime
With beauty and with terror that chills the blood.
HOLY WRIT
It does not seem so many years ago —
Those nights when I lay shivering in my bed
And saw the candle-light round my aunt's head
Casting its hazy sanctifying glow;
And heard her read strange story after story
Of Jonah, Adam, Moses, Esau, Ruth,
[72]
Arthur Davison Ficke
Of Solomon's old age and David's youth —
Things haunting, tender, terrible or gory.
Still can I see the Queen of Sheba's hair;
And all real lions are but mockery
To him who once knew Daniel's; there's no tree
That can with Eve's great Paradise Tree compare:
A golden light gleamed through that ancient air
That leaves me homesick in modernity.
THE BOOK OF LU T ANG CHU
In the reign of the great Emperor Lu T'ang Chu
Wise men were ordered to inscribe in a book
All the great body of wisdom that men knew.
Today I turn the pages, and as I look
I cannot see anything very new or old,
And I wonder why it was worth the trouble, then,
Of days and nights and a thousand labors untold
Which the volume must have exacted from those wise men.
But still we write — and the Emperor now is blown
As grey dust over the limitless Asian plains.
Still we inscribe all that is humanly known,
Although no ruler honors us for our pains-
Recording a thousand wisdoms, all our own,
To celebrate our good and glorious reigns.
Arthur Davison Ficke
[73]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
THREE POEMS
CHARMIAN'S SONG
I'm glad I have but a little heart —
For my heart is very small:
It makes it free to come and go,
And no one cares at all.
I give my heart for a tender look,
For a gentle word or touch;
And the one who has it never knows,
And it does not hurt me much.
If my heart were great and I gave it away,
Then all the world would see ;
But my heart is only a little thing
And it does not trouble me.
I may give my little heart unseen,
It is so small and light;
And only very wakeful things
Can hear it cry at night.
FOR ALL LADIES OF SHALOTT
The web flew out and floated wide:
Poor lady! — I was with her then.
She gathered up her piteous pride,
But she could never weave again.
[74]
Aline Kilmer
The mirror cracked from side to side;
I saw its silver shadows go:
"The curse has come on me!" she cried.
Poor lady! — I had told her so.
She was so proud, she would not hide;
She only laughed and tried to sing.
But singing in her song she died ;
She did not profit anything.
THE HEART KNOWETH ITS OWN BITTERNESS
The heart knoweth? If this be true indeed,
Then the thing that I bear in my bosom is not a heart,
For it knows no more than a hollow, whispering reed
That answers to every wind.
I am sick of the thing. I think we had better part.
My heart would come to any piper's calling —
A fool in motley that dances for any king;
But my body knows, and its tears unbidden falling
Say that my heart has sinned.
You would have my heart? You may. I am sick of
the thing.
Aline Kilmer
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
BACKWATER
A CHILDISH TALE
Listen to my childish tale:
My heart was sad today;
My heart was so sad I could not find
Anything to say.
I walked out to the city's edge
Where the streets all disappear,
And I thought the fields were sad with me —
Songless fields and drear.
I sat down under a maple tree
That rose up lone and bare;
Its dying-colored leaves were strewn
About me everywhere.
I sat and pondered aimlessly
Under the silent tree,
I pondered sadly under the boughs
That I thought were sad with me.
Then in a flash I felt a cool
And steely serenity
Descending from those silent boughs —
They were not sad with me.
[76]
Edward Sapir
And I felt the steely calm of their strength
Slip in my heart like a breath,
And I was like a wakened man
That had drowsed away in death.
I saw that steel was the maple-tree,
It had never been sad with me;
I saw that the blue of the sky was steel
In its cool serenity.
We were all steel out there in the field,
We three beyond the town —
We three that were strong over the leaves
Dying in red and brown.
Now you have heard my childish tale:
My heart was sad today
And it lost its sadness under a tree.
That is all I wanted to say.
THE OLD TOWN
Oh, let me not enter the old town,
The straggling street!
Oh, I fear, I fear the going down
On stumbling feet!
)h, let me not grope down the dim way
To the pitchy sea,
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Unlit of a moon or a dim ray
Through a cavernous tree.
All, all they will take from me
By the black shore;
The ancients will steal me silently
The purple I wore.
They will steal my love, they will steal my hate,
I shall tremble bare;
They will make my body cold and straight
And lay me there
Where my childhood sleeps forever and ever.
Oh, I fear,
I fear the town that ever and ever
I'm coming near.
OVERLOOKED
I was nothing, though I had a kind of pain or feeling —
I knew her hair —
I think it might be said I knew too well, but I was nothing
To her but air.
That other one, he knew her eyes with only half a knowing —
I knew her eyes —
I think it might be said I knew too well whom he Was loving.
Yes, he was wise.
[78]
Edward Sapir
Oh well, and they are wed — I might indulge in grieving or
in smiling —
I hardly dare.
You see, it wasn't very much I was to her — nothing,
Nothing but air.
SHE SITS VAC ANT- EYED
Surely, surely, there is something for me,
There is something to fill my spirit's measure.
Winds tell, rains tell —
Somewhere, somewhere is my treasure.
They promised it me when a raven spoke
Back in the reaches of maidenhood.
He spoke for God, he spoke well —
I am groping for what I then understood.
Ten thousand pathways ran to treasure —
The raven spoke, I saw the vision.
Suns burn, moons burn —
God, God! I am sitting in prison!
mrely, surely, there is something for me —
There is something to fill my spirit whole.
!un, burn! sun, burn!
Pity me, make a blaze of my soul!
Edward Sapir
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TONIGHT
SNOW
This night my body is an offering—
I am carried to you.
Years I was near you
And you were far.
But tonight of all nights
Was not the night
To be parted.
I would fain go forth
And seek you,
And sink down by you,
As the flakes falling outside
Sink into the cushioned ground.
And that which is me
Is also a field
Glowing and boundless.
PRESENCE
You. Your presence. Why can I not dip into your presence
as I dip into sleep, clasp it and bask in it? How hold
it? How savour it? It is more than I wanted. And
less.
Muriel Ciolkowska
Now you have left — you, in whose presence I would steep,
around whose presence I hover like a gull over the
lake. And, ere I have tasted it, your presence is no
more your presence.
You have left. You have returned to me. Your presence
no longer disturbs me from you.
Muriel Ciolkowska
OFF THE HIGHWAY
Lilacs lift leaves of cool satin
And blossoms of mother-of-pearl
Against the tarnished silver of the deserted house.
Tall, exquisite grasses fill the door-yard with spray.
Through the sun-drenched fragrance drifts the hazy mono-
tone of bees.
Tints of opal and jade; the hush of emerald shadows,
And a sense of the past as a living presence
Distil a haunting wistful peace.
Julia Weld Huntington
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PAGEANTRY
REVELATIONS
Crystals of light,
Like raindrops,
Beat down about my head;
And I kneel low to receive them
Reverently.
POISE
I must step
From star to star
Amid the shadowed planets
That hang in the profound deepness
Of bottomless space,
With thin clouded draperies
Filming about my feet
In eddies of motion.
My path is as wide
As the pageantry of worlds
That fling themselves out
In the dance of fettered motion;
And I shall, stride
As though all were still.
Amy Banner
[82]
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
On reading her letters to M. Heger
O proud! O passionate! what desperate pain
Subdued that haughty soul, that iron will —
Bowed that stiff neck, wore that wild spirit, till
It bit the dust, and, broken, rose again!
What feverish, trembling fingers held the pen
Which traced those delicate characters — the cry
Of one too hungry-hearted, plain and shy,
Baffled and stung by the strange moods of men.
Discarded fragments, eloquent and rare,
Carelessly torn by man without regret;
Roughly sewn up, with some parts missing yet,
How many a woman's heart lies bleeding there!
Blanche Dismorr
TRAILING ARBUTUS
Why do you hide beneath the pines, and cling to earth,
Infrequent, foolish flower of fragrant breath?
Your blossoms fresh and pink, like babies at their birth;
Your twigs as brown and brittle as old women at their
death.
Ruth Mason Rice
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LONG DAYS
I have watched long days of dawning,
And long, long nights of dread;
And I am a little weary
Of traveling toward the dead.
When I looked out last evening
I thought the wan moonlight
Seemed tired and pale with shining,
A lantern in the night.
I heard them whisper this morning
As I heard them yesterday,
"Do you think she will last much longer,
Dragging along this way?
Her hands are like withered flowers,
Her face is a strange dried leaf;
She has stayed too long in her body,
She is wheat turned dust in the sheaf."
HEAPHY HERSELF
When Heaphy, the old woman,
Is not looking,
Herself trips lightly off to Donegal
And there dances in the shadow of Slieve.
When Heaphy, the old woman,
Is looking,
Dorothy McVickar
Herself has never a chance at the dancing,
But stays in the kitchen
Mopping the floor.
Dorothy McVickar
YOUTH AND AGE
Youth has music on his lips
And in his hurrying feet,
Rhythm in his finger-tips
And in his laughter sweet.
Age has silence on his tongue —
Never a note or sound;
But his heart is often wrung
By music all around.
Youth has tongue, but lacks an ear —
He whistles, pipes and sings.
Age is still, but he can hear
Silence and growing things.
Elizabeth Hart Pennell
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REPETITIONS
/ plunge at the rearing hours —
Life is a steed of pride,
Who so high above me towers
I cannot mount and ride.
TWO SEWING
The wind is sewing with needles of rain;
With shining needles of rain
It stitches into the thin
Cloth of earth — in,
In, in, in.
(Oh, the wind has often sewed with me!-
One, two, three.)
Spring must have fine things
To wear, like other springs.
Of silken green the grass must be
Embroidered. (One and two and three.)
Then every crocus must be made
So subtly as to seem afraid
Of lifting color from the ground.
And after crocuses the round
Heads of tulips, and all the fair
Intricate garb that Spring will wear
The wind must sew with needles of rain,
With shining needles of rain
[86]
Hazel Hall
Stitching into the thin
Cloth of earth — in,
In, in, in —
For all the springs of futurity.
(One, two, three.)
INSTRUCTION
My hands that guide a needle
In their turn are led
Relentlessly and deftly,
As a needle leads a thread.
Other hands are teaching
My needle; when I sew
I feel the cool, thin fingers
Of hands I do not know.
They urge my needle onward,
They smooth my seams, until
The worry of my stitches
Smothers in their skill.
All the tired women,
Who sewed their lives away,
Speak in my deft fingers
As I sew today.
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THREE SONGS FOR SEWING
A fibre of rain on a window-pane
Talked to a stitching thread:
In the heaviest weather I hold together
The weight of a cloud!
To the fibre of rain on a window-pane
The talkative stitches said:
I hold together with the weight of a feather
The heaviest shroud!
II
My needle says: Don't be young,
Holding visions in your eyes,
Tasting laughter on your tongue! —
Be very old and very wise,
And sew a good seam up and down
In white cloth, red cloth, blue and brown.
My needle says: What is youth
But eyes drunken with the sun,
Seeing farther than the truth;
Lips that call, hands that shun
The many seams they have to do
In white cloth, red cloth, brown and blue!
[88]
Hazel Hall
HI
One by one, one by one,
Stitches of the hours run
Through the fine seams of the day;
Till like a garment it is done
And laid away.
One by one the days go by,
And suns climb up and down the sky ;
One by one their seams are run —
As Time's untiring fingers ply
And life is done.
COWARDICE
Discomfort sweeps my quiet, as a wind
Leaps at trees and leaves them cold and thinned.
Not that I fear again the mastery
Of winds, for holding my indifference dear
I do not feel illusions stripped from me.
And yet this is a fear —
A fear of old discarded fears, of days
That cried out at irrevocable ways.
I cower for my own old cowardice —
For hours that beat upon the wind's broad breast
With hands as impotent as leaves are: this
Robs my new hour of rest.
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I thought my pride had covered long ago
All the old scars, like broken twigs in snow;
I thought to luxuriate in rich decay,
As some far-seeing tree upon a hill;
But, startled into shame for an old day,
I find that I am but a coward still.
FLASH
I am less of myself and more of the sun;
The beat of life is wearing me
To an incomplete oblivion,
Yet not to the certain dignity
Of death. (They cannot even die
Who have not lived.)
The hungry jaws
Of space snap at my unlearned eye,
And time tears in my flesh like claws.
If I am not life's, if I am not death's,
Out of chaos I must re-reap
The burden of untasted breaths.
(Who has not waked may not yet sleep.)
Hazel Hall
[90]
COMMENT
SOUTHERN SHRINES
EVERY traveler may be his own Columbus; for every
journey is a voyage of discovery, leading, mayhap, to
the promised land. The editor, setting out for a few talks
about poetry in the warm and mellow South, discovered rich
quarries in the blossoming landscape and ships of magic
ready to set sail from the shores — all guarded by local loyal-
ties jealously excited and aware.
In other words, she seemed to find a stirring of new
beauty in the hearts of the people as well as in the spring-
garlanded fields and hills; and an enthusiasm of preparation
— a feeling of expectancy, as if efflorescence must be as
simple and inevitable in art as in nature. Sow the seed, till
the soil, and the harvest will surely follow — such would
seem to be the faith of the new South, the South which loves
its traditions but refuses to be enslaved by them, which is
not satisfied to sit in colonial houses and contemplate its his-
toric and romantic past.
To be sure, there are spinsters in Charleston and Savannah
who still live on tea and toast in the midst of faded splendor
rather than sell ancestral portraits by Sully and Romney,
or even a single mahogany hautboy or old Lowestoft plate;
grandes dames of the old regime who stay indoors rather than
replace the carriage-and-pair with an automobile. And there
are college professors to whom Sidney Lanier uttered the
last audible word of poetry; who even, in extreme cases, re-
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sent the present neglect of Timrod. But the nephews and
nieces and grandchildren of these ultra-loyalists are forming
poetry and art societies and little-theatre enterprises, and
inviting up-to-date people like Carl Sandburg and Daniel
A. Reed to help give them a good start. And they are
aiming at a frank expression of the locale in their exhibitions
and poems and play-productions — a special stress which is
much to be desired, because the beauty of that moss-hung
landscape, and the dramatic contrasts of feeling in the spirit
of the bi-racial people, are a sufficient basic motive for put-
ting those south-eastern Atlantic states more adequately on
the modern artistic map.
Columbia, South Carolina, was the first full-stop of the
editor's pilgrimage. In its little Town Theatre, the adroit
reformation of a quaint old house, Mr. Reed, trained in the
Chicago Little Theatre and seconded by a group of en-
thusiasts, is offering a generous hospitality to all the arts.
Plays, exhibitions, lectures, readings, musicals, all find
audience-room here and a congenial atmosphere of challeng-
ing sympathy. Even the quiet old University of South Caro-
lina, a few steps away up the hill, seems to welcome this
modern interloper into the old state capital, and to co-
operate in the stirring-up process which its presence implies.
And it is not easy to be stirred up under the languid
southern sun, in towns whose every old mossy brick and
stone is sacred but whose occasional sky-scraper seems an
anachronism.
Proud Charleston was the second stage — Charleston, as
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Southern Shrines
indomitable as ever, as unchangeably a beautiful great lady
of heroic spirit and aspect. What Charleston wills she does :
not in the bravoura Chicago manner, by a bubbling-up of
helter-skelter democratic forces; but by a haughty wave of
her queenly hand, the grand gesture of the assured aristocrat
who never dreams of denial. Today she wills the arts: she
is restoring her old houses, summoning her painters to local
exhibitions, and creating the Poetry Society of South Caro-
lina, with its two hundred members professional and ama-
teur, and its critical committees to pass on poems and award
numerous prizes. Du Bose Heyward, Beatrice Ravenel and
others are leaders in this effort to turn the local ambition
toward the arts; also one or two painters who recognize the
pictorial charm of the colonial houses with their grilled
gateways, and of the moss-draped, semi-tropical landscape.
The wealth of historic tradition and association in Charles-
ton may well be a hope and an agony in the heart of any
poet who loves her, for no art has yet expressed it ade-
quately. The old houses bring something of it home to us —
houses spaciously planned for patriarchal slave-holding
families, stately enough for eighteenth-century banquets, and
of an elegance befitting the crinoline of Victorian emotions;
houses therefore inconsiderate of modern needs, imprisoning
many a pathetic comedy of servantless impecuniosity, and
perhaps now and then a tragedy of some free spirit beating
its wings against ancient barriers. One wonders at neither
excess of loyalty, so beautiful is the curve of old mansions
along the Battery against the wide blue water of the harbor,
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so full of charm are the fading memories, the lavender-scented
relics, of more leisurely, better-mannered days.
If Charleston is a great lady, Savannah is a fine one.
Charleston commands, and Savannah persuades. She is
tempted to sit dreaming over her past, to linger in the two
old moss-hung graveyards whose mournful beauty is a won-
der-story all over the world. Children were romping in the
Colonial Cemetery while I scanned its eloquent monuments,
but they avoided the most eloquent of all — that bitter me-
morial of a suicide, with four coiled serpents carved in the
four-square stone, under the inverted marble urn, as the only
record of a nameless agonist. But Savannah does not forget
that she is one of the great ports of the world, with all
Spanish America to the south of her; and now and then she
salutes the future with a sky-scraper. Or even with a poetry
society — a little one, The Prosodists she calls it, to show
that its five members are students of technique.
Jacksonville is frankly modern, with more sky-scrapers
than colonial houses. And the cause of modern poetry, of
modern art, is eagerly sponsored by the Round Table Club,
whose membership is both professional and amateur. Marx
G. Sabel, whose second POETRY group will appear in June, is
one of its officers.
From young Jacksonville it is only an hour or two by
motor to old St. Augustine. But even in St. Augustine the
invading tourist demands a compromise between old and
new; and gets a swept and garnished, guide-regulated mu-
seum-fort, a quaint little gate-guarded ancient street for his
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Southern Shrines
modern trinket-shops, and numerous ultra-modern hotels dis-
guised in pseudo-Spanish architecture. St. Augustine is on
the high-road; in full-season it seems less atmospheric than
San Antonio, and far less intact than drowsy old Santa Fe,
still lisping Spanish to her aboriginal pueblos. But it has
corners to which one may retire with the past — a little old
graveyard, an ancient church or two, certain mossy walls.
And perhaps the most wonderful corner of all is that barrel-
vaulted guardroom of the old fort whose damp masonry is
fringed to the top with delicate maidenhair.
A contrasting episode though ultra-modern seemed blessed
with timelessness, like all other simple and elemental ex-
periences. This was a flight in a passenger aeroplane over
the white sands and blue water of Atlantic Beach. The
sensation? — oh, merely a feeling of being joyously at ease,
like a bird, as we sailed slowly through the warm, blue sky,
and looked down at the fishes in the rippling sea and the
automobiles crawling over the long white strip of sand, and
at the cottage roofs and the stretch of marsh with its ribbon-
twist of river. It seemed strange that men had waited these
thousands of years to do a thing so natural, so inevitable.
From Jacksonville I followed the northward trail of the
blossoming spring, stopping at Atlanta's suburb, Decatur,
for a day in the Agnes Scott College, which has a course in
modern poetry; and at Bowling Green, Kentucky, where
new oil-wells are piercing the century-old farms, and new
ideas the patriarchal before-the-war traditions; and finally
at Louisville, where Cale Young Rice, Hortense Flexner
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King and others keep the muse's fires alight, and where Otto
A. Rothert, convinced that Madison Cawein was one of the
immortals, is devoting years to the preparation of a monu-
mental Life and Letters complete enough to satisfy the de-
mands of the poet's vociferous future fame.
The journey was another reminder of the variety and
potential richness of culture, of imaginative and spiritual life,
in these far-flung United States. The problem is, of course,
to make the local loyalties generously productive and creative
instead of narrowly exclusive and prejudicial, to sweep away
hindrances between the imaginative energy of elect souls and
the adequate expression of that energy in the arts and in life.
The energy is there — of that I was once more convinced
during this southern journey; but against its vital force rise
always the dead walls of conservative repression.
The people, there as elsewhere, must learn that beauty is
created from within — it cannot be inherited from the past
or imported from over-seas, or manufactured for passive
minds by theatrical and movie syndicates and subserviently
popular writers and artists. It is an achievement of the
individual soul; and if the individual soul fails to achieve it,
to create its own beauty in some one of the innumerable art-
impulses or spiritual impulses of life, something within that
soul turns to dust and ashes. And what is true of the in-
dividual is true of the group : hand-me-down art and liter-
ature, hand-me-down ethics, morals, politics — the ready-made
everywhere, the self-created crowded out, speeded away —
this is the dusty-ashen threat against our modern civilization.
H. M.
[96]
The Death of ((B. L. T."
THE DEATH OF
"The Line" came to a full stop with the passing of Bert
Leston Taylor on the nineteenth of March. Who now will
carry on "the column that made Chicago famous," the
column of wit and wisdom founded in the old Record by
Eugene Field of happy memory, and built up in the Tribune
as a finely whimsical all-American monument by the genial
genius who has gone ?
It would be difficult to set bounds to the influence of this
witty wise man, who so modestly, so humanely, so urbanely,
disguised in kindly humor his good judgment and good taste.
The warmth of his sympathy mellowed the penetrating keen-
ness of his satire — he never expected too much of "the so-
called human race," and always felt himself a fellow-offender
in its inexplicable derelictions and vagaries.
In music, art, literature he was a sane and penetrating
critic; a word in "The Line" went further than many long
reviews to set some clamorous best-seller in its place or
promote some shy work of beauty. His column was an open
book of the amenities; Henry Kitchell Webster, in his me-
morial address, called it a daily letter to his friends, classing
him with Gray and Fitzgerald among the great letter-writers
of the world.
But he ranks also, with Frederick Locker and Austin
Dobson, with Oliver Wendell Holmes and Thomas Bailey
Aldrich and Eugene Field among the best of the ever-to-be-
gratefully-remembered lyrists of the drawing-room and — no,
we don't have drawing-rooms now-a-days — of the living-
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room and library. One might quote an hundred poems to
prove it; we choose Canopus because it is, not better than
many others, but possibly a keener self-revelation:
When quacks with pills political would dope us,
When politics absorbs the livelong day,
I like to think about the star Canopus,
So far, so far away.
Greatest of visioned suns, they say who list 'em;
To weigh it science always must despair.
Its shell would hold our whole dinged solar system,
Nor ever know 'twas there.
When temporary chairmen utter speeches,
And frenzied henchmen howl their battle hymns,
My thoughts float out across the cosmic reaches
To where Canopus swims.
When men are calling names and making faces,
And all the world's ajangle and ajar,
I meditate on interstellar spaces
And smoke a mild seegar.
For after one has had about a week of
The arguments of friends as well as foes,
A star that has no parallax to speak of
Conduces to repose.
Thus one felt heights and depths in this man, against
which he measured sublunary affairs. His gayest word was
always in scale, always had perspective. So it is not surpris-
ing that he was thoroughly at home in the woods and all
wild places of nature, as some of the finest of his more
serious poems — The Road to Anywhere, for example — prove.
He died in the spring-time, as he wished. Let us hope
that the white-throat, whose music "is sweet as April's sun,"
will sing over his grave. H. M.
[98]
The Poet and Modern Life
THE POET AND MODERN LIFE
The problems confronting the modern poet are exceed-
ingly complex. How can poetry, which is essentially order,
affirmation, achievement, be created in an age, a milieu, of
profound doubt and discouragement? How is it possible to
build up a "spiritual monument" when the most necessary
elements are lacking — in a period of social disorder, mental
anarchy, when so very few are at all concerned with in-
tellectual progress and so many are utterly bounded by
material progress? How, again, is the poet to obtain the
ideas and knowledge which are the matter he works with,
when he is simply confused by an immeasurable discord, a
vast unsynthesized knowledge? And does not this situation,
undeniable, I think, and so much more acute than it was
fifty years ago, lend strength to Matthew Arnold's pessimism,
and force us to conclude that now, if ever, must be an age
of criticism, an age of pure conservation, if any intellectual
life is to survive the dying of the Renaissance? The narrow
ideas of comfort and utilitarianism, which are the motive
force of the contemporary revolution, must of necessity be
unfruitful in the larger sphere of the mind. In our progress
we have become curiously abased; from the Hellenic dream
of god-like man in harmony with nature, from the mediaeval
dream of man transcending nature through religion, from
the Renaissance dream which infused a new life into Hellen-
ism, from those centuries when the life of the senses and
the intelligence struggled with the life of the spirit and
sentiment, we have fallen into an apathy of discouragement
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where we hope for no more than that each individual should
conform to "modern standards of living." Man exists
spiritually as he conceives of himself ; and the modern world
conceives of man, through a vague deceptive mist of "social
reform," as an animal which eats, drinks, is clothed, travels
and needs to be amused ; add to this a little confused "educa-
tion," a little tepid "religion," and a fair amount of ancient
superstition revived as "new thought," and you get a not
too incorrect picture of the modern world and its motives.
Deep spiritual enthusiasm and energy, disinterested thought,
unfettered intelligence, profound culture, where will you
find a combination of these essentials of poetry?
Meanwhile we go on writing, many just echoing the
words of their predecessors, some trying to strike out rough
new images of vitality, a few trying to add to mere vitality
the mellowness of culture, the permanence of intelligence.
Certain writers, impatient with that mere aping of a van-
ished order which is unhappily the mark of modern poetry
in England, have thrown violently aside the reflective, the
intellectual aspects of their art to create something which
is essentially only vital. This is preferable to stagnation, but
it is not nearly enough. I should like to see that vitality
more mellow, saturated with fertile ideas, enlightened ; for so
far it has done little but interpret a violent material activity.
How indeed could it do more? The essential elements are
lacking, for without an intelligent, enlightened, cultivated
milieu each poet speaks into pandemonium, loses himself in
confusion or in egotism, in provincialism. R. A.
[100]
REVIEWS
PASTELS
Poems, by Haniel Long. Moffat, Yard & Co.
In this slim volume Haniel Long presents his rhymed
lyrics in their various colors — pastel transparents, romantic
and oriental opaques. We miss the free-verse student
sketches, which Alfred Kreymborg includes in his Others
for 1919. As usual the free-verse medium seems to make
the poet relax and be natural; in it Mr. Long sees and feels
with clean honest lines, washing in his emotions with their
own colors. In the best of his rhymed lyrics, he works
through a group of imperfect songs played on pipes rather
than on a lute or a lyre. In this group — Madness, Midnight
Sun, With Compliments, Song of Young Burbage, The
Winter Sprite, I Gather Treasures of the Dark — each has a
promise which unfolds to an art achievement in a pagan
pastoral idyl of real beauty, The Herd Boy :
The night I brought the cows home
Blue mist was in the air;
And in my heart was heaven,
And on my lips a prayer.
I raised my arms above me, •
I stretched them wide apart,
And all the world was pressing
In beauty on my heart.
The lane led by a river
Along an ancient wood,
And ancient thoughts came softly,
As with the leaves they should.
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I hung the cows with garlands,
And proud they walked before;
While mother-naked after,
A laurel branch I bore.
The other poems in this vein go scurrying through surfaces
painted in transparents over nothing, rhyming insignificantly.
The poet's attempt at wilder pagan freedom is weakened by
a natural love for pastoral restraint — or is it an academic
inhibition ?
Mr. Long's more colorful dipping into the romantic is
rather limp, and in the panoramic his sweep is tight. The
Death of Alexander the Great lacks the freedom and flare
of pageantry, which we find quite glorious in his free-verse
Student group, when he would have his girl enter his
class-room window
On the elephant's trunk.
In his rhymed pageantry it is as if he were trying to blow
a fanfare of trumpets on his pipes. However in Dead Men
and the Moon, Dead Men Tell No Tales, and His Deaths,
there is the swagger and color of truth romantically ex-
pressed, perhaps romance truthfully expressed.
The Cuban in the States lacks Spanish feeling and interest.
The pitch is too high in his remote tropical effects, the tone
too thin, the touch too cool, not enough of the green-eyed
serpent subtleties. There Was a City Where Serpents
Writhed comes nearer finding the remote than Gifts. And
the war poems are too personal — they look puny against the
conflict. War is a stride in the ages, an impressionistic
record from a gigantic panorama. Laura Sherry
[102]
Silence Awakening
SILENCE AWAKENING
Terra Italica, by Edward Storer. The Egoist, London.
Mr. Edward Storer is not typical of the English poets
of today; he may have some of their virtues and weak-
nesses, but he has others which are peculiar to himself. He
is English in his clinging to decoration, to suavity; he is
English in a kind of inarticulateness which prevents his say-
ing all the fine things that are in him ; but he is un-English
in his profound and unaffected love of beauty, he is un-Eng-
lish inasmuch as he hates quaintness. The rough strength
of the "vital" poet is not his; when he tries to interpret
modern life he fails because this life is so alien, so hostile
to his subtler conceptions. He makes me think of some
pupil of Heine, intoxicated by Heine's adoration of Hellenic
beauty, but most un-German in that the ideas he works with
are very few and simple. Moreover that English love of
decoration leads him away from Heine's fine simplicity;
though one feels how Mr. Storer struggles against this na-
tional vice, how he has lived with the classics to purge and
lighten his mind of all the sluggish barbarity still adhering
to the English character. His earlier work, fragile and
imaginative, lacked strength but never sweetness; his new
book retains this Ovid-like sweetness and has gained strength,
the strength of brevity and thought ,and therefore it is his
best. Intentionally or unintentionally he had criticised his
own poetry in these words:
It is so near to silence as to seem
Silence awakening,
[103]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
A listening rather sweet;
A mood evaporating
That* has entered in
To all your spirit
Numbing it with peace,
Oozed to the very core of you
With ethereal sweet;
A vaporous light,
Luminance rarified,
Yet dewy with the sap of earth ;
Bitter a little
From the great salt sea.
But let me not be misunderstood ; in pointing to a "weak-
ness" in this fine highly-wrought poetry I do not mean to
imply any inferiority to the poetry of vitality. The weak-
ness in Mr. Storer's poetry is the weakness of much thought,
much emotion, much living; of a cultivated mind turning in
disappointment and discouragement from the present to
linger in imagination over the happier past, with a charm,
a lightness, an elegance wholly delightful. The melancholy,
the skepticism, the discouragement of these poems, their sad
devotion to a lost ideal of beauty, their haunting insistence
on the Horatian theme of
the dream called life,
Rosy with a little love,
Quick with sharp sorrows —
are certainly delightful to react to in certain moods, yet
typical of that unavowed but deep despair which holds so
many sensitive minds in a distracted Europe. R. A.
[104]
Country Sentiment
COUNTRY SENTIMENT
Fairies and Fusiliers, and Country Sentiment, by Robert
Graves. Alfred A. Knopf.
The poetry of Robert Graves compares with the mass of
good modern poetry, especially in the United States, as the
trim, well-ordered English farm compares with the vast
cattle ranch of Wyoming or the great wheat farm of North
Dakota. Mr. Graves has chosen a small field, withal one
chosen by many English poets before him. He tills it well,
and it brings forth lovely blossoms if not always luscious,
satisfying fruit.
Melody, everyday humanness, fancy, quiet whimsy, chiv-
alry— these are words that come to mind as one reads Mr.
Graves' verse. They represent qualities found in Skelton,
in Surrey, or in Herrick, poets in whose tradition Mr. Graves
would probably class himself. One gets the impression that
the author studies rather than observes, as when the boy
stays away from church and goes walking —
To ponder there in quiet
God's Universal Plan.
These are the boy's own words! Such boys exist only in
eighteenth-century English paintings.
Generally, however, Mr. Graves presents clear, vivid pic-
tures, as in Finland:
The skies are jewelled all around,
The ploughshare snaps in the iron ground.
The Finn, with face like paper
And eyes like a lighted taper,
Hurls his rough rune
[105]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
At the wintry moon,
And stamps to mark the tune.
Country Sentiment shows an advance over the author's
first book in story-telling and dramatic power, in hardness
and cleanness of expression:
Here they lie who once learned here
All that is taught of hurt or fear.
Dead, but by free will they died:
They were true men, they had pride.
Nelson Antrim Crawford
RECENT ANTHOLOGIES
The Oxford and Cambridge Miscellany: June, 1920. Basil
Blackwell, Oxford, England.
A Queen s College Miscellany. Queen's College, Oxford.
A Treasury of War Poetry. Second Series, edited by George
Herbert Clarke. Houghton Mifflin Co.
Dreams and Voices, compiled by Grace Hyde Trine. The
Woman's Press, New York.
Joyful Sorrow, compiled by L. H. B. E. P. Dutton & Co.
Lilly gay: an Anthology of Anonymous Poems. The Vine
Press, Steyning, England.
American and British Verse from The Yale Review. Yale
University Press.
Modern British Poetry, edited by Louis Untermeyer. Har-
court, Brace & Howe.
Contemporary Verse Anthology } edited by Charles Wharton
Stork. E. P. Dutton & Co.
The above list is a slight indication of the present rush
[106]
Recent Anthologies
of anthologies; and incidentally it is proof of a public for
modern poetry: a public, however, too eager for pre-digested
food, too eager to lean upon the opinions of editors and pub-
lishers. Perhaps this is inevitable — in these crowded days
no one can read everything, even in one specialty. But the
public should choose its anthologies carefully, avoiding those
whose motives are frankly commercial.
Our list may be divided into four groups: The first in-
cludes those anthologies intended to introduce a group of
young poets connected by similar ideals, or perhaps merely
by acquaintance or propinquity; second, subject anthologies;
third, resumes of a period or a locale; fourth, reprints from
special magazines.
Under the first heading there is no suspicion of a com-
mercial motive. The poems included in such collections may
be well or ill chosen: the new claimants for the laurel may
be raw or crude, affected or supersophisticated ; or they may
be young geniuses trying their wings; but at least the pub-
lisher is making room for the unknown and taking a gam-
bler's chance with the public. The first two titles listed
above are of this kind; and although neither pamphlet con-
tains any very exciting evidences of genius, a variety of
talent — fictional, critical, limnal and musical, as well as
poetic — is displayed in an admirable typographic setting. . The
two miscellanies, though of recent work, are not confined
to undergraduates, the first including names like Robert
Graves and Edith Sitwell. In poetry the most — I had
almost said the only — interesting exhibits are in a mood of
[107]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
sarcasm verging on the grotesque — Absinthe by Royston D.
Campbell, The Survivor by Godfrey Elton, and this bit of
satire by E. W. Jacot:
Jabez Q., the millionaire.
Has oozy hands, dead lichen hair;
A grey rag eye — no spark is there.
He also has a garden close,
Where Jabez likes to think he grows
The most expensive kinds of rose.
Once he puffed a ring of smoke
Towards the stars; it spread, it broke,
Disintegrated past revoke.
Jabez watched it; hiccoughed "Gee!"
Then shuddered . . . what if he
Became like this — vacuity?
When his body — horrid doubt —
Suffered this atomic rout,
Would it ...
His cigar was out
"Waal," said Jabez, "I'm doggoned!"—
And pitched it in the lily-pond.
Of the subject anthologies, the second series of Mr.
Clarke's Treasury of War Poetry is mostly depressing read-
ing; apparently the first series gathered the cream, leaving
for this, with of course a few notable exceptions, skim milk.
The book seems to represent the war-muse's too-sober second
thought — neither her first fierce inspiration nor her final
verdict.
Dreams and Voices, a book of parental and filial poems
by modern poets of varying quality ; and Joyful Sorrow, with
entries, chiefly by British poets past and present, intended to
[108]
Recent Anthologies
cheer up those who grieve — these are two curious examples
of publishers' efforts to attract a special public. Lilly gay:
An Anthology of Anonymous Poems, is more intriguing, with
its lively little wood-cuts by Eric and Percy West. Its
cheering lyrics and ballads must be centuries old — at least
some of them are, the beautiful Lyke-wake Dirge for exam-
ple ; and no reviewer would be mean-spirited enough to guess
at a later origin for others.
Of our third class, Mr. Uintermeyer's Modern British
Poetry is the only example. It is a companion to his rather
elementary Modern American Poetry , both running from
1870 to 1920, and being intended especially for young stu-
dents. In the latter case one was forced to wonder at the
poor showing of a rich period, but the British volume may
be a little more satisfactory.
In our fourth class, of magazine anthologies, the Yale
Review book opens with The Passing Strange, one of Mr.
Masefield's finest meditative poems; and its other entries —
by Messrs. Robinson, Frost, Fletcher, Sassoon, Mmes.
Teasdale, Wharton, and other poets — show that this maga-
zine has done generous work in this department.
As good manners would almost debar us from reviewing
the anthology of our most steadfast fellow-specialist in mod-
ern poetry, we shall permit the editor of Contemporary
Verse, Mr. Charles Wharton Stork, to speak for himself
in regard to his anthology, which brings together the more
notable poems from several years' issues of his magazine.
In the Introduction he says:
[109]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
Most of the other magazines, we thought, were over-stressing
the appeal of novelty. We believed that the growing power of
American poetry could be shown to express itself in forms that an
average person could enjoy. . . . The great universal motives of
the race — love of home, delight in outdoor nature, generous human
sympathy, kindly humor, and a quiet, first-hand religious sense —
all of these will be found in abundance.
However,
A moderate number of free-verse ventures have been included,
where genuineness of feeling and beautiful handling of its changing
rhythms have seemed to justify the exceptions.
And the editor inquires:
Where, one may ask, is one likely to find more American idealism
than in a volume such as this?
Perhaps one may question Mr. Stork's conclusion. He
says:
The American people has a right to ask that poetry should ex-
press the thoughts and emotions of this generation in a. style which
can be widely understood and appreciated.
Do poets worthy of the name take orders, even from
that formidable connoisseur, "the American people"?
The haphazard arrangement of the book makes appraise-
ment difficult — the poems are quite ungrouped, whether by
subjects or authorship. However, one may find, by search-
ing, Joyce Kilmer's gay dialogue, The Ashman, Edwin Ford
Piper's Gee-up dar, Mules, and a few fine lyrics — by Sara
Teasdale, E. Merrill Root, Marx G. Sabel, Helen Hoyt
and one or two others. H. M.
[no]
French Poets in English
FRENCH POETS IN ENGLISH
Fleurs de Lys, translated and edited by Wilfred Thorley.
Houghton Mifflin Co.
The introduction to this anthology is so lucid and com-
plete that the reader expects equally competent translations.
It sets forth briefly, but well, a history of the poets of
France from the thirteenth century to the present day, show-
ing how their personalities were affected by their times,
analyzing their methods of work and estimating their values
in as fair a manner as is possible to foreign thought. And,
throughout, we find those who would translate urged to
keep to the spirit, rather than the word of the original. With
all this in mind, it is a shock to turn to the opening poem,
which reads like a Scotch ballad ! Here is one stanza :
The mirk did fa' lang syne, lang syne,
When twa fond systres wi' hands that twine
Went doun to bathe whaur the waters shihe.
Blaw ivind, bend beugh in the stormy weather,
They that be leel sleep saft taegither.
Clearly, the author of this anthology has, as he says, at-
tempted to match the French language as closely as pos-
sible with that of the same period in English literature.
He has followed this plan with all his translations of old
French, and it seems to me a grave mistake, even an affecta-
tion. For the flavor which should infuse its spirit into the
English is altogether missed.
Mr. Thorley has done better with the more modern poems.
He says is his introduction :
[mi
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
The real task of a translator is that of re-creating, and unless
he can bring to his original as much as he takes from it, he had
far better leave it alone.
But he has sometimes fallen short of his theories, as in his
renderings of Gautier. L'Art, the oft-attempted, has been
translated better by Dobson, or Santayana. Again he says:
It is so difficult to keep rightly informed and critically aloof amid
the trumpeting and disparagement of rival clans, whose activities
seem only to bewilder the native doctors, that a mere foreigner
may be forgiven for including frankly what happens to appeal
to him.
And he has given evidence of his critical aloofness in The
Cloud, considered one of the most delicate of the Emaux et
Camees. Of this he has done into English only three of the
original nine stanzas; omitting the whole point of the poem,
which seems hardly fair to the author.
The renderings of Baudelaire are especially fine. They
have the spirit of the French, and yet — truly a rare achieve-
ment— they do not read like translations. Mallarme's
Apparition keeps the subtle savor of the original. The
author has been less happy with the ten versions of Verlaine.
Maeterlinck is represented by only one poem, The Seven
Maids of Orlamonde, a questionable choice but well trans-
lated. Autumn and Cleopatra, by Samain, are beautifully
presented. Rodenbach's In Tiny Townships is as musical
in English as in French. Of the translations of de Regnier,
The Secret and Experience are excellent, while good render-
ings of Viele-Griffin, Fort, Bataille, Gregh, Guerin and
many other poets give distinction to this anthology.
Agnes Lee Freer
[112]
Symbolists and Decadents
SYMBOLISTS AND DECADENTS
La Melee Symbolist e} by Ernest Raynaud. La Renaissance
du Livre, Paris.
Here is an example of the fine book-making of La Renais-
sance du Livre. Consisting of reminiscences of the author
and his poet-companions, it suggests Gautier's La Fenetre
Ouver te, and is equally fascinating.
A chapter on Les Zutistes, founded by Charles Cros, de-
scribes the Cafe de Versailles, where every evening this
leader gathered about him such men as Coppee, Richepin
and Raoul Ponchon. Here Louis Marsolleau recited senti-
mental bagatelles or noble poems, and here Poussin was made
to read over and over again his artistic achievement, La
Jument Morte, which resounded through the breweries of
the Latin Quarter for several seasons. But what assured
this order, aside from the renown of Charles Cros, a place
in history, was that it was the cradle of a lyric evolution,
in which, perhaps, the two most prominent figures were
Laurent Tailhade and Jean Moreas. From their fruitful
controversies arose the new movement. Here is a portrait
of Jean Moreas at that time :
He always went gloved in white, corseted tightly, his glossy hair
curled in the latest fashion, wearing a multicolored cravat and a
flower in his buttonhole. His timid nature was hidden under
brusque mannerisms, and he fortified himself with an insolent
monocle. His hatred of mediocrity was expressed in brief aphorisms.
And Tailhade draped himself, like a Spaniard, in a black, scarlet-
lined cape. Full of anecdote and wit, he offset the disdainful
haughtiness of Moreas toward bad poets by firing at them a volley
of cleverness. No one knew as he did how to use irony and unctuous
epigram.
[113]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
At this time the two were merely at their debut, their
period of dilettantism. Later they were to descend from
their ivory tower to write for the periodical Lutece, wherein
Verlaine had already begun to print his Poetes Maudits.
Lutece, once a banal gazette of the Latin Quarter, was be-
coming the official organ of advancing symbolism. To this
paper we are indebted for poems by Paul Adam, Rachilde,
Henri de Regnier, Jules Laforgue, Francis Viele-Griffin, and
Ernest Raynaud. According to Raynaud, Lutece, which
came to its end in 1886, had the glory of devoting itself
entirely to the poets of the new school, who wrote for it
their best and worst poems.
To me one of the most interesting things in this little
volume is the discovery of the origin of the word decadent.
Verlaine was sick in bed, his confreres gathered about him.
On the bed lay a magazine in coarse gray paper. Someone
took it up and read mockingly from the cover, frLe Decad-
ent!"— and asked, "What imbecile invented this ridiculous
title?" "I am the imbecile," challenged a crisp voice. The
author turned and saw Anatole Baju, a little man with
flaming eyes set in a wizened face. The history, as given
by Raynaud, of this founder of Le Decadent is very enter-
taining. Verlaine, who ardently supported the magazine,
defines its purpose thus:
Decadence is Sardanapalus, in the midst of his women, setting
the torch to his funeral pile ; it is Seneca reciting poems as he opens
his veins; it is Petronius masking his agony with flowers; it is
the marchioness walking to the guillotine with a smile, and with
care not to disturb her coiffure. Decadence is the art of dying
beautifully.
["4]
Symbolists and Decadents
Le Decadent raised a hue and cry from the symbolists; yet
their aims against the literature then in vogue were alike.
Both wanted to be freed from form which had outlived itself.
A. L. F.
OUR CONTEMPORARIES
TWO NEW MAGAZINES
We welcome two new magazines which are to be devoted
wholly or largely to poetry — The Measure, published by
Frank Shay at 4 Christopher Street, New York; and The
Double-dealer, from 204 Baronne Street, New Orleans.
The former began in March, the latter in January.
The Measure: A Journal of Poetry is thus advertised:
Edited by Maxwell Anderson, Padraic Colum, Agnes Kendrick
Gray, Carolyn Hall, Frank Ernest Hill, David Morton, Louise
Townsend Nicholl, George O'Neil, Genevieve Taggard. From
these nine an acting editor and an assistant are elected quarterly
by the board.
We are much interested in this experiment of a shifting
editorial board. As fellow-editors, we wonder how it will
be arranged — will each pair of acting editors accept only
the exact number of poems to be used in their own three
numbers and return all others? or will there be hold-overs
from one quarterly editorial pair to the next — hold-overs
accepted by the first pair and perhaps despised by the second
and third and fourth? At any rate, so populous an editorial
board, with a three-months' elective tenure of office, makes
for variety, relieving the editors of the danger of satiety
and the magazine of a too monotonous consistency.
[us]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
The first number, while not exciting, is competent and
interesting. There is nothing revolutionary, but there are
characteristic poems by Padraic Colum, Robert Frost, Con-
rad Aikin, Alfred Kreymberg, Hazel Hall and others we
know, besides two or three less familiar entries. The long-
est poem, Ice Age, by Genevieve Taggard, asserts once more
her unusual promise; and Wallace Stevens' Cortege for
Rosenbloom is a beautiful airy fling of his magician's wand.
Maxwell Anderson, the first editor, seems not over-con-
fident in his initial article: "This is not an age favorable to
great poetry," he says; "there are not any great poets writ-
ing at this time in English, or none so far uncovered. . . .
The very value of art, of life, grows dubious." And he
confesses :
The Measure, then, is a hope against hope, a venture in the
face of despair, a riddling while Rome burns. ... If The Measure
gets hold of an undoubted masterpiece once in its career, it will
be lucky. POETRY, of Chicago, has come out uninterruptedly for
ten years without doing it. This is not the fault of the editors of
POETRY. If there had been masterpieces to print, they would have
printed them.
Not yet ten years — only eight-and-a-half; so there is still
hope! But meantime may we remind this despairing young
editor that it takes a master to recognize a masterpiece; and
a slow procession of masters, in accord across spaces of time,
to pronounce the ultimatum?
The Double-dealer is an auspicious attempt to give the
South a literary organ. It ought to succeed — we hope and
trust it will, for the South has a right to speak with its own
voice; and those members of the staff whom we know — for
[116]
Two New Magazines
example, John McClure, the New Orleans poet, and Vincent
Starrett, Chicago correspondent — are certainly competent.
The local flavor is not yet very strong in the first three
numbers, but no doubt that will come. Meantime we have
a gay-spirited monthly which has the air of being happily
alive, and some of whose entries — of stories, plays, criti-
cism, verse — are vivid and interesting. H. M.
NOTES
Mr. Maxwell Bodenheim, formerly of Chicago but now of New
York, is the author of Minna and Myself (Pagan Pub. Co.) ; and
of Advice (Alfred A. Knopf), which was reviewed last month.
Miss Hazel Hall lives in Portland, Oregon. Her first book of
verse will soon be published by the John Lane Co.
Mr. Edward Sapir, of the Canadian Geological Survey in Ot-
tawa, is the author of Dreams and Gibes (Poet Lore Co.).
Mr. Arthur Davison Ficke was listed last month.
The other poets in this number are new to our readers:
Aline Kilmer (Mrs. Joyce Kilmer) of Larchmont, N. Y., is the
author of Candles that Burn, published iu 1919 by the George H.
Doran Co.
Madame Muriel Ciolkowska is a poet and journalist resident
in Bellevur, France. She has served as Paris correspondent of the
London Egoist and other critical journals.
Julia Weld Huntingdon (Mrs. John P.), who has published
verse and prose in various magazines, lives near Norwich, Conn.
Ruth Mason Rice (Mrs. Willis1 B.), a resident of New York, has
published a novel and written for various papers. Miss Dorothy
McVickar is living at present in Poughkeepsie, N. Y. ; and Miss
Amy Bonner and Elizabeth Hart Pennell (Mrs. Henry B., Jr.)
are residents of New York City. Miss Blanche Dismorr is an
English poet, resident in or near London. So far as the editor
knows, none of these six ladies has published as yet a book of
verse.
["7]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
BOOKS RECEIVED
ORIGINAL VERSE:
A Canopic Jar, by Leonora Speyer. E. P. Dutton & Co.
The Last Knight and Other Poems, by Theodore Maynard. Fred-
erick A. Stokes Co.
Seen and Unseen, by Yone Noguchi. (New Ed.) Orientalia, N. Y.
Julian Hunter: Soldier Poet, and The Dales of Arcady, by Dorothy
Una Ratcliffe. Erskine Macdonald, Ltd., London.
Poems, by Wilfred Owen. B. W. Huebsch, Inc.
The Wind Over the Water, by Philip Merivale. Four Seas Co.
Indian Summer, by Henry Lane Eno. Duffield & Co.
Passions, by Russell Green. Holden & Hardingham, Ltd., London.
Dawn on the Distant Hills, by Steel Grenfell Florence, Pri. ptd.
To-day and Yesterday — Sonnets and Other Verses, by William
Dudley Foulke, LL.D. Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford, Eng.
The Little Wings — Poems and Essays, by Vivienne Dayrell. Basil
Blackwell, London.
Roses and Rime, by Glenn D. Whisler. Pri. ptd., Cleveland.
Dreams at Twilight, by Ada Emery McCurdy. Pri. ptd., New
Albany, Ind.
Swift Wings: Songs in Sussex, by the editor of Lillygay. The
Vine Press, Sussex, England.
ANTHOLOGIES AND TRANSLATIONS I
Oxford Poetry: 1917-1919. Basil Blackwell, Oxford, Eng.
A Miscellany of American Poetry: 1920. Harcourt, Brace & Howe.
Star-points: Songs of Joy, Faith, and Promise from the Present-
day Poets, ed. by Mrs. Waldo Richards. Houghton Mifflin Co.
The Garden of Bright Waters: One Hundred and Twenty Asiatic
Love Poems, tr'd by E. Powys Mathers. Houghton Mifflin Co.
Selections from the Rubaiyat & Odes of Hafiz, tr'd by a member of
the Persia Society of London. J. M. Watkins, London.
PLAYS:
Mary Stuart, by John Drinkwater. Houghton Mifflin Co.
Two Mothers, by John G. Neihardt. Macmillan Co.
PROSE :
The Sacred Wood, by T. S. Eliot. Alfred A. Knopf.
The Tales of Chekhov— Vol. IX, The Schoolmistress and Other
Stories, translated by Constance Garnett. Macmillan Co.
Romance of the Rabbit, by Francis Jammes, translated by Gladys
Edgerton. Nicholas L. Brown.
[118]
V
l\t
POETRY is one of the three good magazines in America.
Geoffrey Parsons, of the New York Tribune
Vol. XVIII No. Ill
POETRY for JUNE, 1921
PAGE
Boys and Girls Genevieve Taggard 119
Twenty-four Hokku on a Modern Theme I-XXIV Amy Lowell 124
Tanka I-VIII . Jun Fujita 128
Goodfellowship — Lonely Translated by Moon Kwan 130
The Hunchback John Peak Bishop 131
The Villager Clifford Franklin Gessler 132
Your Horses — Nevertheless — Concentric Circles — Prayer
God-lover Muriel S afford 135
Voluntaries Mark Turbyfill 136
The Intangible Symphony — The Power of Nothing — Reple-
tion— The Sea Storm — Things Not Seen
From the Near East Morris Gilbert 140
Cape Helles — The Boulghar Dagh
By Hill and Dale Ruth Suckow 142
Prayer at Timber-line — Beauty — The Odd Ones — Grampa
Schuler
Primaveral . Grace Hazard Conkling 144
Recompense — The Sweet Lady .... Anne Eliz. Wilson 145
Annotations Marx G. Sabel 146
Jeremiad — No Good Thing — The Strange Load
A Word About Keats . . . H. M. 150
The Sub-conscious Cliche E. T. 153
Reviews:
From New Mexico Carl Sandburg 1 57
Mr. Aiken's Bow to Punch E. T. 160
A Contrast H. M. 162
Still a Soul to Save Nelson Antrim Crawford 166
Coleridge and Wordsworth . H. B. F. 167
Correspondence :
A Letter from Paris Jean Catel 168
The Winter's Publishing in England . . . . R. Hughes 172
Our Contemporaries:
Kreymborg's Millions 174
Notes and Books Received . 175,176
Manuscripts must be accompanied by a stamped and self -addressed
envelope.
Inclusive yearly subscription rates. In the United States, Mexico,
Cuba and American possessions, $3.00 net; in Canada, $3.15 net; in all
other countries in the Postal Union, $3.25 net. Entered as second-class
matter Nov. 15, 1912, at the post-office, at Chicago, 111., under the Act of
March 3, 1879.
Published monthly at 543 Cass St., Chicago, 111.
Copyright 1921, by Harriet Monroe. All rights reserved.
VOL. XVIII
No. Ill
A Magazine of \ferse
JUNE 1921
BOYS AND GIRLS
The Sun-children:
Boys and girls, come out to play !
The sun is up, the wind's astray,
Early morning's gold is gone —
(They slumber on, they slumber on!)
I have never done with you
Half the things I want to do.
I will put kisses on your knees,
And we will squander as we please
This little, lazy, lovely day.
Ninety million miles away
The sun halloos: "Come out to play!
The winds are prancing on tip-toe,
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
Impatient with long waiting so;
The hills look up. Come out! and oh,
Let your bodies dart and run
While I make shadows!" says the sun.
Boys and girls, come out to play
Before the river runs away.
I have never done with you
Half the things I want to do.
The Sun:
Boys and girls, come out to play
Before the river runs away.
While you are fluid, unafraid,
Beneath my light and shadow skim,
Before this folded gloom is dim
And limb no longer follows limb,
Dancing under spotted shade.
For dancing were your bodies made!
Before the roses of you fade
Find your meaning for the mouth
While I lean south; while I go west
Find your meaning for the rest.
The Sun-child:
Throw back your head and fly with me —
Love me, chase me, lie with me!
Follow, sweetheart of the sun,
[120]
Genevieve Taggard
Turn and follow where I run
Between blue vineyards and fruit-trees —
Fall down and kiss me on the knees !
Pant beside me while I pull
Berries for you from the full
Blue-jewelled branches! Crush them red-
Not on your mouth, on mine instead!
The Sun:
Nimble you move — you are my own,
My pliant essence. All alone
On fire in the passive sky
I burn — a stone, a liquid stone.
Together, you in double shade,
Discover why your limbs were made.
The Sun-child:
I have never done with you
Half the things I want to do!
Link your arms and loosen them,
Pluck and suck a grass's stem,
Touch my breasts with that blue aster;
Kiss me fast — I'll kiss you faster!
Link your arms and loosen them.
Now link your arms like mine 'together,
Toward me lightly — like a feather
Dance! Like feathers you'll be blown
Across the level field alone.
[121]
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And like a brown wing my bare feet
Will skim the meadow till we meet.
The river skips, but we are quicker:
Its little body's slender glisten
Goes down alley-ways of leaves.
Flicker, sun, and river, flicker!
Listen, lover, listen, listen
How the river laughs and grieves!
I have never done with you
Half the things I want to do.
Leap for me, sweetheart — reach and try
To catch me, sweetheart! Kiss and cry
After me, sweetheart, darting by!
After you seize me, we will lie,
I in the grass, you in the sky;
After you kiss me, we will start
To try and reach each other's heart;
And, searching frantically, find
The unseen blisses of the blind.
The Sun-children:
Before the river runs away,
Boys and girls, come out to play.
(They slumber on, they slumber on —
Morning's glint is almost gone!)
With yellow bubbles fill your veins
[122]
Genevieve Taggard
Before the lusty day-star wanes.
(They slumber on, they slumber on —
Silken leopard noon is' gone!)
Die you may, die you must —
Fill your mouths with pollen dust;
Calyxes and honey thighs
Both will wither. Beauty dies !
Find out why mouths are berry-red
Before you stiffen in your drab bed.
Over you humming summer will glide,
You'll never lie languid on your side
And listen then as you listen now
To half-heard melodies — oh, how
The river runs and runs and runs,
Fluid with splendor, and the sun's
Circuit is singing. Fragile day!
Boys and girls, come out to play!
Genevieve Taggard
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
TWENTY-FOUR HOKKU ON A MODERN THEME
i •
Again the larkspur,
Heavenly blue in my garden.
They, at least, unchanged.
ii
How have I hurt you ?
You look at me with pale eyes,
But these are my tears.
in
Morning and evening —
Yet for us once long ago
Was no division.
IV
I hear many words.
Set an hour when I may come
Or remain silent.
In the ghostly dawn
I write new words for your ears-
Even now you sleep.
vi
This then is morning.
Have you no comfort for me
Cold-colored flowers?
[124]
Amy Lowell
VII
My eyes are weary
Following you everywhere.
Short, oh short, the days!
VIII
When the flower falls
The leaf is no more cherished.
Every day I fear.
IX
Even when you smile,
Sorrow is behind your eyes.
Pity me, therefore.
Laugh — it is nothing.
To others you may seem gay,
I watch with grieved eyes.
XI
Take it, this white rose.
Stems of roses do not bleed;
Your fingers are safe.
XII
As a river-wind
Hurling clouds at a bright moon,
So am I to you.
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
XIII
Watching the iris,
The faint and fragile petals —
How am I worthy?
XIV
Down a red river
I drift in a broken skiff.
Are you then so brave?
xv
Night lies beside me
Chaste and cold as a sharp sword.
It and I alone.
XVI
Last night it rained.
Now, in the desolate dawn,
Crying of blue jays.
XVII
Foolish so to grieve,
Autumn has its colored leaves —
But before they turn ?
XVIII
Afterwards I think:
Poppies bloom when it thunders.
Is this not enough?
Amy Lowell
XIX
Love is a game — yes?
I think it is a drowning:
Black willows and stars.
xx
When the aster fades
The creeper flaunts in crimson.
Always another!
XXI
Turning from the page,
Blind with a night of labor,
I hear morning crows.
xxn
A cloud of lilies,
Or else you walk before me.
Who could see clearly?
xxm
Sweet smell of wet flowers
Over an evening garden.
Your portrait, perhaps?
XXIV
Staying in my room,
I thought of the new spring leaves.
That day was happy.
Amy Lowell
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
TANKA
TO ELIZABETH
Against the door dead leaves are falling;
On your window the cobwebs are black.
Today, I linger alone.
The foot-step?
A passer-by.
SPRING
Down the slope white with flowers,
Toward the hills hazy blue,
A butterfly
Floats away.
MAY MOON
Milky night;
Through the resting trees
A petal-
Falling.
STORM
Against the gulls that play in the gale
The black waves dart
White fangs
fn vain.
Jun Fujita
NOVEMBER
On a pale sandhill
A bare tree stands;
The death-wind
Has snatched the last few leaves.
A LEAF
The November sky without a star
Droops low over the midnight street;
On the pale pavement, cautiously
A leaf moves.
DECEMBER MOON
Among the frozen grasses
Frosting in the moon glare,
Tombstones
Are whiter tonight.
ECHO
I know it is not she,
Yet I listen
To distant laughter
Fleeting away.
Jun Fujita
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GOODFELLOWSHIP
A Fragment by Li Po
Hast thou not beheld the Yellow River
Which flows from Heaven?
It runs rapidly down and empties into the sea,
Nevermore to return.
Hast thou behe!4 the mirror in the hall
That reflects the grief of white hair?
In the morning it is like black silk,
In the evening it will be covered with snow.
While we are in the mood of joy,
Let us drink!
Let not the golden bottle be lonely,
Let us waste not the moon!
LONELY
By Wang Wei, Eighth Century, A. D.
When the moon begins to grow
And the autumn dews to fall,^
My silken jacket is lightly thin,
But I have not changed:
Wistfully I play my lute
Long and deep into the night,
For my heart is shy
Of the empty chamber.
Translated from the Chinese by Moon Kwan
[130]
THE HUNCHBACK
I saw a hunchback climb over a hill,
Carrying slops for the pigs to swill.
The snow was hard, the air was frore,
And he cast a bluish shadow before.
Over the frozen hill he came,
Like one who is neither strong nor lame;
And I saw his face as he passed me by,
And the hateful look of his dead-fish eye:
His face, like the face of a wrinkled child
Who has never laughed or played or smiled.
I watched him till his work was done;
And suddenly God went out of the sun,
Went out of the sun without a sound
But the great pigs trampling the frozen ground.
The hunchback turned and retracked the snows;
But where God's gone, there's no man knows.
John Peak Bishop
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
THE VILLAGER
YOUR HORSES
Often, in clear winter afternoons or crisp fall mornings,
Walking long stretches of sand where waves charge in
proudly,
Or standing on curving walls, looking out over empty
water,
I am aware of the memory of you and your horses —
Prancing bays, proud roans, and wild white horses;
Your laughter syncopating the hoof-beats of horses,
Pounding on clay turf-land or drumming on long white
roads.
Standing at the forks of the river at Orleans Street,
Watching the ice dip up and down in the oily water —
Big gray and white lake birds circling slowly slantwise
over the water,
A tug with smoke-stack down for bridges,
And two engines coughing out of time with each other —
I ride again with the memory of you and your horses,
Of you mounting a flight of steps on a glossy black,
Riding down a railroad track to meet me on a deep-chested
bay.
And the sound of your laughter comes to me over the backs
of horses,
The memory of your hajr streaming with the manes of
horses,
Clifford Franklin Gessler
Your firm brown hand flung out in the crowding of horses,
Greeting me over the necks of wild white horses, galloping
home.
NEVERTHELESS
Inasmuch as I love you
And shall know no peace more unless I am near you,
Though you are a flame of will
Proud and variable as you are beautiful and dear —
Nevertheless I will go your way,
Since you will not go mine.
Therefore, although the cool roads of my village
Are more pleasant to me than the pavements of your city;
Although its dim streets are more kindly than your glar-
ing arcs;
Though the unhurried voices of my townspeople
Are more friendly music in my ears than the screamings
And glib chatter of your city-dwellers:
Nevertheless I will go down with you into the city
And bruise my heart upon its bricks;
Become brother to its shrieking "elevated"
And learn to hurry away my days in this brief world
Among the grimy roofs that soil the clean young sunshine;
Thinking only at long whiles, in summer dusks,
Of hushed paths where hurrying feet have never trodden,
Of cool lanes white in the splendor of the rising moon.
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CONCENTRIC CIRCLES
Cracks in broken windows
Thread out like spokes from the center where a pebble
or a bullet struck,
Cross and recross, and spread to the edge of the pane.
Ripples in still water or running water race out in con-
centric circles from the place where a stone or a
body is thrown in.
Ice forms on pools in long thin slivers that knit slowly
and close up the gaps till a hard, brittle floor is
formed.
Fissures in stones spread slowly, and widen and deepen
with the prying of frost.
Thoughts are like all these things.
PRAYER
O thou elemental
Rain, sun, and body of the quick warm earth:
Hear these words from the cells of thy blood,
Multitudinous, various!
Let the waters at the dim roots of the grass be sweet,
And the milk be abundant in the breasts of time —
Yet a little while, till the pearl-gray banners of smoke
Be dissolved, and the flowing of rivulets be but a distant
murmur
In the shout and the far white splendor of thy coming.
[134]
Clifford Franklin Gessler
Let thy kindness be as a wide white blanket covering all
The brave inglorious futile race of men
Who lift tired eyes ever to sad stars
More desolate
Than the wind-harrowed wastes of ocean,
Whence comes no answer.
And after our futile striving, give us
Peace.
Clifford Franklin Gessler
GOD-LOVER
Who are you?
Why do you hide behind
Your mask — the sun and stars ?
The brazen day and
The moon-washed night
Are alms that you give your beggars.
I ask no mendicant's pittance —
I cry for the supreme desolation of your face.
Muriel Safford
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VOLUNTARIES
THE INTANGIBLE SYMPHONY
How shall I capture
Sound and desire?
Let candor stir upon candor
As sword upon sword,
Tempering the tenor and the timbre
Of this sweet ecstasy.
Grieved is my mind,
Harassed by music
Untouched of any sound.
Yet on trellis, on infinite arch,
On bridges of fretted iron —
Frail to thought, acrid to sight,
Thunderous with traffic of men —
Red-budding, peach-petalled
Beauty flames into view.
But how shall I capture
Sound and desire?
How shall I hear
The pointed vagaries,
The evanescent harmonies,
That float unfingered
Across the strings of the mind ?
[136]
Mark Turbyfill
How shall I hear,
Plucked from the intangible mind-strings,
The song desire sings, and sings?
There is no create instrument.
THE POWER OF NOTHING
I only laughed,
As at a gauche mistake,
When I learned we had paid
With innocent counterfeit —
That such carnival, confetti,
Festival of flamingo fun,
We had danced for nothing spent:
So much brightness
All out of nothing!
But when I learned of my awkwardness —
Mistaking the denomination, color, design
Of a little word you gave me ! —
And of the bright shapes of dreams
Germinated in my heart
All out of nothing,
I could not laugh any more;
For there was a sharp severing of slender unseen roots,
And that fruit which they bore
Fell dangling and bruised
From the tendrils and the vine.
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REPLETION
I have fed on the radiance of my beloved
Lying beneath the flowering pear-tree.
Her breasts are inverted cups of sunlight;
She is dappled over with iridescence.
Light and heat
Pierce the pear leaves,
And fall dizzily
Through a flashing of petal-flakes,
Burnishing and mellowing her.
My nostrils are prophetic
With the sweetness of pear flesh,
My eyes are dazzled with love made manifest,
And my mind is parturient and tremulous
With glistening schemes.
THE SEA STORM
I hurtled like a hound for joy
Through the storm
Of your magnificence —
Wave on crashing, dashing, crested wave,
You hurl yourself against space!
You are positive force,
You might crush me to nothingness;
Yet I revel like a golden super-carp
[138]
Mark Turbyfill
Flashing pas de poisson
Through flowers of foam.
And I know your ecstatic response,
Exquisite monster,
As I blossom into glittering spray
Above you!
THINGS NOT SEEN
The sea-gull poises
In the charged, expectant air.
The sea-gull poises
With delicate resistance.
Its sheer conscious being
Is cause to strike creation
Out of all this emptiness.
The sea-gull waits,
Wavering slightly
Against this mighty immanence.
So does my heart wait
For the release of a substance
Not yet seen.
Mark Turbyfill
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FROM THE NEAR EAST
CAPE HELLES
This water is all rich; and no great wave,
Rushing, can ever sweep from the old ooze
The witnesses of simple men who gave
Their lives here to the sea.
Our ship's foot goes
Warily now, for here she treads above
The globed mortal homes of dreams all drowned.
Sometimes, as if a man smiled at his love,
A smile turns in the water. Round and round,
Sometimes, a hundred cries go swimming, while
Such common woes and hopes are ocean-freight,
That every eddy of the grey sea-mile
Is strewn with ardors inarticulate
And homing memories.
Yet this must be:
That men's ghosts ever shame old pagan Earth,
With human blood crimson grey Neptune's sea,
Snap the Fates' thread with high impetuous mirth,
Cast in the dicing game mortality,
Slip from the moorings of sweet flesh, and then
Clean past the loom of the Ultimate Islands ride,
To bring a vision down to the sea again
In ships, and keep the faith, and take the tide.
[140]
Morris Gilbert
THE BOULGHAR DAGH
Day by day the sun booms over this long valley,
And the mountains are sun-flowers
And smile fondly at him as he goes by.
For only Gunesh, the sun,
Of all the people they have seen pass,
Is steadfast.
Alexander came through this valley,
And did not return.
At its mouth a lass unparalleled
Found Antony in a market-place,
Whistling to the air: they sailed away together.
A man named Saul trudged up this road soon after:
He went on to Rome.
Godfrey de Bouillon passed this way, to drown
In Cydnus.
Some troopers from Bavaria and Pesth
Were here last year — and they fled.
Now Pathans and Sikhs
And other swarthy fighting-men camp hereabouts.
But presently they'll be gone.
Morris Gilbert
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
BY HILL AND DALE
PRAYER AT TIMBER-LINE
Oh, that I could fashion words
As the wind bends the trees —
Could shape my lines as shining-bare,
As exquisite, as these
White branches of the writhen pine
Standing alone at timber-line!
Winds of life, blow stinging-free
Into my heart that's waiting, still!
Beat on my words unceasingly,
And shape them to your stern white will !
BEAUTY
I went where pines grew;
Beauty I found in these,
In stars, and in the strange
Twisted boughs of trees.
I went where houses were;
Beauty I found then
In eyes, and in the strange
Twisted lives of men.
Ruth Suckow
THE ODD ONES
I like best those crotchety ones
That follow their own way
In whimsical oblivion
Of what the neighbors say.
They grow more rare as they grow old,
Their lives show in their faces —
In little slants and twisted lines;
Like trees in lonely places.
GRAMPA SCHULER
Grampa Schuler, when he was young,
Had a crest of hair, and shining eyes.
He wore red-flowered waistcoats,
Wild Byronic ties.
The whole land of Germany
Wasn't wide enough! —
He ran away one night, when winter
Seas were fierce and rough.
He has a sleek farm here
With already a settled air.
He's patriarchal, with his sons
And daughters round him everywhere,
His son's son Jim has fiery eyes —
He wants to go where the land is new!
Grampa bitterly wonders: "What are
Young fools coming to!"
[H3]
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PRIMAVERAL
You should have seen the griffin in the pine-tree
With stars for eyes !
You are my own,'
Mine, though I never found you.
There was the hollow valley
With its river,
There was the big magnolia
Strung with moons . . .
/ look for you . . .
Love makes my feet unsteady.
One day
The perul in the garden was on fire with tanagers . . .
I saw it burning.
/ wonder where you were?
Yesterday the flower woman brought me violets . . .
Cape jasmine . . . dark roses . . .
When are you coming?
Today the yucca has finished building her tower of
ivory . . .
// is late . . .
What excuse will you offer?
Grace Hazard Conkling
[144]
RECOMPENSE
You are growing old, my lithe and gay,
But age with you is different and rare;
Gray — yes, but like the mist that veils an autumn moon
Stretched across the black trees' gaunt array.
Your light, now opalescent and more gently bright,
Makes beautiful the wintry night.
Why do you long for the bronze hue of youth,
Or the noisiness of its display?
Let us be comforted in this sweet quietness where
There is nothing loved before
But that our having loved so long can make more fair.
THE SWEET LADY
She is so gay-
Such easy sweetness falls away
From her! Her words are simple as a little wind
That sings all day.
Such lazy kindliness she spreads about,
As thoughtless as her hands that twine
And turn their pink palms in and out.
Such loving weariness has she
Of giving sweetness forth unthinkingly,
That she is almost sad — still smiling sad,
Tired with her all-unknowing ministry.
Anne Elizabeth Wilson
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ANNOTATIONS
JEREMIAD
What avail are these days?
The days come and the days go,
Limping like old men
Over an uneven pathway.
Day follows day,
And each day
Falls over my last memory of you
Like a thin white sheet
Over a dead body.
Day after day —
Sheet upon sheet —
Until now I cannot see
The lines of the dead body underneath.
What avail are these nights?
The nights come and the nights go,
Shambling like heavy negresses
Walking down a steep path
With overflowing baskets on their heads.
Night follows night,
And each night
Falls over my last memory of you,
Like a heavy black sheet over a dead body.
Night follows night,
Marx G. Sabel
Sheet falls upon sheet,
Until now I cannot see
The lines of the dead body underneath.
What avail are these days
And these nights,
These halt men, and these
Cumbersome negresses burdened with baskets?
Day after day,
Night after night,
Sheet upon sheet,
Black on white,
Falling over a dead body,
Covering a dead body,
Falling upon and covering my memory of you.
NO GOOD THING
It is no good thing
Even on a dark night
To clutch a memory for guidance.
I know, because I have tried it
Confidently.
I walked on in the dark night
Remembering.
I walked on and on,
Yet no star shone,
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And there was no light nor even any ghost of light
Ever
To guide me.
I shall walk on in the dark night
Forgetting.
I shall clutch no memory for guidance.
I shall walk on and on,
Accepting the darkness
Proudfully, fearlessly, without hope.
For it is no good thing
Even on a dark night
To clutch a memory for guidance.
THE STRANGE LOAD
Things have come to a fine pass!
Just now,
As I sat teasing shy thoughts,
A strange load lifted
Of its own volition !
Maybe I should make a moan,
Or gurgle in my throat a bit,
On losing suddenly
And for no apparent reason
The strange load —
The little weight of chosen sorrowings,
The small warm woes of love.
Marx G. Sabel
Little lady whom my heart has nurtured,
The pressure of your petulance
Has passed;
Your eyes' chatoyancy
In the deep dark night of my heart's heart
Has faded,
And the phosphorescent glimmers of your body
In the center of my mind
Have faded.
Faded . . . lifted . . . faded . . .
Entirely done away with.
Shall I miss the strange load lifted,
Having carried it so far,
So long, with such great care?
Now I arise from a cramped posture,
Now I slowly swing my shoulders back
And take a deep breath !
Now I shatter heights of thin air,
Stretching forth rejuvenescent fingers!
Yes . . . surely . . .
Things have come to a fine pass,
A fine pass, indeed.
Marx G. SabeL
[H9]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
COMMENT
A WORD ABOUT KEATS
TO remember in December a February centenary —
*• that is plainly an editor's duty. In that plain duty
the editors of POETRY plainly failed, else would they have
prepared the February number with reference to Keats.
No poet on our list having aspired to challenge Adonais
with an elegy, the editor should have — indeed, would have
—paid a brief prose tribute to a spirit whose flaring fame
no longer needs one.
As it is, the month has gone by, but not the year — a
year also sacred to Dante, who died at Ravenna Septem-
ber fourteenth, 1321, leaving his work achieved and com-
plete after a rounded life of fifty-six rich years. Of all
English poets since Shakespeare there may be two, Keats
and Synge, who gave promise of genius as powerful and
shapely as Dante's, and of mind and will as capable of
fulfilling its high serene commands; and these two, by
the same tragic hazard, were fatally interrupted by illness
and early death.
The Quarterly's reception of Keats has become a by-
word— it is so easy for the casual inheritor of opinions to
be wise after the fact. But, after all, the youthful bard
was trying out a new instrument; and even Shelley himself
was not at once impressed, for he said of Endymion, "The
author's intention seems to be that no person should
possibly get to the end of it;" not to speak of Byron,
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A Word About Keats
whose remarks are almost unprintable. So far as this
luscious and exuberant exercise of youthful genius is con-
cerned, I sympathize with Shelley, for I never could read
it through without liberal skipping. Ditto Hyperion — but
then, my appetite for modernized Greek myth is dis-
tinctly limited; I cannot "appreciate the intensity and
complexity of symbolic and spiritual meaning" which
Keats and many other poets have read into, and wrung
out of, a folk-lore beautiful in its original primitive sim-
plicity.
Isabella^ or the Pot of Basil was a more Chaucerian
stunt of verse-narrative — a tale drawn from Boccaccio's
rich mediaeval storehouse: a pretty thing, but slight —
even the poet soon tired of it, called it "mawkish."
Lamia also did not quite "come off." And the beauty of
The Eve of Saint Agnes ^ exquisite as it is, is of the fragile,
the dreamily artificial kind, like a Venetian goblet blown
in many-colored glass.
These all were preparatory. What have we to assert
triumphantly the immortality of Keats the master? We
have a half-dozen lyrics of beauty incredible and supreme,
beauty which admits this youth to the innermost magic
circle of all the rich domain of English poetry, the circle
haunted by Shakespeare's voice, by a few strains from
Marlowe and Spenser, from Coleridge and Shelley and
Blake; while beyond, near but not quite within, one may
hear the chanting of Milton and of old John Donne,
and perfect chords from Burns, Byron and Poe, leading
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on many others, a number of moderns among them —
poets ever to be remembered, who have sung a few songs,
or maybe only one, too beautiful to perish.
The Ode to a Nightingale, and the ballad La Belle Dame
sans Merci — any long life were richly charged with these
two poems alone. And when we add to these the other
great odes — the Grecian Urn, Autumn, Melancholy, Bards
of Passion and of Mirth; and certain sonnets — On Chap-
man s Homer, When I Have Fears, and the last one of all,
Bright Star — one must say "Wonderful — wonderful!"
and feel that what Death robbed us of might have added
to the mass, but hardly to the splendor, of this poet's gift.
But what a man gives, be he poet, beggar or king, is
always himself; and the fascinating thing about Keats'
imperishable gift is the torch-like beauty of that glorious
spirit which went flaming through the cluttered world for
a few brief years, leaving a cleared path for men's souls to
walk in. He saw straight and true in a perplexed and dis-
tracted age —
Beauty is truth, truth beauty — that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
To him Byron's rebellions, Shelley's reforms, were negli-
gible details in the rounded spiritual experience of
man. To him, as to Blake, "nothing is pleasing to God
except the glad invention of beautiful and exalted things."
He knew that beauty includes all perfections sublunary
and subliminal; that it is the magic circle which encloses
them all, giving form and symmetry to the created uni-
A Word About Keats
verse — and to that infinitesimal detail of it, the life and
dreams of man.
And then the tragic poignancy of his suffering — for un-
fulfilled love and early death caught his spirit unready and
unreconciled; and the great things he had done seemed
slight to his^despair in contrast with those "high-piled
books" unwritten in his "teeming brain." Of course we
know now that his disease was a direct infection from the
young brother whom he had nursed tenderly to the end;
and that the medical malpractice of his time speeded him
off as fast as possible by prescribing a starvation diet. It
is small consolation to feel that today a science more
enlightened might have saved him to round out Dante's
fifty-six years and rival the majestic mass of the great
Italian's completed labors. Fortunately there is a higher
consolation: a few perfect poems, which, being perfect,
are therefore in themselves complete, sufficient.
H. M.
THE SUB-CONSCIOUS CLICHE
To what extent does language, created and constantly
influenced by a nation's thinking, react upon the thinking
which creates it?
Rabindranath Tagore brought this old question of the
philologists to my mind afresh when he said recently in
Chicago, speaking of transferring his poems from Bengali
to English, "It was not like translating, it was recreating
in another medium."
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
I take this to mean that the English words themselves
influenced the thought back of the poems, since this
thought must have been the same in both cases. So it
has occurred to me that the influence of words in our
mother tongue is probably so ingrained in us that we are
unable to perceive it, but that in a foreign tongue we might
be able to catch a glimpse of its action. And I have been
amusing myself by comparing the stock poetical cliches of
several languages. I do not mean the stock similes, for
the influence would be too hard to trace here; but the
rhyme cliches, in which it is more apparent. I know only
two other languages, French and German, well enough to
do anything with this, but I wish some more scholarly
poet would consider it.
A tendency is so much easier to recognize in its exag-
gerated forms, when it reduces itself ad absurdum, that I
shall offer as examples the worst possible cliches.
They pertain, it seems, in all languages to the tender
sentiments. The word heart for example. In English
the standard rhymes to it are part and dart. Part follows
naturally enough perhaps. But why should we, out of
the innumerable images pertaining to love, have fastened
with such tenacity to that of Cupid's dart and the con-
crete image of a pierced heart, except that it rhymes?
I can find no such persistent reference, indeed very little
reference at all, in either French or German doggerel to
this particular image. Has not the accidental physical
sound of the words foisted it on us? In German the
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The Sub-conscious Cliche
standard rhymes to Herz are Schmerz (pain) and Scherz
(a gay whimsy or joke}. In French coeur is a syllable more
easily rhymed, so the cliches are less marked, but pleure
seems to be the most common with meure a close second.
In all of these it appears that the melancholy side of love
is uppermost in the mind of the budding poet of whatever
nation. But the precise form this melancholy takes would
seem to depend on the rhymes he finds to hand.
In this connection French offers an excellent example.
The word tendresse, of which the French are very fond, has
a cliche ivresse (literally drunkenness but figuratively rap-
ture) , which follows it everywhere. This image of being
drunk on love is so seldom found in either English or
German that one cannot help thinking it is suggested by
the rhyme.
Sometimes of course the natural sequence of ideas hap-
pens to rhyme and so the words become wedded, as kiss
and bliss, or eyes and skies; which last — curiously enough,
since the words are both of northern origin — rhyme also
in French, yeux and deux. But how about our English
rhymes for love — above and dove? Is either of these ideas
inherent in the idea of love? L 'amour on the other hand
seems to suggest to the sentimental Frenchman toujours,
though this follows more naturally and is not a perfect
rhyme. In German Liebe is difficult to handle, and is
most often either lopped off or imperfectly rhymed with
trube (forlorn).
Of the cliches on other subjects life in English is accom-
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
panied by strife, naturally enough perhaps, but more per-
sistently than elsewhere. And to the French patrie seems
to carry with it most frequently tyrannic. Country in
English doesn't rhyme easily, but we are apt to distort it to
rhyme with free. Germany, which is fond of its Lieder,
brings in constant reference to Flieder (lilacs), for no
very visible reason except the rhyme. There are others
of course, but these are enough to point the question.
Perhaps the poetaster ,who is responsible for these
cliches does not set down in them what he wants to say,
but what he can say; and certainly the better poet, being
more accustomed to riding the only half tractable steed of
language, hesitates to use them. But is it not possible
that the association of ideas started by the rhyme has
driven, with these better poets, down into the subcon-
scious, whence it emerges in other forms than those re-
quired by the rhyme ? Have we not even in better English
lyrics more reference to the dove — though it be carefully
unrhymed — and more wounded hearts, than we should
otherwise have? Do not the French think more often of
rapture and the Germans of lilacs because of this?
Short of some instrument of precision, on the order of
that which my doctor friend invented in a dream one
night after a bout with several poets, an instrument which
measured with scientific exactitude the value of a poem,
and gave it a number like the Bertillon system — there will
probably be no definite answer to this question. But the
idea has amused me. E. T.
REVIEWS
FROM NEW MEXICO
Red Earth: Poems of New Mexico, by Alice Corbin.
Ralph Fletcher Seymour, Chicago.
If a book is born out of high deliberation, then the
shrewdest comment on it shall come out of high deliber-
ation.
There are books all aloof from life's tumult, like
out-of-the-way corner haunts where the flair of life equals
the most vivid of flowers; and the mob, the stenches, the
clumping feet and the poking sightseers are not of it.
Such a book is Alice Corbin's Red Earth — clean and
aloof as the high deliberate table-lands where it was
written; elusive as the grave, questioning faces of the dying
nations of copper-skinned people whose last homes are
there.
Here is a poem, Trees and Horses. It reads:
Trees stand motionless among themselves;
Some are solitary.
Horses wander over wide pastures;
At night they herd closely,
Rumps hunched to the wind.
The verbal weaving here is simple and direct as the
stripes in an Indian blanket. Of course, there are touch-
and-go readers who would get this as only an over-stressed
statement of livery-stable fact. Still others of us get an
impressionist painting oHew lines.
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Those who read a poem, hear a song, look at a picture,
must have seen some semblance of the thing the artist
is trying to tell, sing or paint; else it is no use at all to
read, hear or look at what that artist attempts to deliver.
Take Afternoon as Alice Corbin saw it once on the high
deliberate plateau of New Mexico:
Earth tips to the west
And the hills lean backward —
Cedar-trees
Hugging the hillsides.
Smoke drifts in the valley —
The pinto sun
Nickers over the gate
Of the home corral.
Here is a woman who has read nearly all books of im-
portance, and in the centres of so-called culture absorbed
wide ranges of intellectual fact. And in the piece titled
Sunlight, written amid the aloof heights of New Mexico,
she voices the heart of a myriad of sunburnt farmers and
farmers' wives who joined the ashes of their ancestors
with peace and few regrets. Sunlight reads:
The sunlight is enough,
And the earth sucking life from the sun.
Horses in a wide field are a part of it,
Dappled and white and brown;
Trees are another kind of life,
Linked to us but not understood.
(Whoever can understand a horse or a tree
Can understand a star or a planet.
But one ma'y feel things without understanding,
Or one may understand theiif through feeling.)
From New Mexico
The simple light of the sun is enough.
One will never remember
A greater thing when one dies
Than sunlight falling aslant long rows of corn,
Or rainy days heavy with grey sullen skies.
Not love, not the intense moment of passion,
Not birth, is as poignant
As the sudden flash that passes,
Like light reflected in a mirror,
From nature to us.
The last five lines are five too many. The fault is
''the crime of adjectives/' and negations that blur too
dark a gray over the already decently crossed slants of
afternoon light.
Joseph Warren Beach once wrote of a poet, "He has
been known to cry, but never to weep." That would
apply to Red Earth, the book.
Attractions of a house swept and garnished, ready for
a hurdy-gurdy or the undertaker; an open door for tam-
bourines and bells, or crape and a coffin — there is a hospi-
tality that widely varied in Red Earth.
Here is an Indian song — only four lines — to be read
a hundred times, and then again. It is called The Wind
and goes:
The wind is carrying me round the sky;
The wind is carrying me round the sky.
My body is here in the valley —
The wind is carrying me round the sky.
Carl Sandburg
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
MR. AIKEN'S BOW TO PUNCH
Punch, The Immortal Liar, by Conrad Aiken. Alfred A.
Knopf.
Four years ago I reviewed for POETRY a book by
Conrad Aiken — Turns and Movies, it was called. Looking
back at that review I see that I accused him of being
derivative, always haunted by the ghosts of the other
story-tellers in verse. And I added :
This is the more unfortunate because Mr. Aiken has invention,
vividness, compression and at times a pleasing lyric quality. His situa-
tions are real situations, swiftly told, his technique easy and effective.
It is hard to say just where the authenticity seeps out, yet the total
effect is that of a clever craftsman, working well in the medium of his
day, yet never quite reaching to the heights.
Today that accusation no longer stands, the authen-
ticity no longer seeps out. Conrad Aiken has found him-
self.
Punch, The Immortal Liar is a real achievement. All
the good qualities of his earlier work are here — the inven-
tion and swiftness and surety of his narrative sense, the
vividness of phrase and of situation; and they are no
longer troubled by ghosts. Even the witty acerbity which
in Mr. Aiken's prose criticism, in Scepticisms and else-
where, makes one instinctively doubt his judgments, feel-
ing that some personal complex must underlie so inclusive
a displeasure — even this acerbity is of value in Punch,
since one cannot doubt Mr. Aiken's judgment of a char-
acter of his own invention.
Developing the technique he used so effectively in
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Mr. Aiken' s Bow to Punch
Sen/in, Mr. Aiken has divided his poem into a number of
short facets, telling the story from different angles. This
cutting the story apart serves a double purpose: it avoids
the strain put upon poetry by a long sustained narrative —
a strain which the medium can seldom if ever survive,
and it serves to throw his character into relief, to show
Punch in the round.
The section called What Punch Told Them contains a
real masterpiece of bragging — the good old robust brag-
ging of burlier days, with a big sweep of imagination, a
dash of Rabelais and a fine abandon. The pathetic inade-
quacy of the man behind the bragging, as it is later re-
vealed, comes with great poignancy.
To my thinking however the Epilogue is a mistake.
Mr. Aiken has thoroughly established in the body of the
story the thesis that all men are puppets. And when the
reader has accepted this it is disconcerting to find it stated
explicitly in the epilogue that the author of the book is no
exception to the rule of mankind. But this is quite unable
to spoil what is otherwise a very fine piece of work.
Here is a lyric, spoken to Punch in a dream, which
gives the mood of the gallant and pathological bragga-
docio of the story.
Solomon, clown, put by your crown;
And Judas, break your tree.
Seal up your tomb and burn your cross,
Jesus of Galilee!
For here walks one who makes you seem
But atoms that creep in grass;
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You are the pageant of his dream,
And he will bid you pass.
Let Rome go over the earth in gold
With trumpets harshly blown!
For here comes one whose splendor burns
More gloriously, alone.
Heliogabalus, laugh your last!
Queen Sappho, lie you down !
Punch the immortal shakes the seas ,
And takes the sun for crown.
E. T.
A CONTRAST
In American, by John V. A. Weaver. Alfred A. Knopf.
The Well of Being, by Herbert Jones. John Lane Co.
These two books offer an interesting contrast of char-
acter, mood, manner. Here are two young American poets
starting out from the same town — .Chicago — with talent
and literary ambition. The one explores the neighboring
streets, shops, parks; and his first book presents the every-
day adventures of every-day city people in the slangy
jargon with which they disguise the English language.
The other goes to London as the best place in which to
work out a literary career, and seeks beauty not in com-
mon life but in refined and sophisticated experience. Two
sonnets, both love lyrics, will present the resulting con-
trast better than pages of disquisition. The first, Au
Revoir, is from Mr. Weaver's book:
Don't kiss me! Not no more! . . . Oh, can't you see?
Everythin's perfect now, the way it is.
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A Contras
Why do I hafta fight and beg like this?
It's been so sweet — oh, can't you leave things be?
Oh, now I hurt you! Dear, don't look so sad. . . .
Oh, gee! I guess men ain't got ways to know
How a girl feels, and when it's time to go,
And how too much of even kisses is bad.
But it's the things you didn't just quite do,
And what's left over for some other day,
That makes her wonder and hope and cry and pray,
And tell herself, "Next time!" and dream of you.
Good night, dear . . . you must go ... it's for your sake.
I'll dream about that kiss you didn't take. . . .
Mr. Jones' sonnet is number XXVIII in a sequence of
sixty-two:
I know how it will be when we have met
After these months which you as well as I
Have spent in longing: you'll be very shy,
Your grey eyes very bright, a little wet;
You'll kiss me, in the station crowd, and yet
When we're alone, you'll blush, and laugh, and try
Not to be shy, and fail, and wonder why,
And ask me if I'll have a cigarette.
Doubtless I'll smoke it, but I'll watch meanwhile
The play of light and shadow, blush and smile,
Over your face, so quiet yet so stirred.
No matter if you think your mood absurd —
Bashful, when you're alone with me: I know
How that will vanish in one soft-breathed "Oh!"
Both young men, perhaps, are feeling their way as yet
toward their different goals. There is nothing final, noth-
ing fully demonstrated, in either book. The danger in
the one case is of course super-sophistication — an intellec-
tual thinning-out of emotion, and a too dapper use of an
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over-studied instrument. In the other case the danger is
vulgarization — a danger which may become a persistent
and aggressive temptation if Mr. Weaver's book proves a
best-seller, so that popular magazines and newspaper
syndicates try to make its author a rival of Walt Mason.
As yet neither young poet has yielded to the danger.
Mr. Jones' poetry, while slight as yet and naively full of
cliches, has a certain authentic youthful delicacy — a
delicacy a bit too gentlemanly, perhaps, but sincere and
sweet; as if he were playing, with grace and feeling, old-
fashioned airs on a flute. And in Mr. Weaver's book there
is no vulgarity; for no dialect that passes through human
lips is vulgar per se, however snobs may call it so in
Piccadilly or Madison Street; and these poems "in the
American language" are lifted above vulgarity by the
genuine human emotion in them, the authentic character-
ization, the unexpected little turns of pathos, tenderness
or humor.
Sometimes Mr. Weaver's imagination is adventurous,
but the leap is usually justified, as in Moonlight:
Say — listen —
If you could only take a bath in moonlight!
Hey! Can't you just see yourself
Take a runnin' dive
Inta a pool o' glowin' blue,
Feel it glidin* over you
All aroun' and inta you?
Grab a star — huh? —
Use it for soap;
Beat it up to bubbles
And white sparkin' foam —
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A Contrast
Roll and swash —
Gee!
I just like to bet
You could wash your soul clean
In moonlight!
Sometimes the monologues — of a bar-keep, perhaps, or a
drug-store man — seem harsh in their bald realism; bufin
each case the poet gives us a hint of the man's dream,
shows us the special queer glint that lights his life. It is
vital stuff, this book — a good rich promise.
The piece de resistance in Mr. Jones' volume is a love-
story in a thousand lines of rhymed verse — a quiet tale,
simply told, of a youth and maid meeting here and there
in Europe, and falling joyously in love. The description
of the girl will suggest the style:
A beauty? Never. Something far more rare:
A spirit bright and flame-like, straight and clear,
That shone from laughing eyes and filled the air
Around her; knowing neither doubt nor fear;
A little out of breath, with glowing cheeks,
As if the sun and tingling frost were brought
Into the room with her; and when she speaks,
Her quaint and happy phrases come unsought.
The story moves along with a certain soft music, in a
style more mature than that of the sonnets. There is a
faint, delicate perfume in it, as of a genuine and sensitive
youthfulness. Mr. Jones will have to guard against temp-
tations toward literary sophistication which beset an
American aspirant in London. Probably he would be in
less danger at home — perhaps he needs crude contacts.
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It will be interesting to watch these two young Chicago
poets, travelling such different roads, from the same start-
ing-point. //. M.
STILL A SOUL TO SAVE
Before Dawn, by Irene Rutherford McLeod. B. W.
Huebsch.
On the jacket of Before Dawn appears the same portrait
of Miss McLeod which adorned the extremely promising
Songs to Save a Soul, published several years ago. The fact
is significant. Miss McLeod has not developed. She is still
trying to save her soul, but she has grown a trifle weary in
the process.
Most of the poems express a woman's reaction to the
war. One does not doubt the author's sincerity; but fresh,
deep-rooted poignancy is lacking. And there is a lack of
reticence, of restraint — qualities hardly to be expected in a
poet who writes of a lover and his beloved as "twin ships
of joy upon a summer sea."
Included in the book is a sequence of sixteen inconse-
quential sonnets. There are good lines, but enough
atrocious ones to appal, or amuse, the reader; for example:
How sexual education still is rotten.
Monogamy in males is nature's freak.
This scorpion janitress, whose watchful part
Is to destroy who comes his heart to maim.
Probably the best lines are at the end of one of the longer
poems, untitled like most of them.
[i 66]
Still a Soul to Save
Patient Mother, I have come,
With some withered flowers, home:
Some were flowers, some were weeds —
Life has given to both their seeds.
Lying in thy heart, I pray
Winds may bear the weeds away
Where their roots shall sprawl in vain.
But O my flowers, spring again!
For that matter, Miss McLeod is at her best in her long-
er poems. Maggie Winwood^ a narrative of some seven
hundred rhymed octosyllabic lines, has elements of
strength, effectiveness in character portrayal, and re-
straint. Objectiveness is the saving grace of this poem, as
a somewhat futile subjectiveness explains the weakness
of other poems in the volume. Nelson Antrim Crawford
COLERIDGE AND WORDSWORTH
Coleridge's Biographia Literaria^ with Wordsworth's Preface
and Essays on Poetry. University Press, Cambridge,
England.
This caption summarizes the elaborate title of a work
dealing with the earliest of the reform movements in mod-
ern English verse — a work edited by George Sampson and
introduced, lengthily, by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. The
volume offers such portions of Coleridge's book as can be
combined to form a shapely little treatise for the use of" all
who enjoy a poet's interpretation of poetry unclouded by
the obscurity of yesterday's philosophy," and also those
Wordsworthian essays "out of which the book arose and
without which it might never have been written. " Quiller-
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verte
Couch's introduction offers a judicious union of the bi
ographical, the historical and the critical. H. B. F.
CORRESPONDENCE
A LETTER FROM PARIS
My dear POETRY: I was waiting for a masterpiece to
unveil to you; but the offerings, if many, have not been
masterly. Yet our muse has given a few golden songs.
I wish I might enclose in my letter something of their
amiable beauty, transmuted into the metal of your speech.
Pierre Camo has published his Book of Regrets done in
the mellifluous and azure tones of Ronsard and Chenier.
Camo is a troubadour from the Pyrenees who has pitched
his tent in Madagascar, his aloofness from Paris being the
condition of his originality. His classical prosody gives
him a place apart from the crowd of modernists. The
sonnet, the stanza, are the genuine mold of his sensitive-
ness; such molds might be crushed to dust in the topsy-
turvy productiveness of Paris.
New books from Paul Valery, Georges Duhamel and
Mallarme have a somewhat different sound.
Valery's works are few, and most of them can be found
only in reviews and anthologies. Les Odes has just come
out, and La Nouvelle Revue Francaise has given us Sea
Cemetery. These works show an evolution in Valery. In
his odes he turns back to the traditional forms of Racine,
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A Letter from Paris
Vigny, Hugo; yet he is a creator because of his breadth of
vision and ecstasy. Sea Cemetery is a meditation; the poet
stands before the graves where his dear ones sleep to the
sea's perpetual chanting. He sees their souls reborn in
flowers. A wide serenity carries him above the petty
emotions of life:
Fair sky, true sky, look down on me who change;
After so much pride, after so much strange
Idleness, but pregnant with power,
I give myself up to this resplendent space;
On the roofs of the dead my shadow moves,
Subduing me to its fleeting frailty.
Briny and cool water work an emotional change in the
poet:
The wind rises! I must try to live!
The immense air opens and closes my book;
In foam-dust the daring wave flashes from the rocks.
Away, dazzled pages!
Valery's verse unites the intellectual and verbal magics
which Mallarme blended so beautifully.
George Duhamel's art is purely emotional. His war
meditations, published as La Vie des Martyres, have won
world-wide fame — I am sure you have read some of them
together with Barbusse's. His Elegies are still permeated
with the horror of those unforgotten scenes: the Ballad of
the Man with the Wounded Throat l, The Sadness of Sergeant
Gautiery the already famous Ballad of Florentin Prunier.
In the pages of the new book we hear the sighs of sleepless
nights, the rattle of dying throats, the farewells of fellow-
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
creatures. But through the suffering we feel the approach
of hope, for the beauty of things earthly comes with biting
acidity to the poet's heart. Blossoming apple-trees, glit-
tering sea, a familiar street, restore hope to his mind. The
Elegies hesitate between despair and bliss — a smile ex-
quisitely veiled with tears:
I knew you, happiness!
Despair, I know you.
In turns have you not tortured
My slavish heart!
Of his Ballad of Florentin Prunier I shall quote a few
lines. The hero's mother has come from the farthest fron-
tier of the provinces:
She carries a basket with twelve apples,
And fresh butter in a small pot.
All day long she stays in her chair,
Near the bed where Florentin is dying.
She stares obstinately
At the wan face damp with sweat.
She stares and never complains —
It is her way, being a mother.
For twenty long days he held death at bay,
While his mother was near him.
At last one morning, as she was weary
With twenty nights spent God knows where,
She let her head hang a little,
And slept for a little while.
And Florentin Prunier died quickly
And quietly, not to waken her.
The daughter of Stephane Mallarme has carefully gath-
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A Letter from Paris
ered a few hitherto unpublished lines of the famous writer
of The Afternoon of a Faun. An amiable distraction of
a great poet — that's what they seem to be. Some of them
are a series of addresses written in quatrains. Some are
inscriptions for red Easter eggs, for New Year's gifts, for
fans. A certain number of these quatrains are delightful
trifles; a few relate the funny little facts of life. Partic-
ularly charming is Mallarme's fancy when he writes to
the ladies. Everywhere we recognize the delicate mirage
which his more familiar works have taught us to admire.
I am glad I can associate such a stern production as
Duhamel's with Mallarme's precious grace. Seriousness
and fancy have always attended our muse; a new blending
of them seems to be in the making.
If the influences of Moreas and Rimbaud are still dis-
cernible in the verse of today, yet a great deal of purely
fanciful verse has been issued lately, verse which reflects
the ironical smile of Laforgue and Apollinaire. The
changes which the war has brought into our social life as
well as our verse are suggested not only in serious poems,
but in occasional outbursts of gayety and fancy. France
may be a sober — shall I risk saying puritanical ? — country
(you should see her provincial towns and study her
Parisian middle-class!); but in spite of difficult circum-
stances, in spite of an official gravity and its communica-
tive gloom, modern verse reflects the most diverse moods.
Fancy has now left Montmartre — Max Jacob is never at
home! — to dwell with Jean Cocteau near the Champs
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Elysees. Having danced Auric's one-step on the terrace of
a fashionable sky-scraper, they both went back to the little
band of their youth, led by Poulenc at a street corner.
There they mixed up with soldiers, nurses, children and
sentimental workmen.
Back home the couple entertain their six musician
friends and a few poets. The apartment is simple, of a
refined poverty, such as Okakura would have liked. The
chief ornament is a rose in a glass of water, the very im-
mortal French rose that Raymond Radiguet boasts of hav-
ing thrown like a bomb in the Galerie des Machines, full
of modern and exotic monsters. The poetry of this group
aims to be as perfect, as useless and as indispensable as
red on beautiful cheeks, as a rare wine or a silent prom-
enade; and some of Cocteau's and Radiguet's verse is not
far from such perfection. Jean Cafe/
THE WINTER'S PUBLISHING IN ENGLAND
Dear POETRY: The quite unnatural interest in poetry,
which the British public was stirred to by the emotional
activity of the War, has given way now, broken down
before another bad attack of the usual British lethargy in
matters artistic. Two books which a year or so ago would
have won for their authors a wide as well as a narrow circle
of readers — Edmund Blunden's Waggoner (Sidgwick &
Jackson, and Alfred A. Knopf) and Wilfred Owen's Poems
(Chatto & Windus), books which have been greeted enthu-
The Winter s Publishing in England
siastically by nearly all reviewers — have achieved a repu-
tation in the narrower sense, it is true; but have not
reached the sales of far inferior stuff which appeared dur-
ing those tragic years. Edmund Blunden was recognized
at once as a distinguished poet of English country life;
and Wilfred Owen, whose posthumous war-poems have
now appeared, is generally considered an abler war-poet
than Nichols, Graves, or even Sassoon himself. He has an
absolute clarity and intense vividness of vision and an
unflinching sympathy, which are hardly equalled any-
where in the poetry of the War.
The Collected Poems of Edward Thomas (Selwyn &
Blount, and Henry Holt & Co.) have now appeared, with
an introduction by Walter de la Mare. A collected edition
of Mr. de la Mare's own poems has also appeared; (Martin
Secher, and Henry Holt & Co.) — but this does not, un-
happily, include the poems published in illustration of
Pamela Bianco's drawings in Flora (Wm. Heinemann);
in many respects his best work, as well as his latest.
W. H. Davies has published another volume, the Song
of Life (Fifield), which is in fair accord with his earlier
work. One of the most interesting books produced dur-
ing the winter is Robert Graves' Pier-glass (Martin Secher),
a work which shows that he is developing in a new and
quite unexpected direction. It is not a kind pf poetry
that is likely to be popular; but such poems as The Gnat,
The Pier-glass and The Jubilee Murder Cycle , are an inter-
esting variation from the usual modern trend.
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John Masefield's racing poem, Right-Royal, is too widely
known to need comment.
The first number of a new annual anthology has ap-
peared, Mr. Masefield contributing the introduction.
William Heinemann is the publisher, and it is to present
successive collections of Public School Verse, thus in a way
anticipating the poetry of the next generation. The first
number has discovered, in P. C. Quennell, of Berkhansted
School, at least one poet of surprising promise and no
inconsiderable attainment. It is to be hoped that those
responsible will insure that his talent is not forced. A
second volume is in the press. R. Hughes
OUR CONTEMPORARIES
KREYMBORG'S MILLIONS
The Dial for May opens its page of Comment by quoting
this remark of W. C. Blum :
Williams' first suggestion was that someone give Alfred Kreymborg
one hundred thousand dollars.
And the editor goes on to inform us of a windfall of
money:
What do you know? Somebody's gone and done it! Alfred Kreym-
borg and Harold Loeb announce an International Magazine of the Arts,
to be printed in Italy and sold all round the block. How much is
$100,000 in lire, just now?
"Tirra lirra," by the river
Sang Sir Alfred Kreymborg.
[174]
Kreymborgs Millions
Some people are born lucky! Nobody ever offered
POETRY an hundred thousand, whether in pounds, dollars,
or lire! And POETRY has been a conspicuous target
for such windfalls these ten years — nearly — whereas Mr.
Kreymborg carried Others scarcely more than a year.
The new international is to be called The Broom.
May it sweep clean without raising too much dust.
NOTES
Genevieve Taggard, who first appeared in POETRY in June of last year,
removed soon after from Berkeley to New York, and last winter became
one of the nine editors of The Measure, the new poetry magazine which
we greeted last month. In March, Miss Taggard married Mr. Robert
L. Wolf, and the bridal pair are living at present near Farmington, Conn.
Miss Amy Lowell, of Brookline, Mass., requires no introduction.
Her latest book of verse, Legends, just published by the Macmillan Co.,
is advertised in this issue.
Mrs. Grace Hazard Conkling, who is in the Smith College faculty,
lives in Northampton, Mass. Her latest book of verse, published last
year by Henry Holt & Co., is Wilderness Songs,
Mr. Morris Gilbert, of Yonkers, N. Y., who served in the navy during
the war, and afterwards in the Near-East Relief, is the author of A Book
of Verse, privately printed in 1917.
Mr. Mark Turbyfill, of Chicago, who received in 1919 POETRY'S
prize for a young poet, will soon issue, through Monroe Wheeler, of
Evanston, 111., his first book of verse, The Living Frieze.
Mr. Marx G. Sabel, of Jacksonville, Florida, has appeared in various
magazines.
Mr. Jun Fujita is a Japanese poet resident in Chicago, and now in the
employ of The Evening Post.
The other poets in this number are new to our readers:
Miss Ruth Suckow, who is a bee-culturist in Earlville, Iowa, has
appeared in various magazines.
[175]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
Mr. Clifford F. Gessler, who has published in the special magazines,
recently left Chicago to follow his profession of journalism in Honolulu.
Miss Anne Elizabeth Wilson, now of Brooklyn, but a native of
Kentucky, has published little as yet. Ditto, Miss Muriel Safford, of
New York City.
Moon Kwan is a Chinese poet who studied recently in the University
of California, but is now, the editor is informed, in Europe.
Mr. John Peale Bishop, a native of West Virginia and a resident of
New York, has become, since he got out of khaki, managing editor of
our brilliant contemporary, Vanity Fair.
The editor regrets to announce that Mr. Richard Aldington has
been compelled to resign as London correspondent of POETRY, because
of numerous and pressing literary engagements in England. Mr.
Aldington's first appearance as a poet was with Choricos and two other
poems in POETRY'S second number, November, 1912, when he was a
boy of twenty. Since then many of his best poems, and of late a number
of editorials and reviews, have been presented in our pages; and we shall
hope for further contributions.
Since his three years' service as an infantryman on the Western
Front, Mr. Aldington has gradually become engrossed in critical and
editorial labors. We shall hope that they will not absorb him to the
neglect of poetry.
BOOKS RECEIVED
ORIGINAL VERSE:
Avon's Harvest, by Edwin Arlington Robinson. Macmillan Co.
Ships in Harbour, by David Morton. G. P. Putnam's Sons.
As the Larks Rise, by Theodosia Garrison. G. P. Putnam's Sons.
Poems, by Augusta E. Stetson, C. S. D. G. P. Putnam's Sons.
Resurrecting Life, by Michael Strange. Alfred A. Knopf.
The Harvest Home, by James B. Kenyon. James T. White & Co.
Some Songs of Bilitis, by S. Fowler Wright. Birmingham, England.
Poems, by Arthur L. Phelps, English Club of Cornell College, Mount
Vernon, Iowa.
Poems, by Stewart Mitchell. Duffield & Co.
Highland Light and Other Poems, by Henry Adams Bellows. Macmillan
Co.
[176]
POETRY is one of the three good magazines in America.
Geoffrey Parsons, of the New York Tribune.
Vol. XVIII No. IV
POETRY for JULY, 1921
PAGE
Gallery of Paintings Marjorle Allen Seiffert 177
The Shop — Dingy Street — Interior — Cubist Portrait — Two
Women — Portrait of a Lady — Dream-kiss — Shadow — As
You are Now — Nocturne
Under the Tree Elizabeth Madox Roberts 185
The Cornfield— The Pilaster— The Star— Water Noises— Cres-
cent Moon — Strange Tree — A Child Asleep — My Heart
Semper Eadem Babette Deutsch 190
Fourth Dimension — Overtones — Reflections — Knowledge
Four Poems Josephine Pinckney 194
In the Barn — Strange — The Outcast — Swamp Lilies
Forgotten ... Harold Vinal 197
Numbers '. Louis Golding 198
O Changing One William A. N orris 2OI
Golden Darkness Oscar Williams 202
There was a Time — Clouds and Waves — Cobwebs — Grey —
Rains — The Golden Fleece — Because — Motes — The Subway
is Lit— The Bubble— The Return
Here in Cass Street H. M. 208
The Nebraska Laureate H. M. 212
Reviews:
A Census Spiritual H. M. 214
Little Theatre Rhythms Laura Sherry 218
Nightmare Fingers Marion Strobel 222
The Silver Stallion Oscar Williams 223
Who Writes Folk-songs? A. C. H. 227
Correspondence :
Professor Phelps and Rostand Jean Catel 232
Notes and Books Received 233, 234
Manuscripts must be accompanied by a stamped and self-addressed envelope.
Inclusive yearly subscription rates. In the United States, Mexico, Cuba and
American possessions, $3.00 net; in Canada, $3.15 net; in all other countries in the
Postal Union, $3.25 net. Entered as second-class matter Nov. 15, 1912, at the
post-office, at Chicago, 111., under Act of March 3, 1879.
Published monthly at 543 Cass St., Chicago, 111.
Copyright 1921, by Harriet Monroe. All rights reserved.
VOL. XVIII
No. IV
A Magazine of \ferse
JULY 1921
GALLERY OF PAINTINGS
THE SHOP
THE shop is red and crimson. Under the forge
Men hold red bars of iron with black iron tongs.
It crashes — sparks spatter out; it crashes again, again.
At last the iron is bent as it belongs.
Swedes, Norwegians, Poles or Greeks — they are men:
They grin when they please, look ugly when they please;
They wear black oakum in their ears for the noise;
They know their job, handle their tools with ease.
Their eyes are clean and white in their black faces;
If they like, they are surly, can speak an ugly no;
They laugh great blocks of mirth, their jokes are simple;
They know where they stand, which way they go.
[177]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
If I wore overalls, lost my disguise
Of womanhood and youth, they would call me friend;
They would see I am one of them, and we could talk
And laugh together, and smoke at the day's end.
DINGY STREET
It is twilight by the dreary edge of town,
And the December air
Is harsh and bitter. All the trees are bare,
The leaves are scattered and trodden down
To pulp; and every house is brown.
There is no trace of beauty anywhere.
Night comes slowly, the houses hide in the gloom;
But toward the muddy street
One by one their shabby windows bloom
Like golden flowers, to shine and greet
The bundled effigies on sodden feet
Trudging toward welcome in the hidden room.
There is a magic in it. There once more,
Body and spirit, they are warmed and fed.
There, as a thousand times before,
The ancient feast is spread —
The simple miracles of love and bread.
They stumble into beauty at the door.
[178]
Marjorie Allen Seiffert
INTERIOR
Words curl like fragrant smoke-wreaths in the room
From the majestic beard of an old man
Who props his shabby feet upon the stove
Recalling ancient sorrows. In the gloom
Beyond the lamp a woman thinks of love,
Her round arms wrapped in her apron, her dark head
Drooping. She has a bitter thing to learn.
His words drift over her . . . uncomforted
Her pain whirls up and twists like a scarlet thread
Among his words. He rises, shoves his chair
Back from the stove, pauses beside her there;
Shuffles irresolutely off to bed.
CUBIST PORTRAIT
She is purposeless as a cyclone; she must move
Either by chance or in a predestined groove,
Following a whim not her own, unable to shape
Her course. From chance or God even she cannot escape !
Think of a cyclone sitting far-off with its head in its hands,
Motionless, drearily longing for distant lands
Where every lonely hurricane may at last discover
Its own transcendent, implacable, indestructible lover!
What is a cyclone? Only thin air moving fast
From here to yonder, to become silent emptiness at last.
[179]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
TWO WOMEN
Two faint shadows of women were ascending
The pathway of a desolate hill,
Pale as moth-wings beneath the low-bending
Sycamore branches, in the moonlight paler still.
"This one is dead," said the moon; "her face is ashen,
She is dry as a withered leaf—
What has she known of beauty or of passion
To come by moonlight to the mountain of grief?"
"The other too is dead," said the earth, "yet her feet are
burning —
I feel them hot and restless as blown fire.
She has known many paths, why is she turning
Here, from the secret valley of desire?"
They passed, the moon paled, and from leafy places
Morning crept forth. At last they came
From the mountain of grief — women with tear-wet faces
Who had been withered leaf and shadow of flame.
PORTRAIT OF A LADY
Good morning, madam, in your sleepy brown hair —
Twist yourself awake, blink and stare!
I am lying on the floor,
With the old rose-red
[180]
Marjorie Allen Seiffert
Dressing-gown you wore
When you went to bed.
Don't look stupid with your drowsy blue eyes-
Here by the bed is your disguise !
You're a gentle wife
And a tender mother,
And all your life
You shall be no other.
Life is a shawl to wrap about your shoulder —
Every day warmer, every day older.
In half an hour
You'll be dressed,
Youth like a flower
Wilting on your breast.
DREAM-KISS
Moment of delight — most delicate,
Cool as a rose is cool;
Swift and silent as a pool
To mirror wings in flight;
Passionate as frost is passionate
With patterns intricate and white;
Pure as music in the night,
Far oflf, yet intimate —
It came
[181]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
Poignant as beauty on swift feet of flame.
It paused . . . was gone . . . most delicate
Moment of delight.
SHADOW
Like the flickering shadow
Of birds flying
Over a wide meadow,
Something passes;
Some forgotten or untold
Dream flies over,
Its wings brushing
Lightly against me, as rushing
Fingers of wind touch clover
And bending grasses.
I am cold
With the shadow of something dying.
AS YOU ARE NOW
Under golden boughs that lean and drift
You lift your head, and ripples of light
Touch the leaves till they quiver,
Reaching down in a motionless
Unachieved caress.
The branches ache with their desire,
And the wind holds its breath.
The moment dies in a shiver
[182]
Marjorie Allen Seiffert
Of icy fire — eternity and death.
Then leaves fall softly on your head.
NOCTURNE
The moonlit hill
And the black trees
Where a hidden bird
Sings and is still —
Even these
Leave me unstirred.
I am hidden deep,
Like the secret bough
Of a tree in leaf.
I am safe asleep —
What can touch me now
Of joy or grief?
For night and noon
The sky is shut,
The winds are dumb;
Behind the moon
No gates are cut
For the winds to come.
Could wind from the moon
Sweep down until,
Like a winter tree,
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
My leaves were strewn
On the moonlit hill
And I stood free,
Beauty and pain
Would touch me now
With bitter cold,
As moonbeams rain
Through a naked bough
When the year is old.
Marjorie Allen Seiffert
UNDER THE TREE
THE CORNFIELD
I went across the pasture lot
When not a one was watching me.
Away beyond the cattle barns
I climbed a little crooked tree.
And I could look down on the field
And see the corn, and how it grows
Across the world, and up and down,
In very straight and even rows.
And far away and far away —
I wonder if the farmer man
Knows all about the corn, and how
It comes together like a fan.
THE PILASTER
The church has pieces jutting out
Where corners of the walls begin.
I have one for my little house,
And I can feel myself go in.
I feel myself go in the bricks,
And I can see myself in there.
I'm always waiting all alone,
I'm sitting on a little chair.
[185]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
And I am sitting very still,
And I am waiting on and on
For something that is never there,
For something that is gone.
THE STAR
0 little one, away so far,
You cannot hear me when I sing.
You cannot tell me what you are,
1 cannot tell you anything.
WATER NOISES
When I am playing by myself,
' And all the boys are lost around,
Then I can hear the water go —
It makes a little talking sound.
Along the rocks below the tree,
I see it ripple up and wink;
And I can hear it saying on,
"And do you think? and do you think P"
A bug shoots by that snaps and ticks,
And a bird flies up beside the tree
To go into the sky to sing.
I hear it say, "Killdee, killdee!"
[186]
Elizabeth Madox Roberts
Or else a yellow cow comes down .
To splash a while and have a drink.
But when she goes I still can hear
The v/ater say, "And do you think?"
CRESCENT MOON
And Dick said, "Look what I have found!"
And when we saw we danced around,
And made our feet just tip the ground.
We skipped our toes and sang, "Oh-lo!
Oh-who, oh-who, oh what do you know!
Oh-who, oh-hi, oh-loo, kee-lo!"
We clapped our hands and sang, "Oh-ee!"
It made us jump and laugh to see
The little new moon above the tree.
STRANGE TREE
Away beyond the Jarboe house
I saw a different kind of tree.
Its trunk was old and large and bent,
And I could feel it look at me.
The road was going on and on
Beyond, to reach some other place.
I saw a tree that looked at me,
And yet it did not have a face.
[187]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
It looked at me with all its limbs;
It looked at me with all its bark.
The yellow wrinkles on its sides
Were bent and dark.
And then I ran to get away,
But when I stopped and turned to see,
The tree was bending to the side
And leaning out to look at me.
A CHILD ASLEEP
And I looked for him everywhere
Because I wanted him to play;
And then I found him on his bed
Asleep, but it was day.
His eyes were shut behind the lids —
He couldn't lift them up to see.
And I looked at him very long,
And something in him looked at me.
And he was something like a cat
That is asleep, and like a dog;
Or like a thing that's in the woods
All day behind a log.
And then I was afraid of it,
Of something that was sleeping there.
[188]
Elizabeth Madox Roberts
I didn't even say his name,
But I came down the stair.
MY HEART
My heart is beating up and down,
Is walking like some heavy feet.
My heart is going every day,
And I can hear it jump and beat.
At night before I go to sleep
I feel it beating in my head;
I hear it jumping in my neck
And in the pillow on my bed.
And then I make some little words
To go along and say with it —
The men are sailing home from Troy,
And all the lamps are lit.
The men are sailing home from Troy,
And all the lamps are lit.
Elizabeth Madox Roberts
[189]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
SEMPER EADEM
FOURTH DIMENSION
His life was strangely hedged about
By three, though he seemed not to know it:
One whom he loved, who shut him out;
One hid her passion in her doubt;
One was too fond and wise to show it.
The first blew on desire's dark flame
Until he tossed with every flicker
In agonies of sad self-blame,
That left him tired, but not yet tame
Enough to cease love's tireless bicker.
The second tried in vain to bind him,
Uncertain of what stirred in each.
Walking through labyrinths to find him,
She saw him shorn, but could not blind him;
And silence was her wittiest speech.
The third had known him since she bore him;
And suffered, though she may have smiled,
To know that barren wishes tore him,
When one was ready to adore him
As if he were not still her child.
Too wise to hate the one he wanted,
Too fond to pity her he scorned,
[190]
Eabette Deutsch
Her hours, like his own, were haunted
By devils that might well have daunted
A monster likewise hoofed and horned.
The first, meeting his mother, knew her
A woman very like her own.
The second wondered how to woo her,
While ever seeking to eschew her,
Fearful of what she must have known.
And so their days were all one tangle
Of this, one dropped, and that, one dared.
While he, from his peculiar angle,
Half-wished that loneliness might strangle
What they so curiously shared.
OVERTONES
Keep up your talk —
There is no need for silence now.
I am content to listen, and watch you now.
Your voice stops while you walk.
You move about,
And toss back from your brow
The lock that always falls across your brow.
Your grin is tinged with doubt.
Einstein and art
And ranching — it goes on somehow.
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
Don't stop, or it will be too much somehow,
And you will hear my heart.
REFLECTIONS
Your eyes were strange with sorrow: were there tears
That touched their color to such troubled light?
Those mirrors wherein mine had shone so bright
Refused the image, looking on the years,
Like naked runners running upon spears,
That showed so impotently few tonight —
The pageant of a passion men requite
With death, and freedom whose chief wage is fears.
I would have outstared sorrow in your eyes,
But looking on them, mine reflected yours
As the most lucid pool shows stormy skies,
Cloud facing cloud, when deepest calm endures.
And though my lips had drunk your bitter wine,
You would have tasted bitterer, touching mine.
KNOWLEDGE
Now there is no confusion in our love —
For you are there
With the big brow, the cheek of tougher grain,
The rougher greying hair;
And I am here, with a woman's throat and hands.
We are apart and different.
[192]
Babette Deutsch
And there is something difference understands
That peace knows nothing of.
It is the pain in pleasure that we seek
To kill with kisses, and revive
With other kisses;
For by our hurt we know we are alive.
The tides return into the salty sea,
And the sea-fingered rocks are swept and grey.
There are no secrets where the sea has crept,
But the sea
Has kept its ageless mystery.
And we,
Beaten by the returning passional tides,
Searched by the stabbing fingers,
Washed and lapped and worn by the old assault,
Knowing again
The bitterness of the receding wave,
With renewed wonder facing the old pain,
We are as close
As one wave fallen upon another wave;
We are as far
As the sky's star from the sea-shaken star.
Love is not the moon
Pulling the whole sea up to her.
And there is something darkness understands
These moons know nothing of.
Babette Deutsch
[193]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
FOUR POEMS
IN THE BARN
The sun, in wanton pride,
Drenches the country-side
With spilt gold from his old autumnal store.
But Scipio sits within the barn's thick gloom,
The merest crack of light coming in the door —
Sits and husks the corn long after working hours.
Vainly for him the autumn bloom
Is on the flowers.
The inside of the barn is velvet black
Except where a gold thread runs along a crack;
And the inquisitive sun thrusts points of light
Through chink and cranny, piercing the midnight.
The dry husks rattle, and his shuffling feet
Keep time to what he sings — an elusive tune,
Husky and monotonous and sweet,
Scarce audible, so softly does he croon
To keep away the evil eye:
Everybody
Who is livin
Got to die.
Across the evening fields the setting sun
Richly intones toil done.
The home-bound negroes idle in the lanes,
Gossiping as they go; coarse laughter falls
Josephine Pinckney
On the resonant air; from a far field cat-calls
Float over, and a banjo's strains.
Shucking corn in the darkness, Scipio in reply
Sits and sings his mournful, husky stave:
Wid a silver spade
You kin dig my grave;
Everybody
Who is livin
Got to die.
STRANGE
We believed
That the tides of our being
Set to each other.
But when we came to speak,
There was a distance between us
More wide and strange
Than the silvery waste
Of the marsh under the moon.
And your voice came
From that untrodden stillness
Like the calling of some marsh creature
Disturbed — seeking.
And I, too, was dumb — frozen,
Like the flood-tide
And moon-silent marsh.
[195]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
THE OUTCAST
Into the valleys I flee, into the shadows;
But there is no peace, no sanctuary.
The hills, like elephants,
Shoulder noiseless through the clouds
And close in on me.
Where shall I hide from the tread of their feet ?
I have overset the gods in the temples, and there is none
to protect me —
The little gods of jade with staring eyes,
The great gold and black gods with foolish faces.
Tell me, little gods of the North and East, and of the
South and West,
How long shall my bones wait, lying on these rocks,
To become as white as the broken plaster
Of the images in the temple?
Tell me, true gods,
Speak a swift word! —
For the clouds descend in a hot white mist of wrath,
And through them stamp the elephants . . .
The terrible elephants . . .
Trumpeting . . .
SWAMP LILIES
Today I feel new-born, for I have seen
A stretch of cloistered wood thick-spread with green,
[196]
Josephine Pinckney
Where wet wild lilies grew on every side,
Streaming away — an immobile white tide.
Not as the sun that bursts upon our eyes
At morning, making glory of the skies,
But like the slow, pervading evening light
They filled the eye — a world of silvery white
Withdrawn and exquisite, as from the sod
They breathed the still inviolateness of God.
Josephine Pinckney
FORGOTTEN
How can I remember
Autumn and pain,
When trees hold dreams
In their arms again?
How can my heart break
Till it cries?
The joy of summer
Has made me wise.
I can't remember
What hurt me so —
Autumn and winter
Were so long ago.
Harold Final
[197]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
NUMBERS
Three sheep graze on the low hill
Beneath the shadow of five trees.
Three sheep!
Five old sycamores !
(The noon is very full of sleep.
The noon's a shepherd kind and still.
The noon's a shepherd takes his ease
Beneath the shadow of five trees,
Five old sycamores.)
Three sheep graze on the low hill.
Down in the grass, in twos and fours,
Cows are munching in the field.
Three sheep graze on the low hill :
Bless them, Lord, to give me wool.
Cows are munching in the field:
Bless them that their teats be full.
Bless the sheep and cows to yield
Wool to keep my children warm,
Milk that they should grow therefrom.
Three sheep graze on the low hill,
Beneath five sycamores.
Cows are munching in the field,
All in twos and fours.
On an elm-tree far aloof
There are nine-and-twenty crows,
Louis Go Id ing
Croaking to the blue sky roof
Fifteen hundred ancient woes.
In a cracked deserted house,
Six owls cloaked with age and dream-
In a cracked deserted house,
Six owls wait upon a beam,
Wait for the nocturnal mouse.
In the stackyard at my farm
There are fourteen stacks of hay.
Lord, I pray
Keep my golden goods from harm,
Fourteen shining stacks of hay!
Fourteen shining stacks of hay,
Six owls, nine-and-twenty crows,
Three sheep grazing on the hill
Beneath five sycamores,
Fat cows munching in a field,
All in twos and fours —
Fat cows munching in a field,
Fourteen shining stacks of hay.
At a table in a room
Where beyond the window-frames
Glows the sweet geranium —
At a table in a room
My three children play their games
Till their father-poet come.
[199]
POEfRY: A Magazine of Verse
Stop a moment, listen, wait
Till a father-poet come —
Lovely ones of lovely names,
He shall not come late.
Fourteen shining stacks of hay,
Six owls, nine-and-twenty crows,
Fifteen hundred ancient woes,
Three sheep grazing on the hill
Beneath five sycamores,
Fat cows munching in a field
All in twos and fours —
Fourteen shining stacks of hay,
My three lovely children, one
Mother laughing like the sun,
Sweetheart laughing like the sun
When the baby laughters run.
Now the goal I sought is won,
Sweetheart laughing like the sun,
Now the goal I sought is won,
Sweet, my song is done.
Louis G aiding
[200]
O CHANGING ONE
Sometimes, O changing one,
Your feet are like white foam
Riding the long blue rhythms of my thought —
Like foam on a subsiding lake
In the hour next before sunset.
And sometimes your feet are leaves
Red from the first frost,
Whirling into the corners of my mind,
Whirling into the sunlight again;
Dancing, chaotic,
Gay in their brief autumn.
But sometimes
Your feet are like black velvet,
And you move without sound within the shadows;
You circle the firelight of my thought.
And I, by the red fire that fights the shadows,
Wonder what prey you seek —
I, not wholly at ease.
William A. N orris
[201]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
GOLDEN DARKNESS
THERE WAS A TIME
There was a time when I was shy and lonely,
And stood in strange bewilderment apart;
And no one spoke to me, and silence only
Would fold my songs into her tender heart.
There was a time when only windy darkness
Would fan my dreams with glamoured loveliness.
But you have come, and nights are filled with starkness;
And I am lonely for my loneliness.
Oh, you have come — and silence is a stranger,
And darkness keeps aloof from my distress;
And you — oh, you are all too fraught with danger,
And I am lonely for my loneliness.
CLOUDS AND WAVES
With bent heads hidden the clouds run by,
Muffled in shadow, across the sky.
With lowered eyes, in the darkness of the sea,
The hunched lean waves scud away fearfully.
How great is the wrong, and where is the place?
What is the truth that they cannot face?
[202]
Oscar Williams
COBWEBS
Rise in the cool dim dawn
When a mist is hung on the pane —
The loose gray cobweb of the fog
Spun by the rain.
When the sun's long golden fingers
Have brushed it away — then go
And watch the sky through the tree-tops
Fall like snow.
And after, when you are tired
And twilight hangs on the leaves,
Listen — and the silence will tell you
Why it grieves.
For the fog, the sky and the twilight
Are the cobwebs that brush the eyes
When a man would enter the dusty door
Of paradise.
GREY
A bleak wind rides on the waves,
And the shadowy foam is hurled.
Grey rains are on the hills,
And a grey dusk is over the world.
Bleak moods and shadowy moods
Move like the moods of the sea;
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The mist, a grey unspoken thought,
Is looking strangely at me.
And I am lost in greyness —
My dreams are still and furled;
For the grey rains are on the hills,
And a grey dusk is over the world.
RAINS
In the country the rain comes softly with timid feet;
A grey silence is in her face, and strands of darkness
blowing from her hair,
And trees are dark in her eyes, and the wind is a mournful
gesture.
Softly the rain comes over the hills and her face is memory:
It is filled with the twilight blowing of waves and grasses;
It is filled with shadowy cloud-paws feeling among the
valleys;
It is filled with the leap of trees that are instantly caught
by the earth.
The spirit of all things breathes on the invisible pane of
time,
And slowly out of the shadows the grey face of the rain
comes into being —
Softly the rain comes over the hills and her face is sorrow.
But the rain in the city is a j azz rain :
The legs of the rain in the city are nimble —
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Oscar Williams
She is loud on the stones, on the roof-tops, on the windows;
Her dancing is filled with the sway and the glitter of tinsel.
Behind her the street is a wide grin, showing the black
teeth of houses —
The street is a wicked leer dark with ugly passion.
But though the laughter of the jazz rain is coarse in the
gutter,
Though her legs are nimble and innumerable on the pave-
ments,
Though the jazz rain speaks so loud,
The brazen rain has never a word for me.
THE GOLDEN FLEECE
I know that life is Jason,
And that beauty is the witch-maiden helping him.
I know that the soft, luminous night of stars
Is the golden fleece he is seeking.
I know that in the beginning
He sowed the boulders, the teeth of dead ages,
And the innumerable armored cities have arisen.
I know that he has thrown among them love and desire,
And they have warred and shall war with each other until
the end.
And if you doubt the least word I have said,
Come out on the dark beach some strange summer night
And watch the huge quivering serpent of the ocean
Still coiled around the trunk of the tree of paradise.
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BECAUSE
Because I have not kissed as yet one burning mouth,
I have kissed a hundred.
Because I have not looked into one pair of eyes,
A hundred have haunted me.
Because I have not lived one hour in passion's flame,
I have died in a hundred others.
MOTES
The stars are mystical motes
Delicately glimmering
In blue sunlight.
I move my hand
Through the elfin radiance,
And my fingers are strange
With dream and glamour.
THE SUBWAY IS LIT
The subway is lit like a great cathedral,
And myriad shadows whisper and float.
But the eyes of darkness are filled with fury,
And a scream of steel is in the wind's throat.
The trains are moving like things of madness,
And the eyes of men have a glassy stare.
Where is the music of holiness?
And where the uplifted face of a prayer?
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Oscar Williams
THE BUBBLE
We have kings, and the deadly sins seven;
We have lives for all things that die;
We have wars and quite a bit of trouble:
But God, ensconced in his heaven,
Watches through air blue as sky,
And delights in his beautiful bubble.
THE RETURN
In some far and lonely midnight
I shall arise as in a dream,
And part dark curtains on a strange room
Where mysterious candles gleam.
I shall open an unknown book
In that weird and wind-stirred place,
•And come upon a poem
With a sad face.
I shall listen to my dead heart's cry
Faint through the years that are gone,
And I shall feel over my shoulder
The Silence looking on.
And very softly he will touch me,
And I shall turn toward the gloom;
He will take my arm and quietly
Lead me out of the room.
Oscur Williams
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COMMENT
HERE IN CASS STREET
WE should like to pass on to our readers a more
liberal share of the "life" of the POETRY office — to
introduce them to our extremely varied callers, show them
scraps of our still more varied correspondence, let them
read our contradictory clippings. And if only the seal
of confidence could be removed, we should make them
laugh by printing a few of our "museum" features — poems
so amusingly bad that we could not bear to send them
back without making copies for preservation.
One day, for example, the arriving editor discovers, so
to speak, a foundling on the door-step — a young poet
from New York or Oklahoma who has started out to see
the world with a few dollars in his pocket, and who must
find some kind of a job in State Street or La Salle to
keep him fed and housed, and to oil the wheels of his
journey. Again, an elderly poet-adventurer appears
fresh from prison, where he had been tangled up in some
friend's attempt at counterfeiting — a lank starveling
figure, the gaunt picture of despair, but offering, to the
editor's surprise, two or three acceptable poems; and
leaping alive, even to a smile, at the actual receipt of a
check. Or, a rainy morning is brightened with color by
the visit of two quite astonishingly superb English ladies —
a poet and her sister — who are speeding through the town
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Here in Cass Street
with their uncle, Sir Kenneth Somebody, and who leave
us edition-de-luxe books and Queen of Sheba memories.
Helen Hoyt once gave us a guest book — it was while
she was still Helen Hoyt, two years before her bridal
New Year's day of 1921, when she became Mrs. William
Whittingham Lyman out in California and took up her
abode in Berkeley. Let us look over its entries since
Christmas, and pause a moment with a few of the visitors:
There are Henry Bellamann and Glenn Ward Dresbach
just before the turn of the year. Southern poets both,
the one from South Carolina and the other New Mexico:
Mr. Bellamann a musician, as well as president of the
Columbia Poetry Society; and Mr. Dresbach an efficiency
expert — a rare talent for a poet! — who had been making
copper efficacious at Tyrone. And with the new year
comes Edward Sapir from Ottawa, where he has been
gathering and translating French-Canadian folk-songs.
And bluff, black-bearded Jo Davidson, sculptor of all
the war-heroes, draws his inky portrait in the book.
And little Winifred Bryher writes her slender name
there — the quiet English girl-author who was even then
on her way to New York to surprise her friends by marry-
ing Robert McAlmon.
Sara Bard Field, the warrior-suffragette from California;
and Nora Douglas Holt, the beautiful bronze-colored
founder and editor of the new and interesting Negro
organ, Music and Poetry — these two are neighbors in the
book. A week later comes John Drinkwater, and at the
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end of March Franklin P. Adams, the St. Simeon Stylites
of the New York Tribune. Next Clinton Masseck, now
of Kansas, erstwhile a warrior in the most fiery battle-line
of the Argonne. A few days later it is Nicolas Roerich,
the big-brained, high-souled Russian painter and dreamer,
whose pictures are a more vivid revelation than Lenin's
politics; and whose poems — if we could get at them in
the three or four books he has published, may be as full
of color and vitality.
And so it goes. The correspondence is more full of
contrasts, possibly, than the visitors. Bits of it come
from remote corners of the earth, but most of it bears
George Washington's familiar red portrait on the envelope.
The editor is asked not only to criticize poems — that is
an obvious and common request — but to advise about
publishers, to prepare club programs; to write an article
on Florence Kiper Frank or Haniel Long for the benefit
of some college-student's thesis; to reveal the author of
some wandering poem — usually an incredibly poor one;
to save some hapless poet from starvation or get him out
of jail; to pass judgment on some elaborate system of
psycho-analysis, or on some meticulous questionnaire
which is to reveal with mathematical accuracy the ability
of students in a certain great university to judge poetry—
a questionnaire which so befuddles the editor's brain that
judging poetry becomes a madhouse dance. These are
but a few of the demands put forth by acquisitive minds —
sometimes of marvellous ingenuity, and still more marvel-
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Here in Cass Street
lous confidence in the editor's lavishness of time, interest
and spirit to meet them.
The poets themselves are usually more reasonable than
these questioners who are studying or writing about them.
Of course now and then the ego flaps its wings and
temperament becomes temper, but on the whole they are
tolerant of the editor's short-comings and astonishingly
patient during that too-long period which usually divides
acceptance from publication. They are very different —
these poets: one, an I. W. W. coal-miner; another, a
bedridden invalid in New Zealand; number three, a fine
lady in the smartest of smart sets; number four, a planta-
tion Negro in Georgia; number five, a Syrian rug-dealer;
number six, a live-wire reporter on the New York Scald;
seven, a corporation lawyer; eight, a little crippled
seamstress sewing and writing in a wheeled chair; nine,
a lovely red-haired siren, the heroine of an hundred
romances; ten, a lonely spinster, inaccessible in her
emotional desert; eleven, a half-mad starveling whose
little gleam of genius may be extinguished by niggardly
denial of light and air and food for body and soul; and
twelve, fortune's favorite, whose gleam may be extin-
guished by the sheer mass and weight of his possessions
and opportunities. And there are the married and the
single, the too much married and too little, the much
divorced and the undivorced, and the careless few who
get on without any of these formalities.
In short, there are today five hundred and ninety-six
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names in POETRY'S card-index of accepted poets; and a
history, thrilling but never to be fully revealed, goes with
each card. Nearly a score of nationalities are represented
either directly or through immigration, and forty-one of
our forty-eight states, besides the District of Columbia
and Hawaii. One of the severest shocks of the editor's
career is the discovery that Indiana is not among them.
Are there no poets left in Riley's own state, the state
where they were wont to foregather and go on pilgrimages?
Or have the poets of Indiana, one and all, boycotted
POETRY? Anyway, Indiana is missing from our list,
along with Delaware, Idaho, North Dakota, Mississippi,
North Carolina and Utah.
It's a long and crowded trail we have travelled these
eight-and-a-half stirring years. H. M.
THE NEBRASKA LAUREATE
The legislature of the state of Nebraska has fitly
honored its most conspicuous poet-citizen by appointing
him Poet Laureate of the state. Mr. Neihardt earns this
distinction not only by his artistic achievement in general,
but also by the fact that, as the resolution puts it, he "has
written a national epic wherein he has developed the
mood of courage with which our pioneers explored and
subdued our plains, and thus has inspired in Americans
that love of the land and its heroes whereby great national
traditions are built and perpetuated."
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The Nebraska Laureate
We congratulate Nebraska upon its gracious decree,
and Mr. Neihardt upon the official appreciation of his
state. The appreciation might have been further empha-
sized by a salary or some form of financial award, but
perhaps that is too ideal an expression of truly poetic
justice to expect at present.
We have criticized Mr. Neihardt's artistic principles and
methods in the writing of his epic narratives, but a differ-
ence of opinion in detail does not prevent our appreciation
of his artistic sincerity and quality, and of the value of
his exploration of a field too little recognized in the arts.
It will be remembered that one volume of the projected
trilogy, The Song of Three Friends, shared last year with
the Poems of the late Gladys Cromwell first honors in the
P. S. A. prize award for the best book of verse published
by a poet of the United States during the year 1919.
The New York Evening Mail discovers "subtle Sinn-
Fein propaganda" in the new Nebraska laureateship.
This would seem to be straining a point, even if Mr.
Neihardt were an Irishman, which no one ventures to
allege of a poet born in Illinois of middle-western ancestry.
However, this laureateship is not quite the first, the
Nebraska State Journal to the contrary notwithstanding;
for in 1919 the legislature of California bestowed a similar
honor upon Miss Ina Coolbrith in declaring her, by official
decree, "The Loved Laurel-crowned Poet of California."
H. M.
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REVIEWS
A CENSUS SPIRITUAL
I
Domesday Book, by Edgar Lee Masters. Macmillan Co.
Mr. Masters is both a lawyer and a poet — a fact which
has advantages and disadvantages. As a lawyer, it
makes him one of the shrewdest, most keenly imaginative
cross-examiners who ever turned inside-out the soul of
an unfortunate witness; and, on the other hand, it prob-
ably tempts him away from legal drynesses and asperities.
As a poet, it gives him a comprehensive and sympathetic
experience of the "innards" of life — the human motives
and processes, enforcing upon him respect for the truth,
for all the aspects and values in any given "case"; and,
on the other hand, it carries these qualities too far toward
absolute legal justice, involving the precision and prolixity
of an argument or brief, with its thorough and searching
statements of all aspects of a given question.
The mere use of a ten-syllable iambic line through hun-
dreds of pages of course does not make a poem; it may as
well be admitted that many of these monologues are
throughout the baldest prose, and that even the finest of
them have passages which strain the rather liberal ameni-
ties usually accorded to the epic bard. Indeed, a more
exacting taste would have struck out quite a number — the
statements of people whose tangent touch upon Elenor
Murray was too remote to be artistically relevant.
However, after granting the numerous and manifest
A Census Spiritual
deductions, Domesday Book establishes its epic claim.
Not by accomplishing its specific charge, to be
a census spiritual
Taken of our America —
although perhaps it comes nearer than any other book to
such a prodigious achievement — but by the sheer im-
mensity and weight of its masses, the depth and richness
of its colors, all thrown together into a rough shapeliness,
and charged with a rude glamour, like a mountain lifted
against the sunset fires of the sky. The mountain has not
been molded and perfected by art, in all details it is
faulty; yet there it stands, of a truth and beauty formida-
ble and unquestionable.
Mr. Masters' book, whether a complete " census spiritual "
or not, is life — modern life, unfaltering, uncompromising
and unashamed; not a mere photograph, moreover, but a
transfigured vision presenting the beauty and terror in-
herent in the human tragedy — in our modern human
tragedy, which always seems half wrought out, infinitely
complicated, unachieved, a thing to laugh as well as to
weep. Like all artists of power and sweep, this poet
neither palliates nor apologizes. He carries his heroine
and her friends through deeds of vulgar disrepute and
even crime, and yet brings them out unbereft of piteous
dignity and beauty. He accepts all, with understanding
and sympathy for human frailty and aspiration.
Nf Certain of the actors in the ever-widening circles of this
drama confess themselves with ruthless precision, so that
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we know them completely and recognize their hard
dilemma. Henry Murray, for example, the ineffectual
father who sees his girl slipping away and agonizes be-
cause he is powerless to hold her:
This daughter and myself, while temperaments
Kept us at swords' points, while I saw in her
Traits of myself I liked not, also traits
Of the child's mother which I loathe, because
They have undone me.
And Gregory Wenner, futile both as business man and
lover. And Gottlieb Gerald, absorbed in making pianos
and dreams. And the slap-dash Alaska man and the
cheaply second-rate Barrett Bays — both accepting all
they could get for as slight a return as possible. And
finally Elenor Murray herself:
Who was this woman?
This Elenor Murray was America.
Corrupt, deceived, deceiving, self-deceived,
Half-disciplined, half-lettered, crude and smart;
Enslaved yet wanting freedom; brave and coarse,
Cowardly, shabby, hypocritical;
Generous, loving, noble, full of prayer;
Scorning, embracing rituals, recreant
To Christ so much professed; adventuresome;
Curious, mediocre, venal; hungry
For money, place, experience; restless — no
Repose, restraint; before the world made up
To act and sport ideals — go abroad
To bring the world its freedom, having choked
Freedom at home: the girl was this because
These things were bred in her — she breathed them in
Here where she lived and grew.
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A Census Spiritual
• Yet that word, however searching, is not all. One of
the jurymen protests:
Look at her — she's brave,
Devoted, loyal, true and dutiful.
She's will to life, and through it senses God,
And seeks to serve the cosmic soul.
And with all potencies clamorous but impotent within
her; giving herself away generously, passionately, but
always wastefully, she passes by and goes out like a little
flickering torch borne by Fate through the high winds of
Time.
Does the poet prove his thesis? Does he make this
girl — restless, sterile, erotic, but somehow clinging to, even
while violating, a certain integrity of soul — a symbol of
our country of tireless searching, immense achievement
and fertile dreams ? Probably most of us will deny the
authority and completeness of the picture; probably the
most searching critical challenge to this epic bard would
be a demand for a hero, or heroine — for a single luminous
soul to whom our hope and faith might cling. The heroic
is found in life, and in all the great epics of the past.
Perhaps it is not justly evident here.
However, whether we grant the main thesis or not, the
book has immensity of scope and power. It is a modern
tale of psychological adventure; grouping somewhat with
The Ring and the Book, no doubt, but taking an every-day
American life, through peace and war, as its text, instead
of a mediaeval Italian crime. It is a rounding-up of our
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modern human democracy by a poet of profound experi-
ence and insight. H. M.
LITTLE THEATRE RHYTHMS
Plays for Merry Andrews ', by Alfred Kreymborg. Sunwise
Turn, New York.
There are certain Broadway critics, using the term
generically, who decry the potentialities of the "Little
Theatres" because they do not function like Big Theatres.
Without considering the medium, or the plays written
and produced through this medium, these critics damn
them as piffling. It will require a new hatch of critics
to handle this art of the Little Theatre.
Because a small group gathers to hear subtleties in
humor, minute shadings in tone, experiments in rhythms;
to concentrate on complexities or relax to simplicities, one
may not necessarily infer that its blood is thin. A healthy
audience functions in various ways; it does not always
wear i ts heart on its sleeve, or stand in a ten-acre lot to
hear its soul bellowed to the highways.
Alfred Kreymborg's soul would feel cramped in a ten-
acre lot, whereas it expands in intimacy. He has accepted
the Little Theatre as his natural medium, accepted it
also as a form of art to be expressed through poetry,
music, and dance. We have here no note-book jottings
from real life, dialogue heard in passing, sketch life-class
work. In the Plays for Merry Andrews, the use of sug-
Little Theatre Rhythms
gestion is not so remote as with many of the Fifth Avenue
school of "opacity." In a play the poet must consider
that the auditor does not register with the same concen-
tration as the reader. Mr. Kreymborg's simplicity ap-
pears to be guileless, but there is always the suggestion
under his naive surfaces. His rhythms and images are
easy to imitate, but not his charm and his humor; and to
capture his agile handling of suggestion is a challenge —
the quiet glance with a keen edge back of it which points
up to a dart and shoots through so deftly that we are
unaware of its awareness.
In the matter of rhythm, he is not an "eye poet." He
is a musician arranging and combining words as notes
and musical phrases. He writes gavottes, scherzos,
minuets and fugues; and he sings and dances his thoughts
about the stage. Often his verbal attempts at poly-
phonic musical forms result only in the husk of tone. His
words do not always vibrate, but on the whole there is a
blending of tone through the combining of vibrations
from his succession of sounds. His rhythms riot in their
variety through all of his plays, which helps to promote
the feeling of dance. When his staccato verges on the
monotonous he gives it a fillip with a sudden turn or lift.
One culminating effect which he uses is to lead us up to the
height of expectancy, and leave his suggestion suspended
in mid-air while we go soaring on the impetus.
The rhythms of his prose are neither "intentionally
odd" nor "intentionally dark"; they are patterned to
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express his whimsical personality according to the varied
meanings of his fanciful plot. Take a passage of staccato
from Vote the New Moon. The citizens are voting, they
are definite and determined, and although their hammers
have been dropped the concise rapping is continued in the
speech:
Crier. Burgher, what do you mean by "One for the red"? —
Burgess, you by "One for the blue"?
Burgher. I mean —
Burgess. I mean —
Crier. What do you mean?
Burgher. We mean —
Burgess. We're tired —
Crier. Tired?
Burgher. Of old moons —
Burgess. We want —
Crier. You want?
Duo. A new moon!
He also uses his staccato to convey his numerous sprightly
moods. Again in Vote the New Moon the harmonized
resolve to vote for the purple is expressed in a fine blend-
ing of resounding vibration: .
Burgher. One for the purple —
Burgess. One for the purple —
Burgher. One for the purple —
Burgess. One for the purple —
ending in a strong chord from the Crier —
Crier. Blasphemous !
Although this volume is freer from the fault shown in
his earlier group of Poem Mimes — the fault of assembling
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Little Theatre Rhythms
poems more or less related into a play instead of conceiving
the play as a whole poem, in quality it falls short of the
earlier book, which is consistently fanciful, poetic, musical.
The Plays for Merry Andrews is made up of two plays in
this earlier manner — Vote the New Moon and Monday —
whose quality is up to his standard while they have de-
veloped in form. The two attempts to mix the reality
of farce and burlesque with the fanciful result in At the
Sign of the Thumb and Nose and Uneasy Street. Of these
the first is the more successful, the second being a rather
doubtful experiment for the Little Theatre. The bulk
of the coffin would crowd the humor off the boards. It
begins in irony and ends in farce. The first half is nicely
pointed and balanced, but this is lost in the later con-
fusion of a rather commonplace dialogue and a bizarre
ending. The Silent Waiter is a topic discussed with some
new angles, but it is not a good play. The handling of the
window panels, the hands, and the headless waiter, while
piquing the interest at first, proves tricky. The end of
the discussion is trite.
The danger of the subtleties of the Little Theatre be-
coming effete is obvious, but then there is the danger of
the Big Theatre becoming banal. The two theatres
cannot be paralleled — they are two different mediums.
Alfred Kreymborg's danger lies in his facility to sing,
to be whimsical, to charm; in the temptation to spread his
material too thin and caper for the fun of capering.
Laura Sherry
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NIGHTMARE FINGERS
Resurrecting Life, by Michael Strange. Alfred A. Knopf.
Clair de Lune, by Michael Strange. G. P. Putnam's Sons.
The New York Times, quoted on the jacket of the first
of these books, recommends it as follows:
Michael Strange is a signature underneath which can always be found
images, phrases, the embodiment in colorful words of things seen or
felt or thought, so unusual and so outstanding that they strike the
attention at once and remain in the memory.
Benjamin De Casseres says of it:
The poems of Michael Strange do not "fly to the eyes." They touch
you remotely at first as with nightmare fingers. You go back to study
them, to concentrate on them, to marry them.
In the light of such praise, it is only fair to give an
example:
O those vast limbs in the chrysalis of me —
O this titanic aerial being so fettered yet
In the slime of my defective understanding —
This God with spheres nestling in His palm
Asleep in me yet —
And veiled in the stupor of my fear of things
Concerning this one tiny world.
However, in case one quotation is insufficient, and be-
cause the poems have as yet only touched us "with night-
mare fingers" whereas someone else may want to "marry
them," it may be reassuring to quote Vision in its en-
tirety:
I will follow the inward chime
Back through empurpling cups of concave hills —
Back through a swaying clot of drowned faces —
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Nightmare Fingers
(All fastened and by nightmare pain into the sedges of memory)
Back through those negative rivers stilled past egress —
And out at last beyond brightening grasses —
Grasses rushing up into hills — peaks —
And up through these through a fume of clouds — aye at last into ether —
Ether — bright with those silver tracks of planet- visiting angels —
And austerely fragrant from the trailing of their doom-lined scarves —
Aye — out into ether humming from the dart of stars
Shaken by a choral thunder —
Until at last appearing among arching naves —
These ascending in architectural jet —
And arrested in vast foaming coils of livid lace —
And where — enlarging at the farthest end of distance —
The Eucharist — chromatic-rayed
And holding forth its Mystic Tenant —
Of Transfigured Rest.
Clair de Lune, the play by this author which John
Barrymore produced recently in New York, is at least
written in prose. Marion Strobel
THE SILVER STALLION
Young Girl and Other Poems, by Hildegarde Planner;
with an introduction and decorations by Porter Garnett.
H. S. Crocker Co., San Francisco.
Poems for Men, by John Austin. Basil Blackwell, Oxford.
Star-drift, by Brian Padraic O'Seasnain. Four Seas Co.
Poems and Essays, by Alfred Hitch. Privately printed,
Stockton, Cal.
Moods of Manhattan, by Louise Mallinckrodt Kueffner.
Modernist Press, New York.
The Blue Crane, by Ivan Swift. James T. White & Co.
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High Company, by Harry Lee. Fred. A. Stokes Co.
A Music-teacher s Note-book, by Henry Bellamann.
Poetry Book Shop, New York.
Wading through these young first books reminded me
of a time I had last summer looking for a run-away horse
in the Maine woods. The silver stallion appears for an
instant, now and then, but it is an uncomfortable business
looking for him through the uncouth growths.
Possibly Hildegarde Planner offers us freer and wider
glimpses through the leaves of her little volume. Indeed,
her book is a small wood of white birch-trees, pale and
slender and frail. The poems are delicate, and in This
Morning she offers us a moment like this:
After the emotion of rain
The mist parts across the morning,
Like the smile of one
Who has laughed in sleep
And cannot remember why.
There is a quaint simplicity in Discovery, but in the
main the book lacks music, though one finds a hint of
music and even strength in Communion. Young Girl
received last year the Emily Chamberlain Cook Prize at
the University of California; and she is almost, if not
entirely, worthy of the beautiful dress and golden orna-
ments which Porter Garnett and the Crocker Company
have so generously given her.
Mr. Austin's Poems for Men, if more virile, are full of a
cold reserve, and a traditional and hampering growth of
words; and coming, as they do, in the newer and freer
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The Silver Stallion
forms, they are but the wolf in sheep's clothing. The book
is studied stuff, impersonal and unstirring, but in the
rhyming verses the poet confesses a little, and in A Bed-
room one comes on —
The fancied forest of Desire,
Among whose unseen leaves
Flits the golden-feathered bird.
I have read and re-read Star-drift and Poems and
Essays, trying to be convinced that they are poetry. I
cannot doubt that Mr. Q'Seasnain and Mr. Hitch appreci-
ate the glittering of great cities at night and the beauty of
a dawn over the mountains; I cannot doubt that the won-
der of earth has a word for them, that they have ideas,
that Mr. O'Seasnain is "furious with the littlenesses of
life," and that Mr. Hitch sees "his old age with its white
hair — a signal of distress, white flag of surrender," and
is sometimes struck with the futility of his own too many
words. But what has all this to do with the great silver
stallion whose hoof-beats are shaking the unknown winds
like curtains over the hills?
Somewhat removed from forests and the mythological
silver stallion, is Miss Kueffner's Moods of Manhattan.
In Afterword she begs us not to ask, Is it prose? — is it
verse ? And we shall spare her the inconvenience of asking
her, Is it poetry? We shall not compare or contrast her
with Whitman or Sandburg whom she has obviously
imitated, and the only little comment we make is, that
her work is very much like Oppenheim — at his worst.
[225]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
The Blue Crane, by Ivan Swift, is crammed with re-
spectability and politeness, and a triteness that some-
times washes its face. Old-fashioned words like yon, thy,
full sure are found all over the book. And for Mr. Swift
"A quiet place is full of eloquent whispers," a tree is
"a trim sentry," and "I fain would laugh," if you please!
Captain Harry Lee probably realizes that his High
Company is shredded prose, as he subtitles it Sketches.
Some of these are good war sketches, simple and sincere,
and there is sympathy and drama in Winged Heels.
Others are sentimental and melodramatic, and through
the whole book runs the so-called free-verse style of
certain cigarette advertisements. John Burroughs, who
in a recent issue of Current Opinion called Mr. Sandburg's
poetry "Bolshevic trash", wrote on the cover of High
Company, "These poems have great merit; they strike
me as about the best free-verse poetry I have seen."
I have saved the last book for a little relief. One finds
in Mr. Bellamann's poems a precision and a choice of
words that give a mood without any fringes, or "muddle,
mist and moonshine" — as in Yellow Leaves:
Yellow leaves among the green,
Like gold coins
Deep in old fountains.
In Dans Le Sillage, the poet touches off some of his
contemporaries:
There's Fletcher,
Painting with frost
On silk watered like an opal sea.
[226]
The Silver Stallion
Amy Lowell rides like Joan
Under colored banners,
Flashing a thousand lights
From her two-edged sword.
Ezra Pound mutters darkly
Behind a Chinese veil.
And here one strikes the gravest fault in the book:
there is too much of Fletcher, Amy Lowell and Ezra
Pound in the poems.
If these first books are a bit discouraging, still
The winds are neighing
Amid the monotonous hills —
and the silver stallion may be not far away.
Oscar Williams
WHO WRITES FOLK-SONGS?
Poetic Origins and The Ballad, by Louise Pound. Mac-
millan Co.
Just when and how the theory of the communal origin
of folk-song, and hence of poetry itself, came to be evolved,
I do not know. But for many years students of folk-lore
have held tenaciously to the idea that folk-poetry is of
crowd origin — i. e., the spontaneous improvisation of
many minds, preferably during a dance or some com-
munity festival.
The idea is very like, and no doubt based upon, that
similar "play-instinct" theory of the origin of art — a
theory which saw nothing incongruous in the analogy be-
tween creative effort and a sportive calf's jumping!
[227]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
To me the belief that the genesis of poetry, or of rhythm,
was in the "hand-clapping and thigh-slapping" of prim-
itive people during a dance has always seemed unneces-
sarily far-fetched. As if man were outside creation, and
some special arbitrary means had to be devised for incul-
cating in him the laws of that world of which he is a part!
And also, how account then for the genesis of space-
rhythm? Did the primitive potter and artist evolve their
volumes and lines to a similar bodily accompaniment?
And should the artist today, who wishes to regain the old
simplicity, take a twirl or two and jump like Nijinsky be-
tween each stroke that he gives to his canvas?
Miss Pound does not attempt to explain psychologically
the beginnings of poetry. Her method is historical, and
she adheres very strictly to the task she has set herself,
which is to show: that the classic English and Scotch
ballads, such as are preserved in the Percy and Child
collections, could be only the work of individual poets,
and not of a crowd or "festal throng"; and that the
accepted belief in the communal origin of folk-poetry thus
falls down, so far as it is based specifically upon these
ballads. Miss Pound then uses the evidence of the living
folk-poetry nearest at hand — that of the American In-
dian, the Negro, and the cowboy — to show that it too is
almost always of individual authorship (and most mark-
edly inferior when, presumably, it is not); but that it is, in
any case, of a character essentially different from the
Child ballads, these latter being of a much higher artistic
[228]
Who Writes Folk-songs?
order and obviously the work of individual poets above
the peasant average, whether in that time or this.
One chapter seems to me to be missing from Miss
Pound's book which would make it finally conclusive: a
chapter on the medieval troubadours of the Continent.
With this as a background, the conviction that the Percy
and Child ballads must have been the work of individual
authors, who held as stock-in-trade the poetic traditions
of an older guild of minstrels and entertainers, would be
inescapable.
Apart from the specific problem of comparison involved,
Miss Pound's summary of the origins of our indigenous
folk-poetry is exceedingly interesting. Beginning with
the poetry of the American Indian, she shov/s that the
individual poet is as well known in the most primitive
tribe as in our own more sophisticated society; and
that there is no evidence that Indian poetry, although
communally sung, is so composed. She shows also that
many of the Negro spirituals are based upon the white
man's hymns, from which their form and substance are
largely derived. Thus although the individual authorship
of the spirituals may be lost sight of, their parentage at
least is not of crowd origin; and the additions made by
the Negro congregation in singing these songs are mostly
in the nature of refrain.
As for the American cowboy songs, for which Mr.
Lomax has claimed a communal origin, Miss Pound shows
that almost all of these are of known authorship; although
[229]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
she does not on this account deny their genuine folk char-
acter, nor (as Professor Gerould in the New York Evening
Post implies) discount them as mere "derelicts" because
they have been based upon earlier songs or adapted to
familiar tunes. On this score one would have to call many
of Burns' poems mere derelicts, and discard with them as
well a large body of accepted folk-songs.
But Miss Pound's definition of folk-poetry is perhaps
wider than many folk-lore scholars will accept. She says:
All types of song are folk-songs, for the literary historian, which ful-
fil two tests: the people must like them and sing them — they must have
"lived in the folk-mouth"; and they must have persisted in oral cur-
rency through a fair period of years. They must have achieved an exist-
ence not dependent upon a printed original. . . . Whatever has com-
mended itself to the folk-consciousness, and has established currency
for itself apart from written sources, is genuine folk-literature.
By this she does not mean, of course, that the song must
never have had a printed origin, but that it must have
become independent of this by being transplanted into the
folk-memory. If the folk-lore scholars object to the
inclusiveness of this definition, they will have to admit
that many of their own restrictions would, if collectively
applied, rule out practically the whole body of accepted
folk-song, including the classic English ballads.
Thus, if known authorship discounts the term "folk-
poetry," then the poetry of the American Indian is not
folk-poetry. If printed sources are not allowed, then all
the old ballads collected in broadsides or chap-books must
go. If the fact that The Cowboy's Lament was adapted
[230]
Who Writes Folk-songs?
from a popular Irish song of the eighteenth century makes
its folk pretensions insecure, then Barbara Allen^ which
was also a stage song, will have to be discarded. In fact,
if all the arbitary barbed-wire fences of the folk-lorists are
heeded, what will be left of the open range of folk-song?
The professor of folk-song, like the melancholy cowboy,
will have to go.
We are faced then with the necessity of accepting a
wider definition of folk-song; or we may be brought to the
pass of confessing that there is no such thing — there is
only poetry, of various kinds. Also it may as well be
admitted that folk-songs are as diversified in character as
any other kind of poetry; and it is impossible to make any
one type the "norm" to which all other examples must
conform. Certainly the classic English ballads can not —
as is too often done — be made the touchstone of what
is or is not folk-poetry. Theirs is a highly specialized
form; their authors were undoubtedly fairly sophisticated
poets; and we have every right to believe that the ballads
became folk-songs by the well-known process of descent.
In other words, we must recognize two broad sources of
folk-song: one of the soil, as with genuinely primitive peo-
ple like the American Indian (though none the less of
individual origin); and the other of the stage, the church,
the court, or the city, descending again to the soil and the
folk, there to be rediscovered as folk-song.
Such ideas as these, presented by Miss Pound, are
sufficiently radical to meet much opposition from the
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
adherents of the accepted belief in the communal "crowd"
origin of folk-song. But just one thing is needed from
Miss Pound's opponents to prove her theory a house of
cards, and that is some evidence of a crowd or group im-
provisation of the ballads, or of any poetry higher than
the nursery-rhyme type used in games. Did anyone ever
see it happen? A. C. H.
CORRESPONDENCE
PROFESSOR PHELPS AND ROSTAND
My dear POETRY: William Lyon Phelps has set my
nerves cringing — is it possible that a Yale University
professor should write the silly pompous windy stuff about
Edmond Rostand which appears in the April Yale Review!
What a pity, when the whole world is trying to get a
clear insight into things, to read such trashy stuff! For-
tunately we know better, but some Frenchmen mayjudge
American criticism and clearness of perception by Mr.
Phelps' oracular utterances. Note the wisdom of this:
Creative genius is the most valuable gift that man can receive.
Isn't this a wonderfully stamped medal? —
He is a poet and a playwright, but above all, he is a magician.
But I wouldn't care about Mr. Phelps' platitudes if he
didn't pretend to judge France and French drama with
the same sweeping alacrity. I shall not trouble you with
a reply en forme. Suffice it to say that nobody here with
[232]
Professor Phelps and Rostand
a sane mind thinks Rostand a "national" poet; and that
anyhow poetry had nothing to do with our aching backs,
our smarting feet — and final triumph. Nobody but dusty
mediaeval people can foster such illusions.
The article contains such luminous ideas as these:
We must go back to La Fontaine for anything approaching the human
manipulation of the animal kingdom.
No modern dramatist has reached the Shakespearean level except
Rostand.
If Mr. Phelps wants to understand our modern drama
better, let him come to Le Vieux Colombier with Copeau as
a director, to Le Theatre des Arts and a few others. Let
him not forget, above all, that what we applaud is a
dozen immortal masterpieces, among which we do not
count L ' Aiglon^ Cyrano^ or Chantecler. Jean Catel
Pans: April 25th, 1921.
NOTES
Marjorie Allen Seiffert (Mrs. Otto S.), of Moline, 111., has appeared
frequently in POETRY, and in 1919 her dialogue, The Old Woman^ re-
ceived one of our annual prizes. Her book, A Woman of Thirty, was pub-
lished the same year by Alfred A. Knopf.
Babette Deutsch (now Mrs. A. Yarmolinsky), of New York, is the
author of Banners (Geo. H. Doran Co.). Harcourt, Brace & Howe will
publish next autumn an anthology of Russian poetry selected and trans-
lated by Mr. and Mrs. Yarmolinsky.
Mr. Oscar Williams, a Russian by birth, resident in New York but now
sojourning in Chicago, will publish next autumn, through the Yale Press,
his first book of verse.
The other poets of this month are new to our readers.
[233]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
Mr. Louis Golding, of London, is the author of Sorrows of War, pub-
lished in this country by E. P. Button & Co. A second book of poems,
Shepherd Singing Ragtime, will soon appear in England. His first novel,
Forward from Babylon, is one of six recently selected as the best of 1920-21
in competition for the Vie Heureuse prize in Paris.
Miss Elizabeth Roberts, of Chicago, who has appeared in various
magazines, will soon publish a book of poems, Under the Tree.
Ditto Mr. Harold Vinal, of Boston, whose book will be entitled April
Flame.
Miss Josephine Pinckney, of Charleston, has published little as yet.
Her poem, In the Barn, received recently a prize from the Poetry Society
of South Carolina.
Mr. William A. Norris is a young poet of Milwaukee, Wis.
BOOKS RECEIVED
ORIGINAL VERSE:
Legends, by Amy Lowell. Houghton Mifflin Co.
Songs in the Common Chord, by Amelia E. Barr. D. Appleton & Co.
Spanish Moss and English Myrtle, by Margaret Dashiell. Stratford Co.
The Two Captains, by Craven Langstroth Betts. Alfred Allen Watts Co.,
New York.
A Love Cycle, by Margery Mayo. Privately printed, Denver.
Souvenirs, by Badry Farkouh. Privately printed.
Ireland, Broadway and Other Loves, by Mary Fleming. Guido Bruno,
New York.
The Mystic Warrior, by James Oppenheim. Alfred A. Knopf.
The Ruined Barn and Other Poems, by A. Hugh Fisher. Selwyn & Blount,
London.
Poems New and Old, by John Freeman. Harcourt, Brace & Howe.
PLAYS:
Clair de Lune, by Michael Strange. G. P. Putnam's Sons.
The Cult of Content, by Noel Leslie. Four Seas Co.
PROSE:
The Sacred Band: A Litany of Ingratitude, by Guido Bruno. New York.
[234]
X
POETRY is one of the three good magazines in America.
Geoffrey Parsons, of the New York Tribune.
Vol. XVIII No. V
POETRY for AUGUST, 1921
PAGE
Growth (seven poems) Charles R. Murphy 235
Hoofs and Haloes (five poems) . . David Osborne Hamilton 239
Memory Margaret Belle Houston 241
Poems (five poems) Florence Kilpatrick Mixter 242
It Vanished Grace Hodsdon Boutelle 245
The Mountain Graveyard DuBose Heyward 246
Innocent Sleep Nancy Campbell 247
Dirge Richard Hughes 248
Timelessness Louise Townsend Nicholl 249
Folk-song, from the Danish — Lucrezia Borgia's Last Letter
Antoinette DeCoursey Patterson 250
In the Night Watches (four poems) . . Margaret DeLaughter 252
Love's Passing — My Sepulchre Gladys Edgerton 254
Poems Original and Derived .... Mason A. Freeman, Jr. 256
Beyond Sorrow (seven poems) .... Eda Lou Walton 260
Midsummer Delite H. M. 264
Brazilian Dance Songs Evelyn Scott 267
Aboriginal Tasmanian Poetry H. W. Stewart 271
Reviews:
Robinson's Double Harvest H. M. 273
The Poet of the War . . . A. C. H. 276
Mr. Masefield's Racer ' N. Howard Thorp 279
Songs and Splashes H. M. 281
Modern and Elizabethan H. M. 283
Classics in English Glenway Wescott 284
Our Contemporaries:
The Dial's Annual Award 289
New Magazines 290
Notes and Books Received 291, 292
Manuscripts must be accompanied by a stamped and self-addressed envelope.
Inclusive yearly subscription rates. In the United States, Mexico, Cuba and
American possessions, $3.00 net; in Canada, $3.15 net; in all other countries in the
Postal Union, $3.25 net. Entered as second-class matter Nov. 15, 1912, at the
post-office, at Chicago, 111., under Act of March 3, 1879.
Published monthly at 543 Cass St., Chicago, 111.
Copyright 1921, by Harriet Monroe. All rights reserved.
VOL. XVIII
NO. V
A Magazine of \feree
AUGUST 1921
GROWTH
ADVENT
OUT of a silence greater than all words;
Over the unspeakable, dumb,
Everlasting hills
With their muter herds;
Swifter than a blade that kills;
Mightier than prayer;
Fairer than the dawn
When some dew yet remains unbroken;
Stronger than despair;
From the unspoken to the spoken,
While the heart rests momently;
Lovely as the half-uttered words of a child,
More delicate, more mild;
Terrible as the torn breasts of anguish
[235]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
When strong wills languish:
Suddenly, dreadfully, exquisitely,
Love, death, and God shall come.
SOWN
Rain and the patience of the planted field,
Grey skies that hasten to the need
Of brown moistening earth, and to the sealed
Faint harvest in the unbroken seed —
Patience for waiting give us! O planted men,
Who waits your budding and your heaped
Flowers of death? Again, again
Perhaps ye shall return — the reapers, not the reaped —
And, braver than corn-seed hid away together,
Of our meagre or our mighty yield
Shall wake for the gathering in harvest weather.
TO EARTH
Oh, fortunate the waiting that shall end in wonder,
And blessed now the patience that is in thy biding;
For now are the herded clouds and the wild rain's thunder
Over the roof of thy quiet seeds' hiding.
We too, O earth, shall need thy blessedness of waiting
For the green flowering of pastures, when the panting
Storm shall cease; though blood be the rain that is abating,
And men be the seeds of our wild planting.
[236]
Charles R. Murphy
WINTER
Now are ye lean, O trees, and shaped for soaring
Over the sacred snow that hides the land;
Now after stress of bitter storms endured
On the spent earth unmutinous ye stand.
Only your faces now are turned not earthward,
However deep your roots are clasped there.
With the gaunt gesture of a saint's uprising,
Ye are the resurrection that is prayer.
SPRING
Trees have a gesture of departure,
Yet forever stay;
Into what eager land they'd travel
No man may say.
In the spring they stand on tip-toe;
Yet, self-willed, remain
In autumn to let earthward
Their hopes like rain.
Yet forever a new spring cometh,
And their muteness swells
To the voice of one long risen
For long farewells;
Who with steps of eternal patience,
In eternal quest,
[237]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
Would venture a truth too lofty
To be expressed;
Whose heart at times is burdened,
When no dream consoles,
With a heritage too mighty
For rooted souls.
HUMILITY
Open the doors of temples, scorn
Their veils! Yet in the flight of bird on sea,
In the fall of leaf from tree,
In the green patient spears of grain, in the torn
Sides of mountains where some verdure clings —
In all these things —
We have enough to brood on till we be
Ready and humble as the corn.
MID-MAY
Put aside your words, and there are left
Stones of the grey walls and apple-trees;
And in the flesh and mind, and in what seems
Birthing almost of an immortal soul,
Virginity and fortitude and hope —
Delicate as blossoms on the gnarled limbs
White, grey and green above the risen grass.
Charles R. Murphy
[238]
HOOFS AND HALOES
TE DEUM
Out in the hot sun I saw Satan stand:
He stroked the peaches with his finger-tips,
And burst the melons open in his hand,
And squirted the fat grapes between his lips.
He cracked an apple, and deep in the rift
Of snowy meat his yellow teeth he thrust.
A daisy from the grass he plucked and sniffed —
His fiery breath soon charred it into dust.
He pinched the purple plums, and playfully
Took up his tail and twirled it round and round
To lash the gold leaves from a maple-tree,
And laughed — the birds fled screaming at the sound.
He swung the boughs, and with his sharp horns pricked
The pears as they went swinging through the air,
And drove his hoof into the ground, and kicked,
Stirring the damp earth through the grasses there;
Then tore the tangled undergrowth apart
Till in its shadow he was deftly placed,
And stretched and said: "I marvel at God's art!
The earth could not be formed more to my taste/'
THE IDIOT
When earth was madly green he lay
And mocked his shadow's dancing feet,
[239]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
Or from his laughter ran away
To watch the poppies burn the wheat.
But when the frozen leaves whirled by
And colored birds were blown afar,
He climbed the bitter winter sky
And hanged himself upon a star.
BEAUTY IN FOURTH STREET
It was not strange that Beauty found
Our path in June, and eagerly
Thrust up the gay flowers through the ground
And put a bird on every tree.
But strange it was when skies were grey
That Beauty followed where we led,
And sat beside our stove all day,
And lay at night upon our bed.
ii
I live with Beauty, and across the way
I see a shabby park where women sit
And scold the dirty children from their play,
While old men shift their wrinkled legs and spit.
[240]
David Osborne Hamilton
So close to me these dusty lives go past —
Shall I cry out how Beauty came to me ?
O futile lips, be still! O heart, close fast!
Break not with joy, lest you set Beauty free!
OUR TIME
Once more earth bellows with the lust
Of rolling drums. Once more we win with fire
The passing wind, and perish for the dust
Of man's desire.
Fierce as the tiger in the night,
And greedy as the swine that roots the clod
Is man, whose spirit of eternal light
Moves into God.
David Osborne Hamilton
MEMORY
I walked with you beside the orchard bars,
Where the still plum-tree drops her whiteness down.
You kissed my brow: your kiss was like a crown.
You kissed my mouth: my crown was set with stars.
Margaret Belle Houston
[241]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
POEMS
ALL SOULS EVE
Hark! — do you hear the choral dead?
Forgotten now their pride
Who on this night would have us know
They passed unsatisfied.
They shiver like the thin brown leaves
Upon a sapless tree,
Clinging with palsied, withered might
To their identity.
Their voices are the unearthly winds
That die before the dawn;
And each one has some tale to tell,
And, having told, is gone.
Ah! — you who come with sea-blue eyes,
And dead these hundred years,
Be satisfied! I hold the cup
Still brimming with your tears.
CHINESE EPITAPH
She was a Manchu lady . . .
Near the tomb where she lies
[242]
Florence Kilpatrick Mixter
Broods an ancient Buddha with robes of jade and of coral
And curious lapis-blue eyes.
She was a wistful lady . . .
When the west wind sighs
Inscrutable even as the terrible calm of Buddha
Her impassive disguise.
She was a Manchu lady . . .
Azure the skies,
And golden the tracery sealing the proud lips of Buddha
As the west wind dies.
ALCHEMY
They had no souls, the envious ones!
They were blind to your heart's beauty,
Deaf to your spirit's voice,
And dumb in the presence of your holiness.
But they felt a vague warmth
In their cold hands
As you passed.
And so they reached out
For your flaming soul;
Throwing it on their own dead altar-fires,
Warming their numb fingers in the golden flame
That rose to Heaven,
Flickered,
And went out.
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
Somewhere, among the scattered ashes,
Lies the matrix-stone
Of your imperishable beauty.
INVOCATION
Tonight in sleep there came to me
A dream where Christ walked on the sea;
And, shipwrecked, I called out, to hear
His quiet answer, "I am near.'*
But when the waves had risen high
I doubted — till I heard him cry:
"Come take my hand, beloved one —
The long and lonely night is done.
Fear not! and you shall walk with me,
As Peter walked, upon the sea."
Who was it called? The night is slow
To answer; but awake I know
The clutching terror of the heart
That feels the weed-choked waters part,
And, drowning, rears a Christ who stands
With dim-remembered outstretched hands.
Who knows if Peter's Christ is mine?
Like Peter, now, I ask a sign . . .
If Christ still walks upon the sea —
How calm is dawn on Galilee!
[244]
.Florence Kilpatrick Mixter
LULLABY
Come, sleep. Her heart's a wood-anemone.
Her thoughts are swallows flown
Across the dusk. Her hair's a willow-tree
By the west wind blown.
Her eyes are pools where bubbles rise and break —
Dream-bubbles from the deep.
Her soul's a moth that flutters in their wake.
Come sleep. . . . come sleep. . . .
Florence Kilpatrick Mixter
IT VANISHED
To C. A. B.
Can it matter to you and me
Where the hurrying years have fled,
Since they told me you ceased to be.
Since the day when they called you dead?
Death? As a cobweb spun
By night on the dew-drenched grass,
It vanished ... I saw you pass
With your face to the rising sun.
Grace Hodsdon Boutelle
[245]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
THE MOUNTAIN GRAVEYARD
High on the mountain where the storm-heads are,
Lying where all may see, there is a place
As hideous and shocking as a scar
That mars the beauty of a well-loved face.
Infinitely drear, and raw, and nude,
It waits and listens in the solitude.
There is no friendly tree in all that square
Of scattered stones and arid, troubled clay.
Bleak as the creed of those who journey there,
Hard as the code by which they lived their day,
It gives them all they ask of it — its best;
No beauty and no softness — only rest.
But oh, the pity of it all is this:
They lived with beauty and their eyes were blind.
Dreaming of far strong joys, they came to miss
Those that were near. So at the last we find
No tenderness of blossom, but instead
Mute emblems of the longings of the dead.
These rain-bleached sea-shells in an ordered row
Tell of an ocean that they never knew
Except in dreams which, through the ebb and flow
Of years, set seaward as the torrents do.
Always they planned to follow, knowing deep
Within their hearts that dreams are but for sleep.
[246]
DuBose Heyward
And see these tawdry bits of broken glass
Which speak the foreign glories of the town —
The crowds, the lights; these too are dreams that pass
Here where the hemming walls of rock look down,
And clasp their children fast within their keep
Until they cradle them at last to sleep.
Yet all the while if they could only know
The beauty that is theirs to breathe and touch —
The whisper of the dawn across the snow,
The vast low-drifting clouds that love them much —
Oh, they could call their dreams home down the sky,
And carry beauty with them when they die.
DuBose Heyward
INNOCENT SLEEP
My little son half woke last night —
A golden-headed rosiness,
Dark-eyed with drowsiness;
Peered for a moment at the candle-light.
So I have seen the daisies sleep
Pink-tipped along a mountain wall,
And hardly stir at all
At the bright dawn — their dreams have been so deep.
Nancy Campbell
[247]
OETRY: A Magazine of Verse
DIRGE
To those under smoke-blackened tiles, and cavernous
echoing arches,
In tortuous hid courts where the roar never ceases
Of deep cobbled streets wherein dray upon dray ever
marches,
The sky is a broken lid, a litter of smashed yellow pieces.
To those under mouldering tiles, where life to an hour is
crowded —
Life, to a span of the floor, to an inch of the light;
And night is all feverous hot, a time to be bawded and
rowdied :
Day is a time of grinding, that looks for rest to the night.
Those who would live, do it quickly; with quick tears,
sudden laughter,
Quick oaths, terse blasphemous thoughts about God the
Creator.
Those who would die, do it quickly; with noose from the
rafter,
Or the black, shadowy eddies of Thames, the hurry-
hater.
Life is the master, the keen and grim destroyer of beauty.
Death is a quiet and deep reliever, where soul upon soul
And wizened and thwarted body on body are loosed from
their duty
[248]
Richard Hughes
Of living, and sink in a bottomless, edgeless, impalpable
hole.
Dead, they can see far above them, as if from the depth of
a pit,
Black on the glare small figures that twist and are shriv-
elled in it.
Richard Hughes
TIMELESSNESS
We knew a timeless place beside three trees,
Where lights across an arching bridge were set;
And, dark against the sky, was flung a frieze
Of human joy in shifting silhouette.
Figures of children — swift, and lovers — slow,
Made us a pageant as they crossed the hill.
We called it "being dead," and watched them go,
Remembering when we were living still.
Now you have died, and found those timeless nights;
Ours was a dream which you have made come true.
Three trees are there, a hill, a bridge of lights:
I know, I know — I have been dead with you!
I shall put off my grief, my sick despair,
Since only joy is silhouetted there.
Louise Townsend Nicholl
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FOLK-SONG— FROM THE DANISH
Little Rose and her mother, from the boat where it lay,
Bantered each other in the merriest way.
Ha, ha, ha, sa, sa, sa, sal
Bantered each other in the merriest way!
"No lover shall wed me — no matter how bold —
Till trees in the garden bear blossoms of gold. "
Ha, ha, ha, sa, sa, sa, sal
"Till trees in the garden bear blossoms of gold."
From the porch thinks Hr. Peder, amused at her jest,
' 'Tis always the one who laughs latest laughs best!"
Ha, ha, ha, sa, sa, sa, sa!
' 'Tis always the one who laughs latest laughs best!"
And when later they entered the garden — behold
From each tree was hanging a ring of bright gold !
Ha, ha, ha, sa, sa, sa, sa!
From each tree was hanging a ring of bright gold!
But Rosalie, scarlet as fresh-dripping blood,
Kept both her eyes fixed on the grass where she stood.
Ha, ha, ha, sa, sa, sa, sa!
Kept both her eyes fixed on the grass where she stood.
Then Hr. Peder he kissed her, still full of the jest:
"Most surely the one who laughs latest laughs best!"
Ha, ha, ha, sa, sa, sa, sa!
"Most surely the one who laughs latest laughs best!"
[250]
Antoinette DeCoursey Patterson
LUCREZIA BORGIA'S LAST LETTER
Before me shine the words of her last letter —
Lucrezia Borgia to the Pope at Rome —
Wherein she begs, as life 's remaining fetter
Slips from her, that his prayers will guide her home:
The favor God has shown to me confessing.
As swift my end approaches, Father •, /,
A Christian though a sinner, ask your blessing
And kiss your feet in all humility.
The thought of death brings no regret, but pleasure;
And after the last sacrament great peace
Will be mine own — in overflowing measure,
If but your mercy marks my sour s release.
And here the letter finds a sudden ending,
As though the dying hand had lost its power:
My children to Rome's love and care commending —
Ferrara — Friday — at the fourteenth hour.
An odor as of incense faintly lingers
About the page of saintly sophistries —
And I am thinking clever were the fingers
That could mix poison and write words like these.
Antoinette DeCoursey Patterson
POETRY: A Magazine of Perse
IN THE NIGHT WATCHES
INVOCATION
Kwan-yin, mother of mercies,
" Kwan-yin, goddess of prayer,
Hear my voice at thine altar,
Heed my foot on the stair!
Lo, the rice-bowl is empty;
Toa-tai smiles no more.
Sorrow lurks at our roof-tree,
Ruin waits at the door.
Kwan-yin, mother of mercies,
Kwan-yin, goddess of prayer,
Hear my voice at thine altar,
Heed my foot on the stair!
PIERROT AND COLUMBINE
The gods are dead, and we are old;
And we are old, for now at last,
For now at last our hearts are cold;
Our hearts are cold, and love is past.
Our love is past, and even so,
And even so our dreams have fled.
Our dreams have fled, and so we know,
And so we know the gods are dead!
[252]
Margaret DeLaughter
REQUIEM
All the love, the love we gave them;
Tears, unanswered prayers to save them !
Now, what is there left to show? —
Wooden crosses in a row!
They wore their crown of thorns so lightly,
June still blossoms just as brightly.
How can laughing roses know
Of wooden crosses in a row?
Is it, then, so sweet, their sleeping?
After all, was life worth keeping?
There they lie, and none may know —
Wooden crosses in a row.
TOWARD EVENING
The poppies just outside my door
Still flaunt their crimson loveliness.
How can they blossom any more,
Now I have lost my happiness ?
Not any grief of mine can mar
The beauty of this tranquil weather.
Each evening, with the first pale star,
Comes that same thrush we loved together,
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And pours gold notes from every bough
Of his old sacred apple-tree.
But he has lost his magic now—
He cannot sing you back to me.
Margaret DeLaughter
LOVE'S PASSING
Gold as the sun,
Bold as a boy,
Your wanton wings waken
The love you destroy,
Leaving within the heart of each flower
Longing for an impassioned hour.
Shade of the sea,
Maid of the sky,
Your azure wings beat on
My heart as you fly
Dreamily on in a happy trance,
Letting me wither with never a glance.
Rare as a pearl,
Fair as a nun,
Your white wings inspire
The love that you shun,
[254]
Gladys Edgerton
Rising from passion and glad desire
Into the sun's heart higher and higher.
Flown from the world,
Blown like a breath,
You leave me earth-rooted
And wedded to death,
Wasting for lips I have never known,
Hoarding my fragrance for you alone!
MY SEPULCHRE
The flame blue of heaven glows overhead,
Under my halting feet crisp leaves burn red.
Oh, what an ecstasy now to be dead !
Oh, what an ecstasy now to lie down
One with the autumn earth pulsing and brown —
So in the sunlight to slumber and drown!
To drown in a sea of gold, melt into air
Crisp with the tang of frost, pungent and rare —
Sunshine my sepulchre, wind my last prayer!
Gladys Edgerton
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POEMS ORIGINAL AND DERIVED
THE TRIPLE SHROUD
This is the triple shroud,
Spun of a single thread
On spindles of the whirling worlds
In thundering halls of dread;
It makes the living shine as flame,
And resurrects the dead.
Life is the shroud of love,
Woven of dust and breath.
Death is the shroud of life;
Love is the shroud of death.
THE WAY
Some souls have slept with sorrow,
And some have walked with shame.
With both I went in shadows
Through firmaments of flame —
To clasp the formless in the form,
The substance in the name.
ONCE MORE
Once more I strip my shroud from me,
Once more unfurl my azure wings,
[256]
Mason A. Freeman^ Jr.
Pursue athwart the reeling suns
An ever-dancing star that sings
Of madder joys than I have dreamed,
And fiercer griefs than I have borne :
Yet would I burn between her breasts
Behind the curtains of the morn!
EPIGRAMS
The Poet
Up leaped the lark in flight,
And saw the dawn
Singing above the night.
The Untrammelled
Only the wind is free —
He shapes at will
The sea's plasticity.
The Beggar
The tulip lifts its bowl
Toward sun and cloud
To ask its daily dole.
Weeping-willow
Is it a maid I see
With hair unbound,
Or a weeping- willow tree?
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The Lotus
The lotus dreams that she
May root in mud,
Yet steal off with the bee.
On a Cameo
This image on a ring
Is all that lives
Of what was once a king.
Late Mourning
Plum petals fall like tears
Upon a grave
Neglected now for years.
Recognition
What seek you from the sky?
Long since
The noisy geese flew by.
The Prophetess
For years the earth has known
Impending fate
Each time the dead moon shone.
FROM THE VEDIC
The Egg
What lies hidden in the shell
Was born through torment deep in hell;
[258]
Mason A. Freeman, Jr.
And it will burst its bonds to sense
Analogous experience,
And swing through poles of heaven and hell
To lurk again within the shell.
Ecce Homo
Behold the man indeed — the inner self
Who sits inside, no bigger than one's thumb;
Who limbless moves, and lacking eyes can see;
Scans all the past, can all the future plumb.
The Herdsman
I hail the wandering herdsman of the night,
The watcher and the shepherd of the stars,
Who points the pathway leading to the light,
And for the sheep lets down the golden bars.
The Rosary
Within the all-enfolding hands
The worlds are being told like beads.
Lift up your eyes and look thereon ! —
What need have ye of forms and creeds ?
Creation
The moon was gendered from my mind,
And from my eye the sun had birth,
And from my breast the winds burst forth,
And underneath my feet the earth.
Mason A. Freeman, Jr.
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BEYOND SORROW
SO IT BEFELL
When the day is long
And full of pain,
I remember
A certain little lane
Where every night,
At half-past seven,
The train flashed by
On its way to heaven.
There you and I,
Watching in the lane,
Dreamed of riding
Inside the train —
Away from the wide
Sun-flowered plain
And tall fields of
High rolling grain.
When night is long
And strangely sane,
I remember
A certain little lane,
Where, on one night —
So it befell—
The train passed heaven
On its way to hell.
[260]
Eda Lou Walton
WITHOUT GRIEF
Beyond sorrow I have seen a pool
Of clear green waters
Without shadows,
And in it lay my body cool
And quiet as a leaf.
And I have watched it lying there
And seen the sunlight on it —
Now I come back and meet you
Without grief.
I WOULD BE FREE
I would be free of you, my body;
Free of you, too, my little soul.
I am so tired of this mocking hobby,
I am so tired of this imaged whole.
I would be neither base nor godly.
Loathing myself, could I bear then
To see all life and suffering oddly
Twisted and shaped to the needs of men?
I would be neither my own nor another's:
I would not tend for myself, nor hate
The flame of silence that in me smothers
Under the crackling smoke of fate.
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God ! — what is there for such as in me
Cannot be two and are not whole?
Within the spirit dwells the body,
Upon the body feeds the soul.
CRISIS
Then, being aloof,
To give myself
Was nothing to me:
Only leaves falling
On the roof
Were prophecy.
DESPAIR
If the dream goes
Does it matter?
Life remains compact,
Integrate, whole;
And the living of it
Is the same
Day by identical day —
There is nothing missing!
NOW MORE THAN EVER DIVIDED
Now more than ever divided,
Loving and yet not loving,
[262]
Eda Lou Walton
A worshiper of your gentleness,
Demanding my own aloofness;
Now more than ever divided,
Two of myself, two in you;
Reared as a tower of granite
Bright on the last blue hill,
Crumbled and rooted with wild-flowers
Under the touch of your hand,
Torn as a leaf from a woodvine
Colorfully tossed to the wind,
Caught with dry tendrils of yearning
Close to an ancient wall!
IN RECOMPENSE
Now for the long years when I could not love you,
I bring in recompense this gift of yearning —
A luminous vase uplifted to the sun,
Blue with the shadows of near-twilight.
Here in its full round symmetry of darkness,
Burning with swift curved flashes bright as tears,
I lift it to the lonely lips that knew
Its slow creation, and the wheel of sorrow turning.
Take it with hands like faded petals,
White as the moonlight of our garden;
And for the long years when I could not love you
Drink from its amber-colored night.
Eda Lou Walton
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COMMENT
MIDSUMMER DELITE
THE poets should companion us in midsummer-
poets old and new, so they be good ones. And
we shall like them the better if we give way to their
moods a little instead of imposing on them our own.
"In this time of our despair we should turn to the poets
for guidance and inspiration toward manhood, rather
than sink into the degradation of utter unbelief in any-
thing outside our small selves" — so wrote the Chicago
Post's London correspondent not long ago. Yes, guid-
ance and inspiration, no doubt, but why be so solemn
about it? We turn to the poet for delight, and of delight
even guidance and inspiration are mere corollaries.
Delight, let us remind ourselves, is no cheap or vulgar
emotion. What says our faithful guide, the Century
Dictionary? First, we are told that our modern spelling
is "wrong" — we should return to the earlier delite,
for there is no etymological reason for linking up this
Old-French word with the Anglo-Saxon light and its
extinct guttural. Delite, then (let us, for a midsummer
moment, resume the old spelling) comes from the Latin
delicere, to allure — the same root which gives us delicate,
delectable, delicious; and the verb transitive means, we
are told, "to affect with great pleasure or rapture."
I will delite myself in thy statutes,
sings the Psalmist to God himself.
[264]
Midsummer Delite
Man delites not me — no, nor woman either,
cries Hamlet. And in Macbeth we are reminded that
The labor we delite in physics pain.
No, delite is too rare to be cheap, and too richly fine
to be vulgar. Guidance and inspiration spring from
under its wings, but so do gayety and all the keen little
joys of sense. Are few of us heirs of delite ? — Do we take
our little joys and big ones merely as fact-ridden pleasures
and without this finer imaginative zest? Then surely
we are cheated of our share of man's universal inheritance;
then surely we have a grievance against the world, whose
misguiding civilization has locked us away from nature
and the other high original sources of delite; then surely
we must turn to the poets, the artists, the seers, and take
them out with us under the sky, into the woods, the
plains, the mountains — set them against the play of
winds and waves, of sunshine and dark storns. Somehow
we must restore the connection, regain and develop our
souls' capacity for delite. It is a stark, sometimes a
bitter business; it implies the stripping away of "fold
on fold of flesh and fabrics and mockeries." It implies
the strict sincerities of nature and of art.
Perhaps the poets would be of more assistance in this
business if we could trust them more — if, as I said above,
we could give way to their moods a little instead of
inposing on them our own. The man in search of guid-
ance and inspiration resents a sense of humor in a poet,
criticizes a grotesque as if it were intended for a god.
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The tame man resents a wild fling of free verse; the violent
man resents the sonnet's rounded mold of sentiment.
The average man looks for peace in art, resents its call
to war; looks for his own image in a poet, and a flattering
image at that. Our standardized fellow-citizens — wearing
their clothes, doing their jobs, thinking their thoughts
all too much alike — would standardize that incarnation
of the untamable, the poet. As The Nation puts it:
We do not banish poets from the Republic, but try to make them over
into the image of congressmen. "Is it necessary," we ask, "to be so
wild and passionate and heedless? How are we to know that the fellow
is a poet and not a poseur? "
And the paper advises:
Let us be content not to know. Better that ten thousand poseurs
should have their little fling and fun than that one Shelley, or one far
less than Shelley, should be wounded or restrained or silenced. Can
we not be liberated from this spirit of miserable thrift? . . . Let us
admit the noble madness of poets and allow for it. Our verse will be
less cool and humble and diluted, and more simple, sensuous and passion-
ate. . . . We stand in bitter need of a glow, however faint, of the
Dionysian, the unsubdued. The universe, as William James finely
said, is wild as a hawk's wing.
So, in our summer wanderings of body or spirit, it
may be well to practice • a little spiritual lavishness.
Only by giving ourselves away to our poet-companions
can we explore their kingdom of delite. It should be a
proud companionship of the free — on equal terms of
challenge and retort, of daring, unflinching sympathy.
Almost any poet worthy of the name, thus treated, has
much to give. H. M.
[266]
Brazilian Dance Songs
BRAZILIAN DANCE SONGS
It may be worth while if I set down for the readers of
POETRY some of the songs which I learned on afazenda
twenty-seven miles from a railway in the state of Bahia, in
Brazil. "White people" did not come to this place, and I
.think it very improbable that any Brazilian has taken
the trouble to note either the words or the music of these
songs, so full of atmosphere, which are known to the
vaqueiros (Brazilian gauchos) and to the country people in
general who dance — sometimes to the sound of a guitar,
sometimes to the combined stimulus of an accordion and
a bean-rattle, but again to the simply rhythmic accom-
paniment of the latter instrument alone, an affair made
from a gourd and gaily decorated.
This dance, or samba, may be varied, but frequently it
consists of no more than monotonous movements of the
hips and an uninterrupted stamping of the feet. The
men, usually heated to the proper pitch of enthusiasm by
a copious indulgence in rum, move in a hesitating circle,
each man with a hand on the shoulder of the dancer be-
fore him; approaching and retreating as they face the
women who make a similar approach and retreat, the
groups joining in the song which is half recitative. The
dance sometimes constitutes a method of lightening labor;
for when a hut is to be constructed the prospective owner
invites a sufficient number of friends, who dig the large
pit in which the mud is to be mixed for chinking the
frail walls of the palm-thatched dwelling. Here, appro-
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priately intoxicated by their appreciative host, the male
visitors, in the dancing attitude described above, churn
the mud with their feet, while the women pass to and
from the nearest water supply, carrying and emptying
large earthen jars, to the encouragement of the singers
who stamp and sway with a hypnotic motion, an ex-
pression of mingled stupidity and exaltation upon their
tan-complexioned faces. I give you a very literal trans-
lation of a song which I heard on one of these occasions.
In the original there is a marked regular beat, but the
singers interpret the music very freely with an undupli-
catable variety of minor quavers and resultant accidentals
that show the African influence dominant over the
Portuguese.
I was a seven-months child.
I did not drink milk from the breast of my mother.
Yet now they send me to the stream to pound their clothes.
In my father's corral were a hundred cows
From which the milk was taken to feed me.
Yet today they send me to the stream to beat the clothes.
Ei! Take the /eaves from the poisonous corana, little Bahian half-breed!
I have no heart, Yaya;
But I go to wash your clothes!
In regard to this one must recall that there is a tra-
ditional distinction in being a seven-months child, and that
only mothers of the common people suckle their children.
Yaya and Yoyo are feminine and masculine terms of
respectful address introduced by the Negroes.
Brazilian Dance Songs
Another song begins:
In my land there are palm trees, little half breed,
Where the sabia sings.
Eiy lei-lei, Yaya!
Come here, my pretty little lady.
The birds in this place
Can not sing like my birds.
Eiy lei-lei , Yaya!
Come here, my little miss!
The songs one hears in more populous districts are
many of them entirely Portuguese in origin, and have the
Latin religious naivete. One, known I think from one
end of Brazil to the other, is called Noiva Morta (The
Dead Bride], and the lines are as follows:
When I die I shall be dressed like a bride,
With my hair flowing free under my veil.
They will say to each other,
"Already she resembles one of the angels of heaven."
My dress will be woven of jealousy
And marked with cruel passion.
My wreath will be of the flowers of white longing,
And my sepulchre shall be in your heart.
A lullaby, which was often sung to my baby, says:
Hush, hush, hush!
Open the door!
Turn the lamp high —
Little Manoel Jose wants to nurse,
Little Manoel Jose wants to sleep.
He will not sleep in a bed,
But in a hammock of boughs
Under the leaves.
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This little baby can not sleep in a bed
Because he is accustomed to lie between the feet of Our Lady, Saint Anna.
And another favorite of the same nurse-maid of extremely
unpoetical exterior has the charmingly unconsidered
verse :
I will come to you singing
In a cart filled with roses and pinks.
Our Lady will stand in the centre
And she will select for me the one of you who is most beautiful.
And again:
I saw the sea fringed with gold,
And I thought it was a cushion of blue velvet.
I saw the sea wound with streamers of white ribbon.
No — I was mistaken.
There is nothing there,
But I see white faces rising up at me out of the water.
Here is a bit which is particularly characteristic of an
ingratiatingly elastic ethical consciousness:
Negress Laurencia, who gave you the lace?
It was the shopkeeper, senhora.
He is called Senhor Chico.
He is called Senhor Chico.
Lace of silk threads.
Skirt of coarse cotton!
O lady, strike me! —
Don't lock me up!
If I stole the lace
It was because I needed it very much
To make me a skirt
For the procession of my saint!
I think I can not end this reminiscence better than by
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Brazilian Dance Songs
giving you the first two verses of the Fado de Hylario. A
fado is properly a song of the people, and the one noted
here is of Portuguese inspiration and as well known in
both Portugal and Brazil as Suwanee River or My Old
Kentucky Home among us :
Go away ashamed, moon! —
Get out of the heavens!
The eyes of my beloved
Are far brighter than yours!
Our Lady is knitting a pair of stockings
With yarn made of light.
The points of Her needles are the stars,
And the stockings are for the baby Jesus.
The above translations are from memory, and in spite
of the defect of ignoring the rhythm will, I think, give
some idea of the temperamental qualities of the Brazilian
people. Evelyn Scott
ABORIGINAL TASMANIAN POETRY
The extinct Tasmanians are interesting in that they
were the most primitive race that we have any knowledge
of. They wore no clothes, and their only shelters were a
few pieces of bark propped up for a break- wind; yet they
decked themselves with shell-necklets and had quite elab-
orate poetry. Does not this prove that art, if it does not
come before utility, at least comes directly after food,
before clothes and shelter? In singing their songs two or
three would take up the burden, always at intervals of a
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third. Some listeners have likened them to the songs of
the Arabs; one (I don't know whether he was a Scotch-
man) compared them to the bagpipes. Around their fire
at night they sang of the doings of the day, and very often
some striking scene would be enacted. If the acted scene
was a success, a corollary was born which passed on from
tribe to tribe all over the island.
Their language, full of vowel sounds and liquid con-
sonants, was almost as musical as Italian. Here is a song
sung by the women, with a rough translation following it:
Nikkeh ningeh tribneh nickeh mollyga pollyla.
Namu rykemmeh treganna mabeh thinninneh treganna
Nehnane, kehgreuna, nynaby thinneh^ tringeh gugerra tyathinneh,
Nynabythinneh koobryneh, march terrennet.
Pypatehinneh pungtinneh, loocoothinneh.
The women hunt the kangaroo and wallaby.
The emu runs in the bush, the kangaroo runs in the bush.
The young emu, the wallaby, the joey-kangaroo, the bandicoot, the
kangaroo-rat,
The little kangaroo-rat and the little opossum, the ring-tail opossum,
etc.
And so on, enumerating all the animals that are hunted.
There were endless repetitions, some lines being repeated
two or three times. Time was kept by beating sticks to-
gether and beating with the hands on skins rolled up tight
to form a drum.
A narrative called The Legend of Fire is the only fraction
of their mythology which has been preserved. The two
stars Castor and Pollox are associated with its heroes'
adventures. H. W. Stewart
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REVIEWS
ROBINSON'S DOUBLE HARVEST
The Three Taverns, and Avon 's Harvest, by Edwin Arling-
ton Robinson. Macmillan Co.
It is a relief to some of Mr. Robinson's admirers to find
him once more in the U. S. A. instead of in Camelot; for,
to tell the truth, he is much more at home here, and the
figures he presents are much more convincing. Although
there are in The Three Taverns certain studies of historic
or legendary characters — Hamilton and Burr, Rahel
Robert, John Brown, Paul of Tarsus, Lazarus — both
books are mainly in this poet's most characteristic vein,
mainly studies of his gnarled and weather-beaten neigh-
bors; of incomplete, unrounded characters in tragically ill-
fitting human relationships.
Of these monologue or dialogue narratives Avon's Har-
vest, the longest, is perhaps the most distinguished. With
true New England frugality, it weaves a closely knit,
formidable tragedy out of meagre materials — a college
antagonism, a blow, a long worm-eating revenge; and its
creeping emotion of horror is all the more powerful, per-
haps, because of the poet's restraint. Probably a psycho-
analyst would diagnose Avon's case as insanity — delusions
induced by fear of the serpentine, ruthless being whose
offensive love had changed into consuming hatred. But
such a gradual burrowing insanity was never more sharply
and powerfully presented. The thing is done with a kind
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of cold thrift, as effective in its way as Poe's lush and
shadowed eloquence; the music in the one case being slow
and stern, and in the other rich and full of sombre color.
Avon has a tonal, almost monotonous beauty:
You need not ask
What undulating reptile he was like,
For such a worm as I discerned in him
Was never yet on earth or in the ocean
Or anywhere else than in my sense of him.
Again:
And having had one mordacious glimpse of him
That filled my eyes and was to fill my life,
I have known Peace only as one more word
Among the many others we say over
That have an airy credit of no meaning.
Last year's book, The Three Taverns^ is mostly also
dramatic narratives. I confess that certain ones interest
me intellectually but bring little emotional thrill. The
Hamilton-Burr dialogue, the monologues by Saint Paul
and Rahel Robert and John Brown, are searching essays
in character analysis, but they leave one cold. There is
more of John Brown's flaming personality in a few lines
of Lindsay's poem —
And there he sits
To judge the world;
His hunting ogs
At his feet are curled —
than in these pages of farewell ito his wife and the world,
fine as many passages are:
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Robinson 's Doufr/e Harvest
Could I have known, I say, before I left you
That summer morning, all there was to know —
Even unto the last consuming word
That would have blasted every mortal answer
As lightning would annihilate a leaf,
I might have trembled on that summer morning;
I might have wavered; and I might have failed.
The best line in the poem is fortunately the last:
I shall have more to say when I am dead.
There is. no lack of fire in London Bridge, a case of ill-
assorted marriage in which the pair hurl swathed rocks
of hatred at each other — these two are terribly alive.
Also, in a marriage-case less violent but more perplexing,
one is deeply moved by Nimmo of the "velvet eyes",
At his bewildered and unfruitful task
Of being what he was born to be — a man.
And one "gets" completely "the inextinguishable grace"
of the vagabond in Peace on Earth, and the nothingness of
Taskar Norcross,
a dusty worm so dry
That even the early bird would shake his head
And fly on farther for another breakfast.
But it is in Mr. Robinson's meditative poems that one
tastes most keenly the sharp and bitter savor of his high
aloof philosophy. He is not for Demos:
Having all,
See not the great among you for the small,
But hear their silence; for the few shall save
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
The many, or the many are to fall —
Still to be wrangling in a noisy grave.
He offers no solution of the problem of creation, either
in general or in detail, but he presents it in vivid lines:
There were seekers after darkness in the Valley of the Shadow,
And they alone were there to find what they were looking for.
He insists —
That earth has not a school where we may go
For wisdom, or for more than we may know.
But meantime,
Say what you feel, while you have time to say it —
Eternity will answer for itself.
H.M.
THE POET OF THE WAR
Poems, by Wilfred Owen; with an introduction by
Siegfried Sassoon. B. W. Huebsch.
English critics have been giving high praise to Wilfred
Owen's poems. Now that he has achieved an American
edition, we are enabled to ratify their choice of him as
the most distinguished poet of the War, and join in their
sorrow over his early death as one of its heaviest losses.
Personally I find his work very fine indeed. I don't
think the much-discussed Strange Meeting stands out far,
if any, above the others — Apologia Pro Poemate Meo, or
The Show, for instance; or the three lyrics, Greater Love,
Arms and the Boy, Anthem for Doomed Youth. The experi-
[276]
The Poet of the War
ment with assonance in Strange Meeting arouses interest,
but this is not the only poem by any means in which he
uses alliterative assonance skilfully, although here the
scheme is more definite and obvious.
Certainly there is nothing cheap about Wilfred Owen,
and if he was making propaganda against war in his
verse, as he might very justly, he was consciously making
poetry also; which is what some of the other war-poets
forgot or failed to do. In one or two of the poems in the
latter part of the book one comes upon the vein made
popular by Siegfried Sassoon and Gibson and others —
the sort of "bloomin' " character-sketch or satiric incident,
as in Chances or S. I. W.> in which someone wrote the
mother of the soldier who had kissed the muzzle of his
gun and shot himself, "Tim died smiling." But these
are below the level of Wilfred Owen's other poems, al-
though certainly not below this type of poem by Sassoon
or Gibson.
The trouble with these poems, if one considers them as
propaganda, is that they do not propagandize! They
have a piquant flair for the easy-chair reader — quite as
much as that first emotional reaction to war which was
Rupert Brooke's. For the fact is, they represent war as
adventure; and on the page it matters not whether a man
is killed in a trench or in a gun-fight in Arizona — the zest
for the reader is the same. And the result, so far as prop-
aganda against war is concerned, is quite the opposite
of the effect intended.
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But when it comes to the slow horror of such a poem as
The Show, or the subtle satire of Arms and the Boy, or the
pitiful hopelessness of Strange Meeting, there you have
the deep personal experience and revelation which is the
only sort of propaganda (and one might say of poetry)
that counts. These poems are indeed at the opposite pole
from Rupert Brooke's gesture of sacrifice and renunci-
ation. And yet the sacrifice is made no less, with a mar-
velously cool restraint and clear perception. This is
what makes Greater Love such a fine poem — fine also in
sheer poetic quality; with a certain seventeenth-century
perfection, like George Herbert or Donne.
To go back for a moment to the sort of satiric graphic
sketches noted above, what I mean about these is what
Wilfred Owen meant:
Nevertheless, except you share
With them in hell the sorrowful dark of hell,
Whose mould is but the trembling of a flare,
And Heaven but as the highway for a shell,
You shall not hear their mirth;
You shall not come to think them well content,
By any jest of mine. These men are worth
Your tears: you are not worth their merriment.
Neither are we, I have sometimes thought, worth their
stark tragedies, or these trench paradoxes which furnish
incidents for the poetic cinema, so to speak — so that poets
also may become war profiteers! It is this that I have
resented in many of the war-poems which, like the war
to end war, were supposed to rid war of its glamour. The
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The Poet of the War
best of Owen's poems are far indeed from this; and that
is their virtue.
Wilfred Owen evidently belonged to a later generation
than Rupert Brooke, in spite of the few years between
them; this not only in respect to his attitude about war,
in which change Brooke would undoubtedly have shared
had he lived, but in respect to his verse as well. It is
nervous, sinewy, closely packed. His is a hardness and
a precision that — could it have been preserved past the
Sambre Canal, where he fell only a few days before the
Armistice — would certainly have achieved much. He
could not, one feels sure, have degenerated into any
"Georgian" looseness of thought or structure. There is
too much aloofness in his poems for that, and too much
clear vision. A. C. H.
MR. MASEFIELD'S RACER
Right Royaly by John Masefield. Macmillan Co.
The poem Right Royal^ by John Masefield, is un-
doubtedly a splendid realistic description of a steeple-
chase; written, I should judge, by one who has never
ridden over a course, but who, being a good horseman, has
painstakingly covered every point in the race. Partic-
ularly good is his description of the London betting com-
missioner's representative who visits the racing stables,
and his picture of the race crowds on their way vividly
recalls Charles Lever's description of those making their
annual pilgrimage to the Punchestown steeplechases.
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But whether Right Royal could really have won this
race, as he does in Mr. Masefield's poem, is another
matter.
After the most grueling race, of some four miles, to
which a horse can be subjected, it seems unreasonable to
suppose this super-horse capable, in a run of four furlongs
on the flat, of making up thirty lengths lost by his mishap
at the jump known as Lost Lady.
Let me make this quite clear: Compton Course, on
which the race was run, was four-and-a-quarter miles in
length. The first time around the course Right Royal
lost thirty lengths at the hurdle and ditch. Eighteen
lengths he seems to have made up by the time he came to
his Lost Lady jump on the second time around the
course. This of course took a great deal out of the horse.
Now, at the average speed at which steeplechases of this
distance are run, the horses were covering approximately
forty-eight feet a second — about four and a half lengths.
Right Royal, in pecking at the Lost Lady jump, thereby
coming almost to a standstill, recovering himself and
again getting into his stride, must have lost some four
seconds, or eighteen lengths. As he was twelve lengths
behind when taking the jump, he had thirty lengths to
recover before overtaking his field, in half a mile. This
is obviously impossible.
Conceding a steeplechase to be the chanciest of races,
the poem nevertheless seems to convey the impression
that the rider of Right Royal rather expected all the other
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Mr. Masefield^s Racer
horses to meet with mishaps, thereby enabling his mount
to win. A number of stanzas, being entirely irrelevant,
should have been omitted: for a four-mile effort it carries
too much hay. But the poem as a whole is delightful,
and takes every lover of a thoroughbred well over the
jumps with him and holds the interest from post to finish.
N. Howard Thorp
NOTE. Because of the controversy as to whether Mr. Masefield's
hero is a real horse or a super-steed of the poet's invention, the editor
submitted the book to a cowboy poet whose horsemanship is as famous
throughout the West as his poetry.
SONGS AND SPLASHES
Morning, Noon and Night, by Glenn Ward Dresbach.
Four Seas Co.
One may find a few fine lyrics in this book, as in the
two earlier ones which this poet has put out — songs simple
almost to obviousness, but deftly and musically turned.
Such are three or four in the Burro Mountains and Apple-
blossoms groups which open the volume, numbers three
and four of the Fruit-growing group, the longer poem
To One Beloved, and the first of the Songs after the War.
These, all but the last, our readers have seen; here is a
shapely new one, with a wistful ending.
I heard a thrush when twilight came
Sing of the woes it had not known —
Of hearts that burned in rainbow flame,
Of barren fields where seeds were sown.
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
And then it sang of happy trees
Where fruit is golden in the sun,
Of raptures and of mysteries
Through which the songs of seasons run.
And I was sadder for the song
Of rapture than the song of pain —
For one lost gladness, gone so long,
Came back and could not hurt again!
Of the longer poems The Nest of the Bluebird has a
softly flowing dreaminess, the dreamer recalling the many
human lives of his wandering soul. If only there were
more magic in its tunefulness, more invention in its phras-
ing and epithets, more white alchemic fire in its motive
power — the creative zest behind it — we should have a
memorable poem, somewhat in the mood of Tennyson's
Lotus-eaters but bearing a different spiritual inference.
Sometimes one is more irritated; sometimes it seems
absurd that a poet who has studiously trained himself
should do the obvious or banal thing with such an inno-
cent air. Certain of the narrative poems are too cheaply
journalistic, one would think — The ColoneTs Lady, for
example — to be allowed typewriter privileges, not to
speak of printer's ink. And how can an accredited poet
commit such a crime as the second of these two lines:
I cannot dine with you today
And hear how all your wealth does good —
or close a war-song with such a meagre rhyme-com-
promise as
But, Lord of Nations, tell us
That Wars no more remain.
[282]
Songs and Splashes
A few of the songs remind us that the poet has lived in
New Mexico and Panama, but the impress of the wilder-
ness, of strange places, is not very strong on a temper-
ament perhaps too hospitable to the lighter and more
facile emotions. H. M.
MODERN AND ELIZABETHAN
The Poet in the Desert, by Charles Erskine Scott Wood.
(New revised ed.) Privately printed, Portland, Ore.
Maia — a Sonnet Sequence, by Charles Erskine Scott Wood,
with two sonnets by Sara Bard Field. Portland, Ore.
Some years ago — in September, 1915 — POETRY reviewed
the first of these two books, then just published. Let us
reaffirm the opinion then expressed, which referred
especially to the Prologue, now the poem's first section:
Mr. Wood proves himself a poet not only by the sweep and power
of his vision, but by the rich imagery and rhythmic beauty of his free
verse at its best. His special distinction is that he really "enters into
the desert," that his poetry really presents something of the color and
glory, the desolation and tragedy, of this western wonderland.
The new edition of the poem is almost a re- writing of
much of it; and for the better, as it is relieved of a good
deal of social and political propaganda.
It may be difficult to judge impartially Maia, coming as
it does in all the luxury of Gothic type on hand-made
large-paper, with decorative illustrations singularly per-
sonal (at least the frontispiece is confessedly by the
author), and of a beauty a bit amateurish perhaps, but
delicate and rare. But one may safely record astonish-
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
ment that the same man should achieve, when well along
in the dangerous middle years of life, these two poems of
different moods and modes — the challenging radical
modernism of the one, and the old-world freshness and
acceptance-of-joy of the other.
It goes without saying that Mr. Wood is a more arrest-
ing poet in the western desert than in the Elizabethan
garden. The sonnets are, perhaps inevitably, imitative
of Sidney or Spenser; while The Poet in the Desert is the
intensely personal work of a modern observer and thinker,
an impassioned challenge to civilization, containing pas-
sages of beauty and power. H. M.
CLASSICS IN ENGLISH
Sappho, by Henry Thornton Wharton. Brentano's.
The Golden Treasury of the Greeks, by Alexander Lothian.
Basil Blackwell, Oxford, England.
Medallions in Clay, by Richard Aldington. Alfred A.
Knopf.
The Poets' Translation Series: Second Set. The Egoist.
Translators put one under no obligation to consider
their work in relation to original texts not included in
their books. I shall assume no familiarity with the classic
works involved, but shall consider these books principally
as English poems upon foreign and antique subjects.
Wharton is the standard Sappho. This new edition
outdoes the former, containing useful literal translations,
[284]
Classics in English
a useless and elaborate "life," metrical versions from
various hands, and disastrous attempts at paraphrasis by
Miss Anne Bunner. He is not content with a single notion
of the shifty poet-pedagogue; he must have them all —
an encyclopedia of Sapphos.
Mr. Lothian, who has "rendered" the Greek Anthology,
has worked hard. His neat rhymed verse is no more
Greek, or at least no less English, than Herrick; the
comparison which he invites could not be fair to him.
At his worst he contrives an embarrassed jig-rhythm.
At his best there are elegant stanzas like this:
Yet there, your nightingales as clear
Sing as they sang of old.
The clutch of death is wide; but here
Is what he cannot hold.
Medallions in Clay contains the translations from Anyte,
Meleager, the Anacreontea, and the Latin poets of the
Renaissance which Mr. Aldington prepared for the
Poets' Translation Series published some time ago in
England. A writer dealing with a past age must decide
whether frankly to outfit it in historical trappings, "cos-
tume," etc.; or to transpose it into the idiom of his race
and day, which produces an effect consistent if bizarre
(see Synge's Villon and Petrarch). Mr. Aldington has
done neither the one nor the other.
All traces of period have disappeared. He might have
preserved the aroma of these verses more successfully
if he had kept the original line-divisions, leaving the
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
words more or less in their original order. This would
not of course indicate the original ' tune, but it might
create another; as in Miss Densmore's Chippewa trans-
lations, or Arthur Waley's Ufa. Such rhythms are at
least jagged, and clash upon the ear; whereas the sort
of cadence Mr. Aldington writes lulls the mind to sleep.
Contemporary poetic prose seems to be a variety of
metrical molasses.
Mr. Aldington, however, is earnest and scholarly, his
translations are infinitely to be preferred to the hackwork
of professors, and they doubtless contribute much to the
general culture of Anglo-Saxons. To do so may have
been the aim of the various imagists whose zeal and study
carried out the scheme.
Except H. D., they share his shortcomings, as well as
some of his excellences. They all have reverent and bland
dispositions toward the holy classics, they seem to have
worked in a cloud of "sweetness and light." But I feel
an absence of outline, clear light, sensuous precision, and
a corresponding tendency to the sweet and discreetly
sentimental. This is true of Mr. Storer's translations of
Sappho, Poseidippus, and Asklepiades; and it may be said
also of the work of Mr. Flint and Mr. Whitall in the
•First Set.
The Pound-Fenollosa Chinese had faces, manners, gar-
ments, dreams, tangibles. Most of these Greeks and
Romans have none. The archaic energy which must
have animated their exploits, military or imaginative, is
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Classics in English
nowhere to be found. No race of men ever subsisted on
sweet rhetorical distinction. This absence of vitality is
an effect of diction, of sound, of rhythm; as in this, from
one of Mr. Aldington's Anacreontea:
I would drink, stretched upon delicate myrtle boughs and lotus grass.
And Love, with his robe fastened about his throat with papyrus, should
serve me wine.
The solitary exception, naturally enough, is the work
of H. D. She writes English as hard as Anglo-Saxon, and
cultivates no continental suavities. She has had the
discretion to select for her contribution Euripides —
Choruses from the Iphigenia in Aulis and the Hippolytusy
which remained impassioned even in the swathings of
Professor Murray's Swinburnian verse.
T. S. Eliot, in reviewing the First Set in POETRY some
years ago, noted that in avoiding such an English cliche
as "Achilles ran like the wind," her version, "Achilles had
strapped the wind about his ankles," is contrary to
Euripides. I agree with H. D., who seems to feel that a
modern poet need not reproduce with exactness phrases
redundant or over-familiar. She explains thus in a note
in the Egoist (vol. II, No. II) :
While the sense of the Greek has been strictly kept, it is necessary
to point out that the repetition of useless, ornamental adjectives . . . is a
heavy strain on the translator's ingenuity . . . the Homeric epithet
degenerates into what the French call a remplissage — an expression to
fill up a line. Such phrases have been paraphased or omitted.
Even Greek rhetoric evidently had its false notes.
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
What if these warriors and women of hers are not
Greek? The Greeks are dead. We cannot put the mask
beside the face to measure it. It is enough if the mask
moves and speaks. He who knows no Greek has the
right to say: I will call these Greek; for they are surely
men and women, they have substance, they move with
passion.
They will lift their shields,
Riveted with brass,
As they enter Simois
In their painted ships.
Phaedra cries out on her sick-bed:
Take me to the mountains!
Oh for woods, pine tracts,
Where hounds athirst for death
Leap on the bright stags!
God, how I would shout to the beasts
With my gold hair torn loose!
The individual talent cannot develop richly without an
historic sense. One need not know all periods of the
past, but some consciousness of Time's moods one must
have — one must feel Time strangely garbed, with un-
familiar talk or metric. H. D.'s Greeks, at least for the
moment, are my Greeks. It does not matter whether
they, any more than Shakespeare's Romans from Plutarch,
correspond with the latest or best findings of scientific
historians. They live, are entities in the mind, with alien
behavior and curious looks; and in the contemplation of
them the poet may truly see himself in his own time.
Glenway Wescott
[288]
OUR CONTEMPORARIES
THE DIAL'S ANNUAL AWARD
Our much esteemed contemporary The Dial is setting
a new pace for literary prizes by offering an annual two-
thousand-dollar purse to some one of its contributors.
This is, we believe, the largest literary award ever made
in this country — may it be a hint to others capable of
being moved by a generous sense of justice!
POETRY, from its first number, has been urging prizes
and scholarships for poets, believing such awards to be
as rightfully due in this art as in painting, sculpture or
music. But we have not yet made much headway.
Meantime count the scholarships in art schools! In this
year's graduating exercises at the Chicago Art Institute
art school, one young girl sculptor received a thousand-
dollar scholarship, and another an award half as large, for
the two best designs on the subject Harvest — fifteen
hundred dollars handed out as a matter of course, just
like that, for a couple of nice little academic bas-reliefs
(I saw them), not to be compared for a moment with
many poems we have printed by gifted but impecunious
boys and girls who scarcely know where their next meal
is coming from! Why are new scholarships and prizes
founded every year in art exhibitions and schools, while
it remains impossible to convince our men and women of
wealth, however liberally disposed they may be, that
the poets have much more need of such awards, and at
[289]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
present more right to them? How shall we wake people
up to the bitter injustice of the poet's meagre earnings,
to the lack of all financial recognition of his service?
The Dial is doing well to make a generous move in the
right direction.
NEW MAGAZINES
New organs of this art are appearing so rapidly that it
is difficult to keep track of them. The Measure is now
nearly half a year old, with Padraic Colum and Carolyn
Hall as its editors for the summer quarter. Tempo, pub-
lished at Danvers, Mass., with Oliver Jenkins as editor
and R. Ellsworth Larsson as associate, appeared in June.
And Voices — A Journal of Verse, is to begin next autumn
as a quarterly, with Harold Vinal as editor and Fiswoode
Tarleton as associate; issuing from Steinert Hall, Boston.
Besides these along the Atlantic, we welcome also
The Lyric West — A Magazine of Verse, which began in
April at Los Angeles, under the editorship of Grace
Atherton Dennen, 1139 West Twenty-seventh Street.
It is "designed to foster the poetic development of the
expanding West, though it will be an open market for
the work of all verse writers of all places."
Mr. Vinal may not be aware that there is an English
Voices — an interesting magazine of progressive modern
spirit, devoted chiefly to poetry but including some
imaginative prose, a few drawings and a section of
reviews and notes. In the latest Summer Number, which
[290]
New Magazines
is No. Ill of Vol. V, we find poems by certain of our own
friends — John Gould Fletcher, Louis Golding, Isaac
Rosenberg — as well as an article on Rosenberg by Samuel
Roth, formerly editor of The Lyric ', who is now in England.
The editor of Voices is Thomas Moult, whose poem of
last summer, Here for a Time, our readers will remember;
and the publishers are Chapman & Hall, Ltd.
The use of a title already pre-empted by another
magazine, however far away, is of course unfortunate.
POETRY is nearly nine years old, but we received recently
a copy of a monthly published by Cornish Bros., Ltd., in
Birmingham, England, under the title Poetry; with the
sub- title A Magazine of Verse, Comment and Criticism.
Somewhat intrigued, we inquired of the editor, Mr. S.
Fowler Wright, whether he was ignorant of POETRY'S
existence when he adopted the same title. Mr. Wright
promised to pass the query on to his predecessor, the
founder, but we have never received an answer. As
POETRY is fairly well known in England, the duplication
of titles is hardly to the advantage of either magazine.
NOTES
Mr. Charles R. Murphy, a Philadelphia!! and a graduate of Harvard,
has contributed to various magazines, and published, through John
Lane Co., translations of Verhaeren.
Florence Kilpatrick Mixter (Mrs. Geo. W. M.), who has recently
removed to Buffalo from Moline, 111., will soon publish, through Boni &
Liveright, her first book of verse.
Antoinette DeCoursey Patterson (Mrs. T. de Hoge P.), of Philadelphia,
[291]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
is the author of three books of verse, the latest being The Son of Merope
and Other Poems (H. W. Fisher & Co.).
Nancy Campbell (Mrs. Joseph C.) of Wicklow, Ireland, is the author
of Agnus Dei (Four Seas Co.).
Miss Eda Lou Walton, a native of New Mexico, was one of Witter
Bynner's class in poetry at Berkeley three years ago. More recently
she has been living in New York.
Mr. DuBose Heyward, of Charleston, is one of the founders and
officers of the Poetry Society of South Carolina.
Louise Townsend Nicholl (Mrs. Marshall Don Bewick) is on the
staff of the New York Evening Post.
Of the poets who have not hitherto appeared in POETRY:
Mr. David Osborne Hamilton, of New York, is the author of Four
Gardens, published last year in the Yale Series of Younger Poets.
Mr. Richard Hughes, of Talsarnau, North Wales, is a student at
Oxford, and a contributor of verse and prose to the Athenaeum, Man-
chester Guardian, and other papers. Our readers will remember his
recent article on The Winter's Publishing in England.
Miss Gladys Edgerton, of New York, has contributed to magazines,
and translated certain French authors.
Mr. Mason A. Freeman, Jr. "manufactures vinegar in Huntington,
W. Va." He is a member of the N. Y. Society of Independent Artists.
Miss Margaret DeLaughter is a very young poet of St. Louis, Mo.
Margaret Belle Houston (Mrs. M. L. Kauffman), who lives in Bristol,
Va., has written for various magazines.
Miss Grace Hodsdon Boutelle lives in Minneapolis. Her poem is in
honor of her father, for many years a congressman from Maine.
Manuscripts submitted to POETRY in mid-summer are subject to long
delay.
BOOKS RECEIVED
ORIGINAL VERSE:
There and Here, by Allen Tucker. Duffield & Co.
The Marble House and Other Poems, by Ellen M. H. Gates. G. P.
Putnam's Sons.
The Hills of Arcetri, by Leolyn Louise Everett. John Lane Co.
Lincoln Life Sketches in Verse and Prose, by Garrett Newkirk. Duffield
&Co.
[292]
Your June number renewed me wonderfully — an absolutely joyous thing! Go to
it, hammer and tongs! Infuse a little beauty, joy, spirit, pain into the
life of today. Did I say a little? — Oceans of them! — A Canadian subscriber
Vol. XVIII No, VI
POETRY for SEPTEMBER, 1921
PAGE
Poems by Paul Fort . . . Translated by John Strong Newberry 293
Louis Eleventh, Curious Man — The Miraculous Catch — The
Lament of the Soldiers — The Return — The Little Silent Street
— Eternity
Still-hunt Glenway Wescott 303
Ominous Discord — Without Sleep — The Chaste Lovers — To
L. S. I-II— The Poet at Nightfall— The Hunter
Night John Crawford 308
Nadir — Sumach — Brackish Well — Endymion
Descent Ivan Swift 312
At Night Marian Thanhouser 313
Spinners Mary a Zaturensky 314
She Longs for the Country — The Spinners at Willowsleigh —
Song of a Factory Girl — A Song for Vanished Beauty — An Old
Tale — Memories
Charles the Twelfth of Sweden Rides in the Ukraine ....
Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Jessie Lemont 319
Dante— and Today Emanuel Carnevali 323
John Adams' Prophecy H. M. 327
Reviews:
Gerard Hopkins Edward Sapir 330
Unity Made Vital Nelson Antrim Crawford 336
Youth and the Desert H. M. 339
Two English Poets Marion Strobel 343
Correspondence :
Concerning Awards Arthur T. Aldis 347
Notes and Books Received 348, 350
Manuscripts must be accompanied by a stamped and self-addressed envelope.
Inclusive yearly subscription rates. In the United States, Mexico, Cuba and
American possessions, $3.00 net; in Canada, $3.15 net; in all other countries in the
Postal Union, $3.25 net. Entered as second-class matter Nov. 15, 1912, at the
post-office, at Chicago, 111., under Act of March 3, 1879.
Published monthly at 543 Cass St., Chicago, 111.
Copyright 1921, by Harriet Monroe. All rights reserved.
VOL. XVIII
No. VI
A Magazine of \fersc
SEPTEMBER 1921
POEMS BY PAUL FORT
LOUIS ELEVENTH, CURIOUS MAN
LOUIS ELEVENTH, for trifles fain, I love you, curious
man. Dear chafferer in chestnuts, discreetly did
you plan to pluck the chestnuts of fair Burgundy! You
seemed all friendliness and courtesy. Your hood was
hung with images of lead and copper medals. Watchers
would have said your pious thoughts were fixed on things
above. Sudden you stooped, your long arms outward
drove. Gently, not even ruffling your sleek glove, you
filched a chestnut, another, half a dozen, beneath the
menacing gauntlet of your cousin.
But if by chance he let his great fists fall upon your
back, your scrawny back, you roared with laughter and
his stolen goods restored. 'Twas but an empty shell.
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
Void were the chestnuts all. Your gentle industry
served your fortunes well.
So I, good singer, sage of little worth, pilfer both heaven
and earth, provinces of my brain, under the hands of the
Lord, all light. I deftly pull from His fingers the roses
of the dawn, the rings of the storm, the lilies of starry
nights, and gain little ineffable images, a heap of shining
things stored up beneath my skull.
To filch by slow degrees but sure, sweet Louis Eleventh,
O man most rare! May God, good politician, O rare
among the Louis, have you in His good care; and as, in
days of old, when you were pleased, your favorite grey-
hound stretched beneath your breeches, mildly to judge
by that grateful warmth appeased, beneath his golden
slippers in Paradise may you be, blest little king at rest,
his most fervent counsellor.
And, for having praised you, counter to my teachers,
and with all candor having kept your law, when the day
of my doom is at hand, when I, in my turn, shall stand
awaiting judgment at the bar above, pluck at God's robe
that he place me in His love.
THE MIRACULOUS CATCH
The tidings seemed so Heaven-sent — an uncle dead so
apropos — my dear little Louis Eleventh was fain to prop-
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Paul Fort, translated by John Strong Newberry
erly express his glee and gain additional content with a
modest fete; but intimately, in pleasant society.
Master Tristan, all imagination, counseled a picnic in
the plain, and as he blinked with his sly red eyes, "I con-
sent," said the king. [ 'Tis good advice. You 're an old
villain, though, just the same."
Next day, 'neath skies of celestial blue, gay and content,
my sweet little king, Louis Eleventh, with Tristan
L'Ermite and their fair, frail friends, Simonne of the
Chains and Perrette of the Treasure, together came to
fish for the gudgeon that swim in the Seine, at the reedy
foot of the tower of Nesle.
Master Oliver, still a virgin, stands sentry near the
river's margin. He strides along his tedious beat, crush-
ing the grass with careless feet. Agape in boredom's
black abyss, no consolation can he find. The fall of
Buridan it is that occupies his mind.
Simonne of the Chains, soul and heart fast bound to
the heart and soul of her well-loved king, like a dainty
water-lily bent above an ancient nenuphar, on her lover's
threadbare shoulder leant her bosom's snows, her brow
of milk, her little nose of swan-white silk; and, now and
then, the gracious king, Louis of France, with a tender
look, would bid his lovely handmaid bring a squirming
maggot to bait his hook. Then 'twas with such a rnjelt-
ing charm that into a small green box she poured one.
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'twas with such a sweet and profound appeal that she
gave the creature, all quivering, to that reclining king,
her adored one, that Louis the impulse no more restrains,
but kisses an ear (not the ear of the maggot but that of
Simonne of the Chains) amorously whispering into its
hollow meekly bent, "You shall be present when I call
the Three Estates to Parliament."
Perrette of the Treasure (formerly King Louis' light-
o'-love, your pardon! — now bequeathed, a charming
guerdon, to Tristan by royal clemency) was plump and
fresh as a rambler rose, cheeks like a peach, ample bosom
bare, where in duplicate glows the rising sun, each breast
an orb but a pointed one, starred with grains of beauty
ambulant (fleas I would say), whereon the gaunt Tristan
from underneath his hood full often lets his glances brood.
And when good Tristan, his line drawn taut, a fresher
maggot would fain acquire, 'twas with a manner so lan-
guor-fraught the plump dame granted this slight desire,
that, quite transported with Cupid's blisses, he dropped
his line her side to gain ! The line, released, went flic, flac,
floe, and sank beneath the Seine, while Perrette received
on her neck, all warm, two or three hearty headsman's
kisses.
Master Oliver, still a virgin, stands sentry near the
river's margin. He strides along his tedious beat, crush-
ing the grass with careless feet. Agape in boredom's
[2961
Paul Fort, translated by John Strong Newberry
black abyss, no consolation can he find. The fall of
Buridan it is that occupies his mind.
He saw with inattentive eyes, like a flower beside the
river 's brim, a certain Master Villon skim the reeds in
chase of dragonflies. From eyes ablaze with anarchy a
side-long glance he sometimes sends towards the place
where those boon-companions ply the angler's art with
their gentle friends. Master Oliver, still a virgin, having
other fish to fry, that advent scarcely heeds. Vaguely
he saw Master Villon disrobe among the reeds, but merely
murmured in slumbrous tone, like one who speaks in
dreams, "That naked gentleman is not unknown to me,
it seems."
And Tristan L'Ermite landed naught. And Louis
Eleventh landed naught. The maggots spun in vain, in
vain. And Master Francois Villon, now swimming in
mid-Seine, as he floated whispered to his brother fish:
"Liberty forever! Don't let yourselves be caught!"
"Gossip," said Tristan, "if you are good, and sage
withal, I here engage to give you a pass, wherewith to
break the cordon of the Scottish guard when I hang and
when I decapitate." Quoth Perrette of the Treasure, "A
neat reward." "And," continued Tristan in merry vein,
"if your heart does not bid you the fatal view shun, some
fine spring morning you shall see the rapid and joyous
execution of the virgin Oliver le Dain." "I'll be there,
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I'll be there," responded Perrette, clapping her hands
with glee.
"Peace!" cried the king, "or this turbot I miss."
"A turbot, seigneur, is a fish of the sea," timidly ven-
tured the tender Simonne. "With my mother I've sold
full many a one in the market-place of Saint-Honore in
the time of my virginity." "A fish of the sea, eh? Then
that was why I missed him!" The monarch made reply,
not disconcerted in the least!
"Days that are o'er will return no more," hummed
Perrette, on her hose intent. "Yes, youth has only a
single time," Tristan intoned in hearty assent. Thereat
the timid, the tender Simonne cooed to an air that is little
known, "Twas twenty years ago my mother died." It
needed only that — Tristan dissolved in tears. While the
king, as he fished the wind, chanted stentorianly, "No, no,
my friends, I do not wish a thing of naught to be."
And Tristan L'Ermite landed naught. And Louis
Eleventh landed naught. In vain the tempting maggot
spins. The esthetic gudgeons loud applaud, clapping
their frantic fins. Applaud, no doubt, is figurative, but
who knows what fantastic dream is truth — in the depths,
where fishes live at the bottom of the stream?
At the reedy foot of the tower of Nesle, those cronies
good, headsman and king, in chorus sing like birds of the
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Paul Fort, translated by John Strong Newberry
wood. And about their floats the little fish waltz as
sweetly as heart could wish.
Master Oliver, still a virgin, stands sentry near the
river's margin.
Then suddenly Perrette smothered a laugh in her skirt.
My sweet little Louis Eleventh, feeling his line drawn
taut and heaving it up with ardor, a king-fisher had
caught. "A wager," Tristan said. Simonne, "A winged
gudgeon," cried. And Master Oliver halted dead in the
middle of his stride.
"On my word, the judgment was too empiric," mused
Villon, swimming beneath the stream. "To fish for a
gudgeon and catch a bird ... in the bourgeois soul of
that curmudgeon mean somewhere survives the germ of
a lyric!"
And about their floats the little fish waltzed as sweetly
as heart could wish.
THE LAMENT OF THE SOLDIERS
When they were come back from the wars, their heads
were seamed with bleeding scars;
Their hearts betwixt clenched teeth they gripped, in
rivulets their blood had dripped.
When they were come back from the wars — the blue,
the red, the sons of Mars —
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They sought their snuff-boxes so fine, their chests, their
sheets all spotless showing;
They sought their kine, their grunting swine, their
wives and sweethearts at their sewing,
Their roguish children, like as not crowned with a shin-
ing copper pot:
They even sought their homes, poor souls . . . they
only found the worms and moles.
The carrion raven clamored o'er them. They spat
their broken hearts before them!
THE RETURN
Ivy has covered all the wall. How many hours, how
many tears, since last we loved? How many years?
No roses now. Ivy has crushed the vine. Soul,
whither didst thou go? Climbing across the nests of
nightingales, ivy has stifled the whole chateau.
Wind, the deep wells are choked with the roses of
yesterday. Is that your hiding-place, O my dead wife?
No one replies? Who would reply? Is it not best to
listen to the wind that sighs through the grasses, "my
sweet love"?
Flush with the roof, the ancient, crimson sun is cut
through the midst so mournfully.
[300]
Paul Fort) translated by "John Strong Newberry
Shall 1 bid the gardener come? The gardener? No.
It would be better to summon Death to reap the long
grass:
So many memories and so much love, and the setting
sun at the level of the earth.
THE LITTLE SILENT STREET
The stormy silence stirs and hums. Will there be none
that this way comes?
Cobblestones count geraniums. Geraniums count the
cobblestones.
Dream, young girl, at your casement high. Shelled
green peas before you lie. t
They plump the apron white you try with rosy finger-
tips to tie.
I pass, in black from head to feet. Is it forked light-
ning troubles thee,
Young maiden, or the sight of me? The peas have
fallen in the street.
Sombre I pass. Behind I see cobblestones count each
fallen pea.
The stormy silence stirs and hums. Will there be none
that this way comes?
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ETERNITY
One does not need to credit death. The human heart
to rest is fain. O'er sleeping fields the evening's breath
dreams, and I hear eternity chime in the bending ears of
grain.
"Hark! — an angelus dies in heaven's blue height." Be
comforted. Hours pass away. Hushed is the belfry?
God doth wake. The nightingale salutes the day hid in
the turret's rose-tree brake, and in its turn will mourn
the night.
"Hark! — once again the hour doth swell." But the
bell's already fast asleep. Eternity is chiming deep,
borne by the sweet, tormented breath of zephyr and of
Philomel.
One does not need to credit death.
Translated from the French of Paul Fort
by John Strong Newberry
[3°2]
STILL-HUNT
OMINOUS CONCORD
As if I were Jeanne d 'Arc,
But wearier, I prepare
Answer and return
To the prophetic air;
My voice answering
Voices of the unearthly nation
With autumnal melody
Of my own creation:
Melody of alarm lest my
So long-imagined love retreat
Into despair as sharp and fine
As the print of sea-gull's feet.
They sing, stilling my response
With silvery indifference;
And what they mean or know
Is, like the falling of first snow,
An indecipherable cadence.
WITHOUT SLEEP
He earns the oblivion of book and shelf
Who will have for muse a Beatrice
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Sitting content by the hearth
To whisper his history and thought.
•
Poet uncuckolded, he hears
No mad ethereal crying
For merciless cloud and ridge
Tormented by the golden horn.
Ah, she will never lift
Her intolerant head like a stag
And scorn him, thinking of wind
And naked hunter and his hallooing hound.
THE CHASTE LOVERS
Siberia is a land
Drops from a cloud.
The shackles click,
Yet never loud,
Upon a pavement
Of the frost —
A road we know,
Yet still are lost
Within the semblance
Of its cold
Mile after mile
Till we are old.
[304]
Glenway Wescott
You and I, man and maid.
Together form
Procession or cavalcade
Minute as a worm.
Prisoners to each other,
And to these even less kind —
The bottomless beauty of body,
The bottomless pomp of mind.
And perpetually discontent,
We eye the crows,
Or watch the weasel where it went,
Or hail the wind that blows.
TO L. s.
i
O you
Wing-of-the-wind,
Why do you chant
Ree, ree, with the mourning-dove,
And dee, dee, with the male gannet —
When you may live forever
In the fray of her feathers,
And in the tumult of the dark wave
Where he pillows
In all weathers?
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ii
Why the perpetual sway
Of the air?
Why the rift of the heaven
Into light and dark,
Into black and white of division?
Women are deeper than sound.
They are the storm, which continues
In quiet, in peace, in sunshine,
Healing and building
In the air the airy sinews.
THE POET AT NIGHT-FALL
I see no equivalents
For that which I see,
Among words.
And sounds are nowhere repeated,
Vowel for vocal wind
Or shaking leaf.
Ah me, beauty does not enclose life,
But blows through it —
Like that idea, the wind,
Which is unseen and useless,
Even superseded upon
The scarred sea;
[306]
Glenway Wescott
Which goes and comes
Altering every aspect —
The poplar, the splashing crest —
Altering all, in that moment
When it is not
Because we see it not.
But who would hang
Like a wind-bell
On a porch where no wind ever blows?
THE HUNTER
You asked me what I did
In peaked New Mexico,
Where lives the most wild beauty
To which a man may go.
And I answer that I pursued
Content that would go in a song
Upon its silvery mountains
So vainly and so long
That if it were bear or lion
Which I had hunted there
I should now be like Orion,
Fixed hungry in the air.
Glenway Wescott
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NIGHT
NADIR
I am part of lonely things
Of this lonely city. . .
A gold fish in a bowl,
Lowered into a lake,
Would feel the sleeping presence of fish
Even as I
Feel life withdrawn, suspended. . . .
An immanence of life,
Like a remembered song of violins
And oboes
After a dance.
Even the sound of my footsteps
Dies in the snow.
SUMACH
An old monk is my night. . . .
Long ago he was young . . .
Song shone between his lips,
And a necklace of round white arms
Fulfilled his throat. . . .
[308]
John Crawford
Dried fruit of trees
That blossom in bitterness
Rustle on his bent shoulders . . .
Wry grey flesh festoons his yellow teeth.
My night is old. . . .
BRACKISH WELL
If I were less than the sum of what I am
I wonder —
My eyes seek yours
Coaxing the flame —
If I were blind?
If I were dumb
And had no song?
Say you would love me
Blind and dumb —
Nothing to hold you,
Nothing to bind you to me.
Say you would love
My spirit . . .
I will say to you:
Go and love some puff of wind
From a graveyard.
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ENDYMION
The universe
Crumbles away,
Crawls away . . .
A simoon
Keyed down,
Hushed away
To whispers. . . .
(Trickling, trickling —
Bare legs —
Impacts of sand-grains —
Impacts of girls ' eyes — )
Up to my knees . . .
(Isolation
Of flesh from flesh-
Slippery, gritty,
Hands grip and slide,
Fingers roll
On my face — )
Knee deep,
Waist deep,
Eyes prickling . . .
(It was my gift
To catch their eyes,
Catch and hold their eyes:
[310]
John Crawford
She knew that,
But She could not blind
All their eyes — )
Waist-deep —
Up to my arm-pits. . . .
(She found one
Could keep my arms knit —
Body like a panther,
That one — )
Up to my eyes —
Sleep slides
Grain by grain. . . .
(What She did to you
No one knows. . . .
She '11 never kill the feel of you
With Her sand—)
Crumbling,
Crawling,
Creeping —
Ring about my neck . . .
(Yours —
Your hands at my throat —
Your lips — )
John Crawford
POETRY: A Magazin'e of Verse
DESCENT
It is large life to sit on the door-log
Of the Hill Tavern,
Among the distinguished birches
Standing in groups,
And look beyond the monotonous green floor
Of the matted tree-tops of the lower land
To the high horizon and the barges,
And the purple island in a ring of gold.
But I am of the lowland,
Of the undistinguished trees and juniper,
And must go down the deliberate trail
Of the undistinguished dead—
And no noon.
Below the bluff-rim —
The trees now are more separate
And individual of pattern;
But the dusk marries them to one another,
And their top branches intertwine,
Like parasols in a crowded park of listeners,
As far as the path leads to the valley terrace.
Then the black belt of tamarack
And tangled bittersweet
Is like the Lower Ten, leaning on brothers
To make stand against the uncertain winds,
And dying in the smother of a brief day.
Ivan Swift
Out of this and on the far side, I knew—
And the stranger would scarce surmise
And rarely venture —
The sun dances in golden tack-points
On the near, cool shallows of the sea.
The gray islands have gone down
Over the world 's rim,
And the freight barges are companion buoys
Floating in pairs under thin smoke fans.
The ring of gold is at my feet, glistening! —
Washed clean by the white surf-reefs
Broken by the blue shadow of a gull.
A single tiger-lily
Flames in a whorl of beach-juniper.
Ivan Swift
AT NIGHT
Sometimes at night I hear the dark,
Wide and wind-shaken, calling me.
I should get up, and flying high
Above the tree-tops to the sea,
Scream till the waves scream back at me.
Marian Thanhouser
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SPINNERS
SHE LONGS FOR THE COUNTRY
It is the May-time now,
And in a place I know
Some girl God will allow
To see the cowslips blow;
And the hyacinths, the fern
That grow by the riversides;
Narcissi, white and stern
Like sad unwilling brides.
Some other girl will run
And, dancing through the grass,
Will laugh in -the wholesome sun,
And feel the sweet hours pass.
Laugh and be merry — oh,
Laugh! Laugh, and play for me!
Go where the sweet flowers grow,
And see what I cannot see!
THE SPINNERS AT WILLOWSLEIGH
The young girl passes by
The old women sit at Willowsleigh. They spin,
And shriek and sing above the humming din.
[314]
Marya Zaturensky
They are so very old and brown and wise,
One is afraid to look them in the eyes.
Their bony fingers make a chilly sound,
Like dead bones shaking six feet underground !
Their toothless singing mocks — they seem to say:
"What I was yesterday you are today;
Stars kissed my eyes, the sunlight loved my brow —
You '11 be tomorrow what I am now."
They dream and talk — they are so old and lean;
And the whole world is young and fresh and green.
Once they were flowers, and flame, and livi ng bread;
Now they are old and strange, and almost dead !
The old women spin at Willowsleigh; they fool
And scold, and sleep. Once they were beautiful.
SONG OF A FACTORY GIRL
It's hard to breathe in a tenement hall
So I ran to the little park,
As a lover runs from a crowded ball
To the moonlit dark.
I drank in clear air as one will
Who is doomed to die,
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
Wistfully watching from a hill
The unmarred sky.
And the great trees bowed in their gold and red
Till my heart caught flame;
And my soul, that I thought was crushed or dead,
Uttered a name.
I hadn't called the name of God
For a long time;
But it stirred in me as the seed in sod,
Or a broken rhyme.
A SONG FOR VANISHED BEAUTY
The house is desolate and bare —
So long ago young Honora left
Her quiet chair!
Through the rose-bordered gardens, reft
Of all her pretty, tender care —
The silent hall, the lonely stair-
No one can see her anywhere.
Here is her shawl, her fan, her book —
She is not there.
No one remembers her bright hair,
Or how she looked, or when Death came.
Few can recall her name.
Marya Zaturensky
Where shall we turn to hope or look
For beauty vanished like an air? —
In what forgotten tomb or nook?
AN OLD TALE
What shall we say of her,
Who went the path we knew of? She is dead —
What shall we say of her?
Men who are very old
Still speak of her. They say
That she was far too beautiful; they say
Her beauty wrought her ruin. But they
Are very old.
The old wives break their threads, they shake their
heads.
They shake their heads when men will speak of her;
They say she was too beautiful.
I must not think of her, I must
Not speak of her! My mother says
One should not think of her.
She went the path we knew of; she is dead.
They say few knew her truly while she lived,
Though men will speak of her.
It really does not matter she is dead.
One need not think of her, although one night
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Folks heard her weeping yet beside a pool
One moonlit springtime I could swear she sang!
But she is dead — one must not think of her.
MEMORIES
Lower New York City at noon hour
There is a noise, and then the crowded herd
Of noon-time workers flows into the street.
My soul, bewildered and without retreat,
Closes its wings and shrinks, a frightened bird.
Oh, I have known a peace, once I have known
The joy that could have touched a heart of stone —
The heart of holy Russia beating still,
Over a snow-cold steppe and on a hill:
One day in Kiev I heard a great church-bell
Crying a strange farewell.
And once in a great field, the reapers sowing
Barley and wheat, I saw a great light growing
Over the weary bowed heads of the reapers;
As growing sweeter, stranger, ever deeper,
From the long waters sorrowfully strong,
Came the last echoes of the River Song!
Here in this alien crowd I walk apart
Clasping remembered beauty to my heart!
Mary a Zaturensky
CHARLES THE TWELFTH OF SWEDEN
RIDES IN THE UKRAINE
Kings in old legends seem
Like mountains rising in the evening light.
They blind all with their gleam,
Their loins encircled are by girdles bright,
Their robes are edged with bands
Of precious stones, the rarest earth affords.
With richly jeweled hands
They hold their slender, shining, naked swords.
A young king from the North did fare,
Defeated in the Ukraine.
He hated springtime and women 's hair
And the sound of the harps ' refrain.
Upon a steel grey horse he rode,
And like steel was his grey eyes' glance;
Never for woman had they glowed,
And to none had he lowered his lance.
Never a woman his colors claimed,
And none to kiss him would dare;
For at times, when his quick wrath flamed,
A moon of pearls he would tear
From a coil of wondrous hair.
When seized by melancholy mood
He wreaked his will of a maid as he would,
And the bridegroom, whose ring she wore, pursued
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Through the glade and across the heath
With a hundred hounds for many a rood,
Till he hunted him to his death.
He left his grey land dim and far,
Whose voice to him never spake;
And rode out under the thrall of war
And fought for danger's sake.
Now he seemed under a spell to ride,
Dreamily slipping his steel-gloved hand
Over his armor from band to band;
But found no sword at his side.
And then a miracle occurred —
A glorious vision of battle stirred
And fired his kindling pride.
He sat on his horse and glanced around —
No movement escaped him and no sound.
Steel unto steel in silver spoke,
Voices were now in everything;
Like many bells they seemed to ring
As the soul of each thing awoke.
The wind, too, stealthily onward crept
And suddenly into the flags it sprang —
Lean like a panther breathless leapt;
Reeling as blasts from the trumpets rang,
It wrestled and laughed and sang.
Then again it would softly hum,
As by some bleeding boy it would dart,
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Rainer Maria Ri/ke, translated by Jessie Lemont
Beating a rally upon his drum,
Carried with uplifted head
Into the grave, borne like his heart
Before his battalions dead.
Many a mountain upward reared,
As though the earth not yet old had grown
But in the making still appeared.
And now the iron stood still as stone,
And then like a forest at evening swayed,
And ever the rising shape still neared
The army's mightily moving shade.
The dust rose up like vapors veiled;
Darkness, not of time, enveloped all,
And everything grew grey and paled,
And smoke rose up and fell like a pall;
Again flame broadened and grew bright,
And all was festively in light.
They attacked: the exotic colors reeled,
On swarms of fantastic provinces rode;
All iron with laughter suddenly pealed;
From a prince in luminous silver flowed
The gleam of the evening battle-field.
Like fluttering joys flags seemed to thrill,
Each gesture now showed the desire
To regally waste, to wantonly spill —
The flames leapt on far buildings, till
The stars themselves caught fire.
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
Night came. And the battle's surging range
Receded like a tired sea
That brought with it many dead and strange;
And all the dead lay there heavily.
The grey horse cautiously picked its way
Past great fists starkly warning it back;
In a foreign land the dead men lay
Where it stepped over grass that was matted and black.
And he who upon the grey horse sat,
Looked down on the colors moist and frayed,
Saw silver like shivered glass ground flat,
Saw iron wither, and helmets drink,
And swords stand stiff in the armor's chink;
Saw dying hands waving tattered brocade . . .
And saw them not.
After the tumult of battle he rode
Onward as though in a trance, alone;
And as with passion his warm cheeks glowed, .
Like those of a lover his grey eyes shone.
Translated from the German of Rainer Maria Rilke
by Jessie Lemont
[322]
COMMENT
DANTE — AND TODAY
ON the fourteenth of this month Dante Alighieri
will have been dead six hundred years. Therefore
the whole world is thinking of him, and his spirit seems to
be questioning the changes of six centuries, challenging
modern civilization. Aristocrat and monarchist that he
was, he was of too immense stature not to have deeply
humane sympathies; his work was not for the elect — in
his day the classically educated, but for the people of his
time and tongue; and thus for the people of all times and
tongues. Indeed, it is symbolically significant that the
three greatest men in Italian literature — Dante, Petrarca
and Boccaccio — wrote in the dawn of that literature, in
what was called il volgare, the language spoken by the
volgo, the people. Although this does not make of Dante
a person of democratic tendencies, still it points out again
that all great things have their foundations in the vo/go,
as all buildings in the earth.
Dante, Petrarca, Boccaccio: they embody the three
traditions. Boccaccio was the artist who works to enter-
tain and amuse his public. Among the thousands who
follow this tradition are the buffoons, as Papini calls
them, the souls sold to the public which the public buys
with large sums. Petrarca is the delicate artist for whom
only the inner world exists, in whose trail a thousand out-
casts, egocentrics, morphinomaniacs, came; for whom
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delicacy is not a luxury, as it is for the strong, but rather
an incurable idiosyncrasy. Dante embodies the great-
est tradition — that of those who through literature judge
men and the times; besides being representative of that
sturdy healthy beauty which has a greater claim on lon-
gevity.
Dante gathered, into what is perhaps the most power-
ful work of all literatures, all the history and philosophy,
and part of the science of his time. He classified men
and judged them; but his judgment is, like the history
contained in the Commedia^ essentially and terrifically
mediaeval. A fierce god is this "merciful god" who gets
a vengeance a thousandfold more terrible than the crime,
than any crime. And a fierce little man it was who went
wandering into hell, cursing each and all of the Italian
cities, and several of the foreign ones, and their unfor-
tunate inhabitants, for some slight reason or other. Today
his ethics are dead: they are at best the skeleton around
which the beautiful immortal flesh of Dante's words was
cast. Dante's words — only an Italian, and a good Ital-
ian, may know the magical beauty of them ! The poign-
ant dramatic beauty of his Conte Ugo/ino, and the sweet-
ness of his Francesca, and the marvelous images scattered
throughout his work like pearls and diamonds over a
gorgeous gown!
But, as I say, his ethics, like the history in his work,
are past and dead. We know now that hell is not neces-
sary— there is nothing so horrible that it may not be
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Dante — and Today
found, at one time or another, upon the face of our earth.
We have developed a philosophy which is more apt to
give life all the credit due to life. We are waiting for the
poet who will give us a Divina Commediaof our own times,
but it is something entirely different from Dante's that
we expect. A hell more terrific than the hell of Dante is
the hell of modern warfare — an immense, eyeless, stupid
machine that batters, mangles, crushes, distorts, tor-
tures, crazes men. And, as if this were not terrible
enough, men are studying how to contrive more terrible
means to kill; and the next war, it is said, will be mostly
a war of gas and germs! Henri Barbusse and Andreas
Latzko gave us some horrible glimpses of the War. But
they left still a great area unmeasured, an area perhaps
immeasurable, perhaps impenetrable.
The world has become overcrowded: human beings are
lost in it and nobody knows. This twentieth-century
world erects horrible structures that look like skeletons —
skeletons of a thing already dead, living now in hell. The
mechanical cities loom like the menace of the future over our
rivers: over and under them the continual uproar of loco-
motives, soul-rending, passes. Railways hold the earth
in a terrible embrace. And the makers of these are busi-
ness men who do not see, and workers whom a whirlwind
sweeps into this modern tremendous factory, and leaves
there like fledglings caught in the blast of an immense fur-
nace. Out of this factory the human soul comes crushed —
out of this factory of neurosis, the modern world. Ma-
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chines and neurosis, out of this factory ! The last trees are
pushed farther and farther away by the oncoming cities.
And there isn't a breeze but brings to them the feverish
breath of the cities. Paradise might be the peace and
the happiness that man has in spite of the world he him-
self builds.
This is Dante's challenge to a poet of today. Who will
tune down this noise, arrange this turmoil, find one voice
in this chaos of voices? His task will be a hundred times
more arduous than Dante's. Dante's conception of his
narrow world was centered around two main hypotheses
— that of the absolute monarchy and that of the Roman
Catholic power, the Pope. A modern poet would require,
besides Dante's great genius, the energy to gather to-
gether in his thought a world which facility of trans-
portation, and science in general, have made enormous.
The question as to whether a poet should be concerned
in this great outer world, as opposed to the petty inner
world of daily moods, cares, worries and affection, is a
ridiculous question. And ridiculous is the thesis of the
esthetic critic when he proposes that the individual who
accomplishes the feat of expressing himself ably has there-
by attained art: implying that a mole's observation of life
is as valid as that of a soaring eagle who sees the world
from above the horizons.
But there are still eagles: Walt Whitman, the multi-
tudinous man, for whom the world was a purgatory of
striving joy and self-redeeming pain — he enumerated, at
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Dante — and Today
least, the modern world. And Verhaeren, with his Villes
Tentaculaires, put down some of the horror of it. But it
is either an Inferno only, or a Purgatorio or a Paradiso
only, that the poets of the six centuries since Dante have
accomplished. No one has attained Dante's completeness.
Emanuel Carnevali
JOHN ADAMS' PROPHECY
Not long ago The Freeman reminded us of a penetrating
remark of old John Adams, first grand chief of the Adams
clan and second president of the United States. Nay, not
old; for he was only forty-five, and still seventeen years
from the seat of Washington, when he wrote to his wife
in 1780:
I must study politics and war, that my sons may have liberty to study
mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval
architecture, navigation and commerce and agriculture; in order to give
their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture,
statuary, tapestry and porcelain.
In 1780 America was quite innocent of art; or rather,
such art as it had — colonial architecture, a few imported
paintings, plays, poems — it took quite innocently, with
abstemious discretion. And Adams, if not himself a
thorough Puritan, was only four generations from that
Henry Adams who, according to his tombstone in Quincy,
"took his flight from the Dragon Persecution in Devon-
shire, England, and landed with eight sons near Wolles-
ton. " And the Puritan hostility to art and all its works —
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was it not attested by the closing of theaters, the de-
struction of old churches, the sale of Charles I's collection
to Spain, and other temporarily convincing devices to
crush out the universal human instinct for creating beauty ?
Therefore it is surprising to find this eighteenth-cen-
tury wise man bequeathing the arts as a glorious heritage
to his grandsons yet unborn, and feeling his own hard
labors in the founding of a nation to be a mere prelimi-
nary to that end. Probably he never asked the much re-
iterated modern question, "What is art?" — never debated
whether it was an iridescent rust of the mind, the be-
ginning of disintegration; or a white-heat of creative
energy, the fulmination of spiritual planets and moons,
new dwellings for the soul of man.
The nation John Adams helped to found has passed on
to the third or fourth generation beyond him without yet
getting its machinery into such perfect running order as
to free its citizens for the active and creative life of the
spirit. There is plenty of machinery, but it proves cum-
bersome, it clogs. For few descendants of those nation-
makers are capable of freedom; they are bound — hand,
foot and spirit — to the machine; and their unconscious
effort is to bind in the same fashion those who could and
would be free, and thereby to conceal the evidence of
their own slavery.
Probably each age has its due proportion of artists,
actual or potential — that is, its due proportion of creative-
ly imaginative minds. Even John Adams' time, though
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John Adams' Prophecy
barren in artistic product, was probably no more barren
than any other in artistic impulse. Certain square-
minded historians and critics are always talking of "great
artistic periods" as if the artists who illuminate them were
necessarily born in clusters; as if, between these clusters,
nature must hold her breath in barrenness. There are
great artistic periods, of course; but they arrive when the
creative impulse in the few meets a sympathetic impulse
in the many, when all things conspire to bring the artists
together into emulative clusters, and make them freely
expressive and productive. The great artistic periods come
when the creatively imaginative mind finds all conditions
urging him, compelling him indeed, to produce temples,
songs, tales, murals, carvings of men and gods, rather
than "politics and war", or even "mathematics and phil-
osophy, geography, natural history" and the rest.
The artist can not be born to order, nor ordered after
he is born. Yet it is paradoxically true that only by the
will of the people, his contemporaries and neighbors,
can he come into his own.
When will the sons of John Adams will it?
ff.M.
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REVIEWS
GERARD HOPKfNS
Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins (now first published)'
Edited, with notes, by Robert Bridges, Poet Laureate*
Humphrey Milford, London.
When the author's preface and the editor's notes are
eliminated, we have here but a small volume of some
eighty-five pages of poetry, and of these only a scant
sixty-three consist of complete poems, the rest being
fragments assembled from manuscripts in the Poet Lau-
reate's possession. The majority of them date from the
years 1876 to 1889; only three earlier poems are included.
Hopkins is long in coming into his own; but it is not too
much to say that his own will be secure, among the few
that know, if not among the crowd, when many a Geor-
gian name that completely overshadows him for the
moment shall have become food for the curious.
For Hopkins' poetry is of the most precious. His voice
is easily one of the half dozen most individual voices in
the whole course of English nineteenth-century poetry.
One may be repelled by his mannerisms, but he cannot
be denied that overwhelming authenticity, that almost
terrible immediacy of utterance, that distinguishes the
genius from the man of talent. I would compare him to
D. H. Lawrence but for his far greater sensitiveness to
the music of words, to the rhythms and ever-changing
speeds of syllables. In a note published in POETRY in 1914,
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Gerard Hopkins
Joyce Kilmer speaks of his mysticism and of his glori-
ously original imagery. This mysticism of the Jesuit
poet is not a poetic manner, it is the very breath of his
soul. Hopkins simply could not help comparing the
Holy Virgin to the air we breathe; he was magnificently
in earnest about the Holy Ghost that
over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
As for imagery, there is hardly a line in these eighty-
odd pages that does not glow with some strange new
flower, divinely picked from his imagination.
Undeniably this poet is difficult. He strives for no
innocuous Victorian smoothness. I have referred to his
mannerisms, which are numerous and not always readily
assimilable. They have an obsessive, turbulent quality
about them — these repeated and trebly repeated words,
the poignantly or rapturously interrupting oh's and ah's,
the headlong omission of articles and relatives, the some-
times violent word order, the strange yet how often so
lovely compounds, the plays on words, and, most of all,
his wild joy in the sheer sound of words. This phonetic
passion of Hopkins rushes him into a perfect maze of
rhymes, half-rhymes, assonances, alliterations:
Tatter-tassel-tangled and dingle-a-dangled
Dandy-hung dainty head.
These clangs are not like the nicely calculated jingling
lovelinesses of Poe or Swinburne. They, no less than
the impatient ruggednesses of his diction, are the foam-
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flakes and eddies of a passionate, swift-streaming ex-
pression. To a certain extent Hopkins undoubtedly loved
difficulty, even obscurity, for its own sake. He may
have found in it a symbolic reflection of the tumult that
raged in his soul. Yet we must beware of exaggerating
the external difficulties; they yield with unexpected ease
to the modicum of good will that Hopkins has a right to
expect of us.
Hopkins' prosody, concerning which he has something
to say in his preface, is worthy of careful study. In his
most distinctive pieces he abandons the "running" verse
of traditional English poetry and substitutes for it his
own "sprung" rhythms. This new verse of his is not
based on the smooth flow of regularly recurring stresses.
The stresses are carefully grouped into line and stanza
patterns, but the movement of the verse is wholly free.
The iambic or trochaic foot yields at any moment to a
spondee or a dactyl or a foot of one stressed and three or
more unstressed syllables. There is, however, no blind
groping in this irregular movement. It is nicely ad-
justed to the constantly shifting speed of the verse.
Hopkins' effects, with a few exceptions, are in the high-
est degree successful. Read with the ear, never with the
eye, his verse flows with an entirely new vigor and light-
ness, while the stanzaic form gives it a powerful compact-
ness and drive. It is doubtful if the freest verse of our
day is more sensitive in its rhythmic pulsations than the
"sprung" verse of Hopkins* How unexpectedly he has
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Gerard Hopkins
enlarged the possibilities of the sonnet, his favorite form,
will be obvious from the two examples that I am going
to quote. Meanwhile, here are two specimens of his more
smoothly flowing verse. The first is from The Leaden
Echo, a maiden's song:
How to keep — is there any any, is there none such, nowhere known
some, bow or brooch or braid or brace, lace, latch or catch or key
to keep
Back beauty, keep it, beauty, beauty, beauty, . . from vanishing away ?
Oh is there no frowning of these wrinkles, ranked wrinkles deep,
Down? no waving-offof these most mournful messengers, still messen-
gers, sad and stealing messengers of grey?
No there's none, there's none — oh no, there's none!
Nor can you long be, what you now are, called fair —
Do what you may do, what, do what you may,
And wisdom is early to despair:
Be beginning; since, no, nothing can be done
To keep at bay
Age and age's evils — hoar hair,
Ruck and wrinkle, drooping, dying, death 's worst, winding sheets, tombs
and worms and tumbling to decay;
So be beginning, be beginning to despair.
Oh there's none — no no no, there's none:
Be beginning to despair, to despair,
Despair, despair, despair, despair.
This is as free as it can be with its irregular line-lengths
and its extreme changes of tempo, yet at no point is there
hesitation as the curve of the poem rounds out to definite
form. For long-breathed, impetuous rhythms, wind-like
and sea-like, such verse as this of Hopkins' has nothing
to learn from the best of Carl Sandburg. My second
quotation is from The Wood-lark, a precious fragment:
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
Teevo cheevo cheevio chee:
Oh where, where can that be?
Weedio-weedlo: there again!
So tiny a trickle of song-strain;
And all round not to be found
For brier, bough, furrow, or green ground
Before or behind or far or at hand
Either left, either right,
Anywhere in the sunlight.
Well, after all! Ah, but hark—
"I am the little wood-lark."
This is sheer music. The stresses fall into place with
an altogether lovely freshness.
Yet neither mannerisms of diction and style nor prosody
define the essential Hopkins. The real Hopkins is a
passionate soul unendingly in conflict. The consuming
mysticism, the intense religious faith are unreconciled
with a basic sensuality that leaves the poet no peace.
He is longing to give up the loveliness of the world for
that greater loveliness of the spirit that all but descends to
envelop him like a mother; but he is too poignantly aware
of all sensuous beauty, too insistently haunted by the
allurements of the flesh. A Freudian psychologist might
call him an imperfectly sex-sublimated mystic. Girlish
tenderness is masked by ruggedness. And his fuming
self-torment is exteriorized by a diction that strains,
and by a rhythmic flow that leaps or runs or stamps
but never walks.
Here is The Starlight Night, one of his most character-
istic sonnets — white-heat mysticism forged out of what
pathos of sense-ecstasy!
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Gerard Hopkins
Look at the stars! look, look up at the skies!
Oh look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air!
The bright boroughs, the circle-citadels there!
Down in dim woods the diamond delves! the elves '-eyes!
The grey lawns cold where gold, where quickgold lies!
Wind-heat whitebeam! airy abeles set on a flare!
Flake-doves sent floating forth at a farmyard scare! —
Ah well! it is all a purchase, all is a prize.
Buy then! bid then! — What? — Prayer, patience, alms, vows.
Look, look: a May-mess, like on orchard boughs!
Look! March-bloom, like on mealed- with-yellow sallows!
These are indeed the barn; within doors house
The shocks. This piece-bright paling shuts the spouse
Christ home, Christ and his mother and all his hallows.
"Ah well! it is all a purchase." You cannot have it
for the asking.
And, finally, this other sonnet, addressed to his own
restless soul, "with this tormented mind tormenting yet:"
My own heart let me have more pity on; let
Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,
Charitable; not live this tormented mind
With this tormented mind tormenting yet.
I cast for comfort I can no more get
By groping round my comfortless, than blind
Eyes in their dark can day or thirst can find
Thirst 's all-in-all in all a world of wet.
Soul, self; come, poor Jackself, I do advise
You, jaded, let be; call off thoughts awhile
Elsewhere; leave comfort root-room; let joy size
At God knows when to God knows what; whose smile
's not wrung, see you; unforeseen times rather — as skies
Betweenpie mountains — lights a lovely mile.
But how many "lovely miles" could there have been
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on the long, rocky road traversed by this unhappy spirit ?
In face of this agonising poem one can only marvel at
the Poet Laureate's imperturbable exegesis of the word
"betweenpie": — "This word might have delighted
William Barnes if the verb 'to pie' existed. It seems
not to exist, and to be forbidden by homophonic absurdi-
ties." From our best friends deliver us, O Lord!
Edward Sapir
UNITY MADE VITAL
New Poems, by D. H. Lawrence. B. W. Huebsch.
The unimaginative person divides life, art, science, any-
thing he is dealing with. He analyzes it, classifies it,
puts it into compartments. The poet, on the other hand,
is not interested in divisions so much as in unity, because
unity is the aspect under which life presents itself natural-
ly to any unbound creative spirit.
Probably there is no living poet whose perception of
the unity of all things is keener and more profound than
D. H. Lawrence. He goes further than Wordsworth and
the romantic school. He goes further than the symbol-
ists. His books give not only new pleasure, but, more
than this, new light to the understanding.
Saturated with Pauline theology — as all of us who
have studied English literature at all are bound to be —
we are prone to draw distinctions between body and spirit,
or even between mind and spirit, and to set one up as
above the others. The lesser poet may as well accept the
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Unity Made Vital
distinctions: an artist like Mr. Lawrence abandons these.
He sees all experiences fused into the indissoluble whole
which is life.
Nay, I persist, and very faith shall keep
You integral to me. Each door, each mystic port
Of egress from you I will seal and steep
In perfect chrism
So you shall feel
Ensheathed invulnerable with me, with seven
Great seals upon your outgoing, and woven
Chain of my mystic will wrapped perfectly
Upon you, wrapped in indomitable me.
The utter unity of art is brilliantly revealed in such a
poem as Flapper, which cannot fail to suggest architect-
ural method in its structure, and in its keeping of all
ornament in inherent harmony with the line of structure.
Love has crept out of her sealed heart
As a field-bee, black and amber,
Breaks from the winter-cell, to clamber
Up the warm grass where the sunbeams start.
Mischief has come in her dawning eyes,
And a glint of colored iris brings,
Such as lies along the folded wings
Of the bee before he flies.
Who, with a ruffling, careful breath
Has opened the wings of the wild young sprite?
Has fluttered her spirit to stumbling flight
In her eyes, as a young bee stumbleth?
Love makes the burden of her voice.
The hum of his heavy, staggering wings
Sets quivering with wisdom the common things
That she says, and her words rejoice.
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The ten-page preface to Mr. Lawrence's present volume
is another witness to unity — a unity perhaps more far-
reaching, more comprehensive, more marvelous, than has
been suggested by the previous examples. In this preface
the author points out that there are two types of poetry,
that it is either "the voice of the far future, exquisite and
ethereal, or the voice of the past, rich, magnificent".
Both types possess an "exquisite finality, perfection which
belongs to all that is far off".
The poet then turns to "the unrestful, ungraspable
poetry of the sheer present, poetry whose very permanency
lies in its wind-like transit". As the best example of this,
he points to Whitman. Free verse, he says, is the norm
of this "seething poetry of the incarnate Now", which is
"supreme, beyond even the everlasting gems of the before
and after".
In his discussion Mr. Lawrence uses with great effec-
tiveness biologic and physical examples. Science and art
may be popularly regarded as enemies. Mr. Lawrence
does not attack science, he puts science into his pocket
and walks off with it — a distinct achievement in the di-
rection of unity.
So much has been written about Lawrence, intelligent
readers know his work so well, that detailed discussion of
his poems seems hardly in place. His New Poems has
much the same qualities as his earlier volumes of poems.
There is the same passion-filled, deep-running ardor, the
same exactness of phrasing, the same fulness of conno-
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Unity Made Vital
tation, the same subtle rhythms. Places are much more
extensively used as subject matter than in his previous
books. The volume has not the emotional completeness
of Look! We Have Come Through, but that is due to the
plan of organic development followed in that work.
Nelson Antrim Crawford
YOUTH AND THE DESERT
The Bitterns, by Glenway Wescott. Monroe Wheeler,
Evanston, 111.
The Immobile Wind, by Yvor Winters. Monroe Wheeler.
These brief first books of two friends may naturally be
reviewed together, since they are the product of sympa-
thetic, though quite different, minds and temperaments
working in the same tradition — the ultra-modern tra-
dition of Ezra Pound, H. D., perhaps Carlos Williams and
one or two others, and above all Wallace Stevens. The
two young poets are both seekers of austere beauty in
her remote cool haunts; and their Pegasus is reined in by
a taut technique, which gives him order and direction
but possibly too little freedom of movement.
Youth is so prone to prolixities and sentimentalities
that the opposite excess is something of a relief — at any
rate it may prove good discipline for young poets keenly
strung and not less sensitive because they abhor facility.
The temptations inherent in this compression are obvious
— self-consciousness and what one might call a mannerism
of tightness. In both these books -one feels this strain
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— one wishes that each poet would be less reluctant to
speak out, to let himself go, to reveal his meaning with a
less mystical air.
Mr. Winters' poem, The Priesthood, suggests the kind
of austere beauty both these poets are aiming at:
We stand apart
That men may see
The lines about our eyes.
We perish, we
Who die in art,
With that surprise
Of one who speaks
To us and knows
Wherein he lies.
And Mr. Wescott, veiling a similar theme, says in his
initial poem, After-image:
Oh I have never sought
This image of remembered fear
Which clings to the eye of thought.
I have desired rather to create
A balance of beauty as direct
As the hills above the cruel farms,
Or the two eyes of a fawn —
In ecstasy to separate
Wheat of memory from rust.
But trees by night lift heavy arms,
Or a hawk screams at dawn:
And my sight turns gray as dust.
Residence of a year or two in New Mexico has con-
firmed this austerity by adding its own stark discipline
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Youth and the Desert
of deserts, mountain spaces, and the art of primitive races.
These poets may be cryptic, secretive; but they can not
rival the desert in either of these qualities, nor yet in a
certain harshness streaked with color. Mr. Winters* book
has the feel of the desert in its title, The Immobile Wind>
which no one who has been in those still spaces can
question as paradoxical. This poet has experienced their
gift of solitude; he is
I, one who never speaks.
Again:
On the desert, between pale mountains, our cries —
Far whispers creeping through an ancient shell.
Indeed, the whole book is a voice from the desert, the
expression of a spirit in intimate communion with it — a
spirit proud and separate, who can say:
I paved a sky
With days.
I crept beyond the Lie.
The reader may be left to his own interpretation of
the more cryptic poems, including the Two Dramatic
Interludes for Puppets. But even one who lives "in the
greatest of our valleys" can hardly fail to get from this
one, with its beautiful last line, a hint of desert grandeur
and silence:
Death goes before me on his hands and knees,
And we go down among the bending trees.
Weeping I go, and no man gives me ease —
I am that strange thing that each strange eye sees.
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Eyes of the silence, and all life an eye,
Turn in the wind, and always I walk by.
Too still I go, and all things go from me — .
As down far autumn beaches a man runs to the sea.
My hands are cold, my lips are thin and dumb.
Stillness is like the beating of a drum.
Mr. Wescott's experience of the desert is less intimate
and static. He has followed the trail — for him the desert
moves:
The sun slides down:
I have not healed
My lame leprous day;
I am not swift enough to walk
From May to May.
Desert flows beneath my feet,
Drips out of the sky.
But I lie down beside content,
For victory is imminent.
Night opens her deep eye.
Indeed, the desert does not pervade this brochure of
twelve poems. There is a hint of softer places and more
personal emotions. Mostly however, it expresses youth's
loneliness — perhaps the following poem is typical, in both
mood and movement :
These are the subtle rhythms, rhythms of sloth:
Mountains which fall in the green swirls
Of twilight as petals, fallen and languid,
Bud in the dawn, and fall again
In the green swirls of twilight, a little
Nearer the stars and the flickering final fires.
These are the rhythms of sloth:
Mountains, my feet on the trails.
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Youth and the Desert
Enough has been quoted from these two poets to show
with what studious insistence they work out their closely
packed thoughts in rhythms of original and delicate
beauty. If the effect is sometimes too tight, too squeezed,
this may be the ardor of youth, which will yield its over-
emphasis to time. Meantime these poets have struck out,
each one, a new and personal tune. As Mr. Wescott sings,
I, in my pitiful flesh
Transfigured, have woven
Music of wilderness.
H.M.
TWO ENGLISH POETS
The Waggoner, by Edmund Blunden. Alfred A. Knopf.
The Kaleidoscope, by Sherard Vines. C. W. Daniel, Ltd.,
London.
If these two English poets were dancing, I am sure one
would do the foxtrot and the other the waltz. And I do
not imply any lack of deference in using this analogy of
another art.
Mr. Sherard Vines, the foxtrotter, would be playfully
pagan with shoulders and feet; and Mr. Edmund Blun-
den, the waltzer, would glide smoothly and turn slowly:
both with propriety. And just as the waltz is a more
finished dance than the foxtrot, so Mr. Blunden 's poetry
is more polished than that of Mr. Vines.
I would recommend The Waggoner to all those who
prefer the i, 2, 3, — i, 2, 3 order of things. The poems
are suave, smooth, and have music. They are very pleas-
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ing to the senses, and leave the emotions unruffled. They
are filled with soft alliterations, and the simple panaceas
of "wood-fairies" and "trysts" and "lilied lakes", as
well as more original ones:
The wild-rose bush lets loll
Her sweet-breathed petals on the pearl-smooth pool —
The bream-pool overshadowed with the cool
Of oaks where myriad mumbling wings patrol.
Frequently there are lines of arresting beauty:
The feather-footed moments tiptoe past.
Some bell-like evening when the may's in bloom.
And always Mr. Blunden is a sincere follower of the
old English pastoral tradition. He has the same genuine
appreciation and authentic knowledge of nature which
inspired Wordsworth, George Crabbe, John Clare, and
the eighteenth-century poets of rural life. Sheepbells is
characteristic:
Moon-sweet the summer evening steals
Upon the babbling day:
Mournfully, most mournfully
Light dies away.
There the yew, the solitary,
Vaults a deeper melancholy,
As from distant dells
Chance music wells
From the browsing-bells.
Thus they dingle, thus they chime,
While the woodlark's dimpling rings
In the dim air climb;
In the dim and dewy loneness,
Where the woodlark sings.
[344]
Two English Poets
Some of the poems are as coolly refreshing as their
titles — The Silver Bird of Herndyke Mill, A Waterpiece,
Perch-fishing, etc. — and all of them have a quiet charm.
They tell of nature in her most gentle moods.
The range of Mr. Blunden's poetry is limited, but it is
highly perfected.
Mr. Vines, on the other hand, springs fearlessly from
one subject to another — starting with Sunrise, and
going with breathless versatility to The Gospel of Chimneys,
to A Ballad of Judas, to Low Tide, to The Dying Bolsh,
and so on, concluding with Anastasis. He uses the direct
appeal of human emotions, and hurls his observations on
love, hatred, and despair with a brutal frankness:
The cold! The ghastly cold,
All colorless! The only color is
My blood, like red wax from a guttering candle —
(You know these red candles ladies use
In piano brackets).
Bitter wind,
A draught blowing so shrilly through my wound,
Blowing the life out, blowing the life out.
There are no sensuous cadences here, as in Mr. Blun-
den's poems; there is no beauty of wording: the effect
is gained through a harsh simplicity, and the subject mat-
ter is always more unusual than the manner of expression.
The poems are — to use the simile again — like the foxtrot,
the modern dance: the dance that is primitive, virile,
whimsical — pagan. The veneer of rhythm is strangely
a part of, and at the same time incongruous to, the un-
[345]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
conventional audacity of the ideas, like the harmony of
discords in modern music.
Perhaps Little Mother of Sorrows is as good an example
as any one poem may be:
Little mother of sorrows,
What is her desire?
" Pence, to buy a drop of milk,
And a few coals for a fire.
"My baby gets no milk from me —
He's crying out for food.
I don't know who his daddy is,
But one that was no good.
"Yes, sir, I used to walk the streets
Before I got so ill;
And now I sell spring flowers or beg,
Since there's two mouths to fill."
Little mother of sorrows,
With holes in your thin shoes,
And little son of sorrows,
With bare pink toes,
No one in the whole town
Cares for you at all;
So go into the workhouse,
Or drown in the canal,
The two poets, like the two dances, have found a dis-
similar, yet each a merited recognition.
Marion Strobel
[346]
CORRESPONDENCE
CONCERNING AWARDS
My Dear Miss Monroe: Your comment on The DiaVs
generous offer of prizes, and your suggestion, repeatedly
made, that poetry should be seriously recognized as a
serious art in our country and encouraged and rewarded
as such, are interesting.
Let me first, however, correct your statement about
the recently won prizes offered for students in the Chicago
Art Institute school. The prizes are larger than you
stated. The French Memorial Prize is, I think, about
$1,200, and the Bryan Lathrop Memorial Prize represents
$800. They were not awarded to the two students, as
you suggest, "for a couple of nice little academic bas-
reliefs," but rather on the basis of these and all their
school work during the past year' plus their personal
qualities; and the prizes are for definite study abroad.
In these particular cases they were undoubtedly the
culmination of three or four years of ardent work.
There is, so far as I know, no school for poetry except-
ing as your magazine, and perhaps to a less extent some
others, afford an intelligent and discriminating outlet
and opportunity to the young poets.
Could you devise and suggest some plan by which
prizes would not be awarded for an individual poem,
but based on broader considerations of personal produc-
tion and talent, youth and need? An outline for such
[347]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
a prize might be worth publishing in POETRY on the
chance of its attracting the generous sympathy of some
well-to-do reader. In the meantime let me repeat that
POETRY is itself the best school and reward, so far as I
know, which exists at the present time for young poets.
Arthur T. Aldis
Note by the Editor: One of POETRY'S annual prizes conforms to our
correspondent's suggestion — that of $100 "for a young poet," awarded
last year and twice previously. This is not given "for an individual
poem," but is "based on broader considerations of personal production
and talent, youth and need." But we submit that there is a vast differ-
ence between this annual hundred dollars (not yet secured for this year,
by the way) and those two far richer memorial prizes permanently en-
dowed for the benefit of the Chicago Art Institute art school.
If anyone feels inclined to endow such a memorial prize in perpetuity
for the benefit of young poets, the editor will engage to satisfy him as to
the terms of such an endowment. Some trust company of proved re-
liability should be made custodian of such a fund, and a committee of
prominent poets should administer it. The editor will be very glad ot
suggestions as to the best way of appointing and perpetuating such a
committee, in order to keep it freshly authoritative and uninstitution-
alized.
Those who are interested — and poets especially should be loyally in-
terested— are requested to give this subject careful thought, and to send
in their suggestions before September fifteenth, so that we may resume
the subject editorially in our annual Prize-award Number in November.
NOTES
Paul Fort has been crowned Prince des Poetes in Paris, and has re-
cently published, through Eugene Fasquelle, his twenty-seventh volume
of verse, Au Pays des Moulins. Yet, though perhaps the most popular
and prolific of French poets, he was little known in this country, if one
may judge by slightness of sales and library circulation, until Amy
[348]
Notes
Lowell introduced him in her Six French Poets, to which volume the
reader is referred for an intelligent presentation of the man and his art.
The Miraculous Catch is partly quoted by Miss Lowell, and admirably
translated into prose. But as she does not attempt to reproduce M.
Fort's rhyme-scheme, with its chiming repetitions of sound not unlike
her own polyphonic prose, we present Mr. Newberry- 's version in the
hope that our readers will be interested to compare the two translations
of a poem so deliciously and whimsically French in its mood and style —
its manner of achieving a modern picture of a mediaeval scene.
M. Fort's series of Louis Eleventh poems, of which we present two,
have been incorporated recently in a play which is to be produced at
the Odeon in October. This autumn Mr. John Strong Newberry will
publish, through Duffield & Co., his book of translations, under the title
Selected Poems and Ballads of Paul Fort.
M. Fort was born at Rheims in 1872, directly opposite the Cathedral
— now "la Cathedrale assassinee" as he has called it since its destruc-
tion. For years he has lived in Paris. Miss Lowell speaks of his joie
de vivre — "I know no one," she says, "except Sam Weller, who seems to
me so bubblingly alive."
M. Fort's translator, Mr. John Strong Newberry, is a resident of
Cleveland, Ohio.
Rainer Maria Rilke, the distinguished Viennese poet from whom we
present a translation, was discussed by Padraic Colum in POETRY for
June, 1919, in a review of a volume of the Lemont translations. "A
mystic poet," Mr. Colum calls him, one "lonely amid the crowd."
Mrs. Jessie Lemont Transil, Rilke 's very competent translator, is a
resident of New York.
Of the American poets who appear this month for the first time:
Mr. Glenway Wescott, a native of Wisconsin and recently resident
in Chicago and Santa Fe* is the author of The Bitterns, published by
Monroe Wheeler and reviewed in this number.
Mr. John Crawford, a native of Arkansas and a resident of New York,
has written for various papers — mostly prose criticisms.
Mr. Ivan Swift, a painter as well as a poet, is the founder of Chippewa
Cove Woods, an artist colony near Harbor Springs, Mich., where he
lives at least part of each year. He is the author of The Blue Crane
(James T. White & Co.).
[349]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
Miss Marian Thanhouser, formerly of Milwaukee, Wis., is now study-
ing at the University of California in Berkeley.
The only poet of this month whom our readers have met before is
Miss Marya Zaturensky — born in Moscow and resident in New York
since she was brought to this country ten years ago. She has contri-
buted verse to various magazines.
BOOKS RECEIVED
ORIGINAL VERSE:
Selected Poems, by William Butler Yeats. Macmillan Co.
The Living Frieze, by Mark Turbyfill. Monroe Wheeler, Evanston, 111.
Commemoration and Other Verses, by Thomas Dwight Goodell. Yale
University Press.
Poems, by Marianne Moore. The Egoist Press, London.
A Song of Faith, by Katherine Milner Peirce. Stratford Co.
Second April, by Edna St. Vincent Millay. Mitchell Kennerley.
ANTHOLOGIES:
Modern Czech Poetry, Selected Texts with Translations and an Intro-
duction by P. Selver. E. P. Button & Co.
A Queen's College Miscellany, 1921, selected and edited by Edmund
Blunden and Alan Porter. Oxford, England.
A Hundred Voices and Other Poems from the Second Part of Life Immov-
able, by Kostes Palamas. Translated with an Introduction and notes
by Aristides E. Phontrides. Harvard University Press.
An Anthology of New English Verse, edited by Makoto Sangu. Osaka,
Suzuya, Japan.
PROSE:
Paul Verlaine, by Harold Nicholson. Houghton MifHin Co.
The Hound of Heaven: An Interpretation, by Francis P. La Buffe, S. J.
Macmillan Co.
The Story of a Poet: Madison Cawein, by Otto A. Rothert. (Filson
Club Publication No. 30.) John P. Morton & Co., Louisville, Ky.
DRAMA:
Body and Soul, by Elizabeth H. Marsh. Cornhill Co.
[350]
POETRY
A MAGAZINE OF VERSE
VOLUME XIX
oetru
VOLUME XIX
October-March, 1921-1922
Edited by
Harriet Monroe
545 CASS STREET
CHICAGO
Copyright, 1921-2,
by
Harriet Monroe
A Magazine of Verse
Editor
Associate Editors
Business Manager
Advisory Committee
Administrative Committee
HARRIET MONROE
ALICE CORBIN HENDERSON
MARION STROBEL
MILA STRAUB
HENRY B. FULLER
EUNICE TIETJENS
LEW SARETT
WILLIAM T. ABBOTT
CHARLES H. HAMILL
TO HAVE GREAT POETS
THERE MUST BE GREAT AUDIENCES TOO
Whitman
SUBSCRIBERS TO THE FUND
Mr. Howard Shaw
Mr. Arthur T. Aldis
Mr. Edwin S. Fletcher
Mrs. Charles H. Hamill
Mrs. Emmons Elaine (4)
Mr. Wm. S. Monroe
Mr. E. A. Bancroft
Mr. C. L. Hutchinson
Mrs. Wm. J. Calhoun
Mrs. P. A. Valentine
Mrs. Bryan Lathrop
Mr. Martin A. Ryerson
Hon. John Barton Payne
Mr. Thomas D. Jones
Mr. Charles Deering
Mrs. W. F. Dummer
Mr. Arthur Heun
Mr. Edward F. Carry
Mr. Cyrus H. McCormick (2)
Mr. F. Stuyvesant Peabody
[i]
Mr. Horace S. Oakley Miss Dorothy North
Mr. Eames MacVeagh Mrs. F. Louis Slade
Mr. Charles G. Dawes Mrs. Julius Rosenwald
Mr. Owen F. Aldis Mrs. Andrea Hofer Proudfoot
Mr. Albert H. Loeb (2) Mrs. Arthur T. Aldis
The Misses Skinner Mrs. George W. Mixter
Misses Alice E. and Margaret D. . Mrs. Walter S. Brewster
Moran Mrs. Joseph N. Eisendrath
Miss Mary Rozet Smith Mrs. Simeon Ford
Mrs. John Borden Mrs. Thomas W. Lamont
Mrs. Clarence I. Peck Mr. Henry J. Patten
Mr. John S. Miller Mr. Charles H. Dennis
Mr. Edward P. Russell Mrs. Frank Gates Allen
Mrs. Frank O. Lowden Mrs. Otto Seiffert
Mrs. Frederic Clay Bartlett Mrs. E. C. Chadbourne
Mr. Rufus G. Dawes Mrs. Richard T. Crane
Mr. Gilbert E. Porter Mrs. William M. Lybrand
Mr. George A. McKinlock Mr. Charles H. Swift
Mrs. Samuel Insull Mr. S. T. Jacobs
Mr. A. G. Becker Mrs. Jacob Baur
Mrs. Roy McWilliams Mr. A. D. Lundy
Mr. Benjamin V. Becker Mrs. Robert N. Montgomery
Mr. George F. Porter Miss Joanna Fortune
Mrs. Charles A. Chapin Mrs. Rockefeller McCormick
Mr. S. O. Levinson Mrs. Francis Neilson
Others besides these guarantors who testify to their appreciation of the mag-
azine by generous gifts are:
Mr. Edward L. Ryerson, Miss Amy Lowell, Mrs. Edgar Speyer and Mr.
Edward C. Wentworth.
Three annual prizes will be awarded as usual next November for good work
of the current year. To the donors of these prizes, as well as to the above list of
guarantors, the editor wishes to express the appreciation of the staff and the poets:
To Mr. S. O. Levinson, for the Helen Haire Levinson Prize of two hundred
dollars, to be awarded for the ninth time; to the anonymous guarantor who will
present, for the eighth time, a prize of one hundred dollars; and to the Friday Club
of Chicago, which has donated fifty dollars for a prize to a young poet.
We feel that these prizes are a most valuable service to the art.
CONTENTS OF VOLUME XIX
VERSE
PAGE
Aber, Loureine:
FROM CITY LANES:
City Wed 10
If, Elevator Man, Bereft 11
Old Man 12
Girl, Death 13
Addison, Medora C.:
Motherhood 261
Andelson, Pearl:
FROM A BAY-WINDOW:
Autumn Rain, Steeples 133
Portrait of an Old Lady .' 133
To a Dead Love, To Felix, April Snow, Solace 134
Beach Song, Song on Death, Out of a Cavalcade of Dust .... 135
Baker, Karle Wilson:
THREE SMALL POEMS:
To Get Wisdom, Meekness and Pride, Courage . 16
Not in the Whirlwind 17
Bellamann, Henry:
POEMS:
Gargoyles of Notre Dame 85
Edges, Lullaby * 86
Peaks, God 87
The Artist 89
Bishop, Morris:
Ecclesiastes • 314
A New Hampshire Boy 315
Brown, Sarah-Margaret:
From a Chicago " L" . . 251
Buchanan, Alison:
The Unloved 313
Buss, Kate:
Gargoyle 77
Butts, Dorothy:
THE PASSERS-BY:
The Parade 80
To the Hills Around Northampton
A Vanity, Audience .
Listening, May Basket .
The Transient, Difference
Please
Bynner, Witter (Translator):
POEMS BY WANG WEI:
Answering Vice-prefect Chang, Bound Home to Mount Sung . . 235
A Message to P'ai Ti, On the Way to the Temple 236
Mount Chung-nan, A View of the Han River 237
In my Lodge at Wang-ch'uan after a Long Rain 237
My Retreat at Chung-nan 238
In a Retreat Among Bamboos, Lines 238
A Parting, A Song at Wei-ch'eng 239
The Beautiful Hsi-shih 239
A Song of Young Girls from Lo-yang 240
PAGE
Harmonizing a Poem by Palace-attendant Kuo 241
A Green Stream 241
Carnevali, Emanuel:
NEURIADE:
Lake 139
Seep, Aubade 140
Encounter, Sermon 141
Hope, Insomnia, Smoke 142
Funeral March, Italian Song 143
Old Accustomed Impudent Ghost 144
Invocation to Death 144
Clarke. Harlow:
An Old Woman, I Complain in Passing 247
Code, Grant H.:
Sea Quatrains I-V 23
Crawford, Nelson Antrim:
FRAGILITIES:
Song, Lake . 24
Companionship, Impotence, Branches 25
Crew , Helen Coale:
Irish Song 192
Curran, Edwin:
The Lions 59
D., H.:
HKSPERIDES:
Fragment XXXVI 26
Song, At Baia 29
DeFord, Miriam Allen:
UNDER THE CUFF:
Shadow Canyon 18
Themes, Will It be like This? 19
De la Mare, Walter:
The Hostage 124
Deutsch, Babette:
TakforSidst 259
Dow, Dorothy:
HANDFUL OF ASHES:
The Captive ... 130
Waiting, Futility 131
Bound 132
Dresbach, Glenn Ward:
Songs of the Plains I-IV 187
DriscoU, Louise:
Keep My Hand 17
Flexner, Hortense:
Holiday Crowd, Winged Victory 317
Frost, Robert:
The Witch of Coos 175
Galahad, Joseph Andrew:
Sic Passim . 20
Recalled 22
Garnett, Louise Ayres:
RESURGAM:
I: Birth . 117
II: Life 118
III: Death 119
IV: Rebirth 122
[iv]
PAGE
Grannis, Anita:
A Fillet of Thorn 75
Harwood, Ruth:
WORKING-HOUR SONGS:
The Shoe Factory 310
Making Little Clothes, Always and Always 312
Haste, Gwendolen:
IN THE OFFICE:
The Guardians, Aileen 260
Janson, Ellen Margaret:
TABLEAUX:
Scherzo, Tryst 196
Incense Smoke < 197
Night in the City 198
The Unknown 199
Johnson, Fenton:
Two NEGRO SPIRITUALS:
A Dream 128
The Wonderful Morning 129
Keeley, Dorothy:
On the Wing 193
KiangKang-hu (Translator of Wang Wei). See Witter Bynner .... 235
Lee, Agnes:
The Jilt I-VI 69
The Blunted Age 71
McCreary, Frederick R.:
HILLSIDE POEMS:
Winter Rain, A Naked Maple 255
Noontime, Judges 256
Alone on the Hill 257
Meeker, Marjorie:
SONGS OF NIGHT:
Ode to Myself Trying to Sleep 182
In Darkness, By a Window 183
Song for a May Night 184
Color of Water, Lonely Sky and Sea 185
Comrades 186
Monro, Harold:
Fate I-II 252
Monroe, Harriet:
Supernal Dialogue 125
North, Jessica Nelson:
The Wages of Sin 76
Norton, Grace Fallow:
Two POEMS:
I Shall Remember .... 190
Shy Perfect Flower 191
Peyton, John R. C.:
Geyser 77
Reynolds, Julia R.:
To Sappho 191
Ruble , Esther Louise:
First Snow 186
Ryan, Kathryn White:
Fog 76
Sandburg, Carl:
MEDLEY OF POEMS:
Moon-riders I-III 295
Feather Lights 298
The Naked Stranger .... 298
Medley 299
Gypsy Mother .... ... 301
Simons, Hi:
INCIDENTALS:
Dust in the Road, Taps, The Star 258
Portrait of an old Roue 259
Skinner, Constance Lindsay:
Winter Dawn 248
Smith, Maurine:
POEMS:
Joy, Ceremony, First Comer 14
Wind, Swallows Brush a Pool . 15
Speyer, Leonora:
In Praise of Abrigada 242
Stevens, Wallace:
SUR MA GUZZLA GRACILE:
Palace of the Babies 1
From the Misery of Don Joost 2
The Doctor of Geneva, Gubbinal 3
The Snow Man 4
Tea at the Palaz of Hoon, The Cuban Doctor 5
Another Weeping Woman 6
Of the Manner of Addressing Clouds 7
Of Heaven Considered as a Tomb 7
The Load of Sugar-cane 8
Hibiscus on the Sleeping Shores 9
Sirobel, Marion:
SONG SKETCHES:
We Have a Day 303
Spring Morning 304
Tonight, The Silence Stirs Again 305
The Night 306
I Would Pretend, Admonition 307
Frightened Face, Daily Prayer 308
L'Envoi 309
Tanaquil, Paul:
Semper Eadem 138
The Lover .... 261
Tietjens, Eunice:
Fire 262
Unna, Sarah:
Roads 316
Unlermeyer, Jean Starr:
From the Day-book of a Forgotten Prince 74
Unlermeyer, Louis:
Monologue from a Mattress 318
Vail, Laurence:
Grey Crust 136
Waldron, Winifred:
Arpeggio 138
Walsh, Ernest:
FOUR POEMS:
I Ask for a Friend, Sonnet 194
The Fickle Lover, Collapse 195
Wang Wei (See Witter Bynner)
Wilkinson, Florence:
Don Juan in Portugal 78
Williams, William Carlos:
POEMS:
Wild Orchard 200
The Lonely Street 201
Spouts, The Widow's Lament in Springtime 202
Zolinsky, Henry Saul:
Two POEMS:
Will Power, Pain 137
PROSE
Poetry and the Allied Arts H. M. 31
Influence of the Art-theatre on Poetic Drama Cloyd Head 37
REVIEWS:
Museum Ships Isidor Schneider 44
Ships in Harbor, by David Morton
New Fire Glenway Wescolt 47
A Canopic Jar, by Leonora Speyer
Pageantry and Rhetoric Laura Sherry 51
Rip Van Winkle, by Percy Mackaye
Two Mothers (Eight Hundred Rubles and Agrippina), by John G.
Neihardt
The Novelist as Poet N. A. C. 53
As the Wind Blows, by Eden Philpotts
The Professor as Critic Nelson Antrim Crawford 54
The Function of the Poet and Other Essays, by James Russell Lowell
The Kinds of Poetry and Other Essays, by John Erskine
From Queen Anne to George the Fifth H. M. 90
REVIEWS:
Drinkwater as Poet and Playwright . . ... Laura Sherry 94
Pawns, Mary Stuart, and Poems, by John Drinkwater
Of Dreams and Stitches Pearl Andelson 100
Curtains, by Hazel Hall
CORRESPONDENCE:
Poet and Composer as Allies Louise Ayres Garnett 102
Reactionary Composers Kay Boyle 104
Announcement of Awards 107
OUR CONTEMPORARIES:
A New "Youth" 115
Renewal of Youth H. M. 146
Alexander Blok Glenway Wescott -149
REVIEWS:
A Flourish of Trumpets Marion Strobel 151
Second April, by Edna St. Vincent Millay
Fletcherian Colors Laura Sherry 155
Breakers and Granite, by John Gould Fletcher
[vii]
PAGE
Minor Chords Isidor Schneider 158
Bluestone, by Marguerite Wilkinson
Selected Poems, by Lady Margaret Sackville
Post-martial Emotion Baker Brownell 162
Aurelia and Other Poems, by Robert Nichols
Color Sonatas Nelson Antrim Crawford 165
Poems, by Iris Tree
The Prematurity of Immaturity Isidor Schneider 167
Hidden Path, by Ned Hungerford
CORRESPONDENCE :
The Allied Arts Again . . I— Charles Albert Case, II— Bertha War dell 169
The Hope of Peace H. M. 204
Must Art be Interesting ? Baker Brownell 206
REVIEWS:
A Symposium on Marianne Moore H. M. 208
Poems, by Marianne Moore
A Mystic Warrior Dorothy Dudley 216
The Mystic Warrior, by James Oppenheim
Mrs. Wylie's Poems H. M. 220
Nets to Catch the Wind, by Elinor Wylie
Thoughtful Measures H. M. 222
Out of Mist, by Florence Kilpatrick Mixter
OUR CONTEMPORARIES:
New International Magazines 224
Various Prizes .... 227
CORRESPONDENCE:
A Letter from Paris Jean Catel 229
The Utterance of Poetry H. M. 266
Translating Wang Wei Witter Bynner 272
REVIEWS:
A Cool Master Yvor Winters 278
Collected Poems of Edwin Arlington Robinson
Mr. Yeats' Plays Cloyd Head 288
Four Plays for Dancers, by William Butler Yeats
Newspaper Verse . . . H. M . 324
REVIEWS:
Miss Lowell's Legends Dorothy Dudley 330
Legends, by Amy Lowell
Spear-shaft and Cyclamen-flower W. Bryher 333
Hymen, by H. D.
"A Distinguished Young Man" Yvor Winters 337
The Living Frieze, by Mark Turbyfill
A Prize-winner Pearl Andelson 340
Heavens and Earth, by Stephen Vincent Ben6t
A Lute of One String H. M. 344
The Lifted Cup, by Jessie B. Rittenhouse
A Poet in Embryo H. M. 345
Archways of Life, by Mercedes de Acosta
Rhetoric Unashamed H. M. 346
Ireland Unfreed: Poems of 1921, by Sir William Watson
CORRESPONDENCE :
The Code of Minority Baker Brownell 347
A New Poetry Society F. P. 351
Notes 37, 115, 173, 232, 292, 351
Books Received 58,116,174,233.293.352
[viii]
POETRY
A MAGAZINE OF VERSE
VOLUME XIX
L
Your June number renewed me wonderfully— an absolutely joyous thing! Go to
it, hammer and tongs! Infuse a little beauty, joy, spirit, pain into the
life of today. Did I say a little?— Oceans of them!— A Canadian subscriber
Vol. XIX No. I
POETRY for OCTOBER, 1921
PAGE
Sur ma Guzzla Gracile Wallace Stevens i
Palace of the Babies — Misery of Don Joost — Doctor of
Geneva — Gubbinal — Snow Man — Tea at the Palaz of
Hoon — Cuban Doctor — Another Weeping Woman — Man-
ner of Addressing Clouds — Of Heaven Considered as a
Tomb — The Load of Sugar-Cane — Hibiscus on the Sleeping
Shores
From City Lanes Loureine Aber 10
City Wed— If— Elevator Man— Bereft— Old Man— Girl-
Death
Poems Maurine Smith 14
Joy — Ceremony — First Comer — Wind — Swallows Brush
a Pool
Three Small Poems Karle Wilson Baker 1 6
To Get Wisdom — Meekness and Pride — Courage
Not in the Whirlwind Karle Wilson Baker 1 7
Keep My Hand Louise Driscoll 17
Under the Cliff Miriam Allen deFord 1 8
Shadow Canyon — Themes — Will it be Like This?
Sic Passim — Recalled Joseph Andrew Galahad 20
Sea Quatrains I-V Grant H. Code 23
Fragilities Nelson Antrim Crawford 24
Song — Lake — Companionship — Impotence — Branches
Hesperides H. D. 26
Fragment XXXVI— Song— At Baia
Poetry and the Allied Arts //. A/. 3 1
Influence of the Art-theatre on Poetic Drama . . Cloyd Head 37
Reviews:
Museum Ships Isidor Schneider 44
New Fire Glenway Wescott 47
Pageantry and Rhetoric . Laura Sherry 51
The Novelist as Poet N. A. C. 53
The Professor as Critic .... Nelson Antrim Crawford 54
Notes and Books Received 57> 58
Manuscripts must be accompanied by a stamped and self-addressed envelope.
Inclusive yearly subscription rates. In the United States, Mexico, Cuba and
American possessions, $3.00 net; in Canada, $3.15 net; in all other countries in the
Postal Union, $3.25 net. Entered as second-class matter Nov. 15, 1912, at the
post-office, at Chicago, 111., under Act of March 3, 1879.
Published monthly at 543 Cass St., Chicago, 111.
Copyright 1921, by Harriet Monroe. All rights reserved.
etiy
A Magazine of Verse
OCTOBER 1921
SUR MA GUZZLA GRACILE
PALACE OF THE BABIES
THE disbeliever walked the moonlit place,
Outside of gates of hammered serafin,
Observing the moon-blotches on the walls.
The yellow rocked across the still facades,
Or else sat spinning on the pinnacles,
While he imagined humming sounds and sleep.
The walker in the moonlight walked alone,
And each black window of the building balked
His loneliness and what was in his mind:
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
If in a shimmering room the babies came,
Drawn close by dreams of fledgling wing,
It was because night nursed them in its fold.
Night nursed not him in whose dark mind
The clambering wings of birds of black revolved,
Making harsh torment of the solitude.
The walker in the moonlight walked alone,
And in his heart his disbelief lay cold.
His broad-brimmed hat came close upon his eyes.
FROM THE MISERY OF DON JOOST
I have finished my combat with the sun;
And my body, the old animal,
Knows nothing more.
The powerful seasons bred and killed,
And were themselves the genii
Of their own ends.
Oh, but the very self of the storm
Of sun and slaves, breeding and death,
The old animal —
The senses and feeling, the very sound
And sight, and all there was of the storm —
Knows nothing more.
[2]
Wallace Stevens
THE DOCTOR OF GENEVA
The doctor of Geneva stamped the sand
That lay impounding the Pacific swell,
Patted his stove-pipe hat and tugged his shawl.
Lacustrine man had never been assailed
By such long-rolling opulent cataracts,
Unless Racine or Bossuet held the like.
He did not quail. A man so used to plumb
The multifarious heavens felt no awe
Before these visible, voluble delugings,
Which yet found means to set his simmering mind
Spinning and hissing with oracular
Notations of the wild, the ruinous waste,
Until the steeples of his city clanked and sprang
In an unburgherly apocalypse.
The doctor used his handkerchief and sighed.
GUBBINAL
That strange flower, the sun,
Is just what you say.
Have it your way.
The world is ugly,
And the people are sad.
[3]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
That tuft of jungle feathers,
That animal eye,
Is just what you say.
That savage of fire,
That seed-
Have it your way.
The world is ugly,
And the people are sad.
THE SNOW MAN
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
[4]
Wallace Stevens
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
TEA AT THE PALAZ OF HOON
Not less because in purple I descended
The western day through what you called
The loneliest air, not less was I myself.
What was the ointment sprinkled on my beard?
What were the hymns that buzzed beside my ears ?
What was the sea whose tide swept through me there?
Out of my mind the golden ointment rained,
And my ears made the blowing hymns they heard.
I was myself the compass of that sea:
I was the world in which I walked, and what I saw
Or heard or felt came not but from myself;
And there I found myself more truly and more strange,
THE CUBAN DOCTOR
I went to Egypt to escape
The Indian, but the Indian struck
Out of his cloud and from his sky.
[5]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
This was no worm bred in the moon,
Wriggling far down the phantom air,
And on a comfortable sofa dreamed.
The Indian struck and disappeared.
I knew my enemy was near — I,
Drowsing in summer's sleepiest horn.
ANOTHER WEEPING WOMAN
Pour the unhappiness out
From your too bitter heart,
Which grieving will not sweeten.
Poison grows in this dark.
It is in the water of tears
Its black blooms rise.
The magnificent cause of being —
The imagination, the one reality
In this imagined world —
Leaves you
With him for whom no phantasy moves,
And you are pierced by a death.
[6]
Wallace Stevens
OF THE MANNER OF ADDRESSING CLOUDS
Gloomy grammarians in golden gowns,
Meekly you keep the mortal rendezvous,
Eliciting the still sustaining pomps
Of speech which are like music so profound
They seem an exaltation without sound.
Funest philosophers and ponderers,
Their evocations are the speech of clouds.
•So speech of your processionals returns
In the casual evocations of your tread
Across the stale, mysterious seasons. These
Are the music of meet resignation; these
The responsive, still sustaining pomps for you
To magnify, if in that drifting waste
You are to be accompanied by more
Than mute bare splendors of the sun and moon.
OF HEAVEN CONSIDERED AS A TOMB
What word have you, interpreters, of men
Who in the tomb of heaven walk by night,
The darkened ghosts of our old comedy?
Do they believe they range the gusty cold,
With lanterns borne aloft to light the way,
Freemen of death, about and still about
To find whatever it is they seek? Or does
[7]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
That burial, pillared up each day as porte
And spiritous passage into nothingness,
Foretell each night the one abysmal night,
When the host shall no more wander, nor the light
Of the steadfast lanterns creep across the dark?
Make hue among the dark comedians,
Halloo them in the topmost distances
For answer from their icy Elysee.
THE LOAD OF SUGAR-CANE
The going of the glade-boat
Is like water flowing;
Like water flowing
Through the green saw-grass,
Under the rainbows;
Under the rainbows
That are like birds,
Turning, bedizened,
While the wind still whistles
As kildeer do,
When they rise
At the red turban
Of the boatman.
[8]
Wallace Stevens
HIBISCUS ON THE SLEEPING SHORES
I say now, Fernanda, that on that day
The mind roamed as a moth roams,
Among the blooms beyond the open sand;
And that whatever noise the motion of the waves
Made on the sea-weeds and the covered stones
Disturbed not even the most idle ear.
Then it was that that monstered moth
Which had lain folded against the blue
And the colored purple of the lazy sea,
And which had drowsed along the bony shores,
Shut to the blather that the water made,
Rose up besprent and sought the flaming red
Dabbled with yellow pollen — red as red
As the flag above the old cafe —
And roamed there all the stupid afternoon.
Wallace Stevens
[9]
POETRY: A Magazine oj Verse
FROM CITY LANES
The dawn comes to me sweetly p, as a soft new child
Leans with its soul to drain a bit of milk.
And I am new.
0 gray old city.
Lift your head a moment from the pots and streets —
Wash over me your meaning as a flask of fire
Tipped and spilled over at the altar s base.
There are new augurings that go in blue-gray smoke
Up from your shops ^
New lips that rain a torrent in me as of words.
Be still a moment , «Vy, while the dawn tells tales.
CITY WED
1 lie by the bricks at night —
Do you think I am lying by you,
And this is your breast I lean against?
No. Bricks are my lord —
With them I shall procreate,
Until I wake some morning with my litter of stone.
Not that I want to lie with bricks,
O beloved of the white limbs and strong neck!
But how can I help it when they come tumbling —
These bricks that come fumbling
At my breast?
[10]
Loureine Aber
IF
If it were not for this dream upon me,
I should make my coin;
I should grind my way to fortune with the little wheels,
I should count the flying heels my slaves to bind,
I should count the eardrums and the ringers mine. . . .
But I keep thinking I can touch the sky
With my lips.
ELEVATOR MAN
You in your little cage and I in mine,
Elevator man,
We will pierce the wide world's heaven
Far as we can:
You to go up and down, beating up and down;
I to brush my wings off
On the walls of Merchant Town.
BEREFT
0 my country,
1 am crying to you piteously as a hungry bird,
I am crying to you for your beautiful ports
And harbors,
For the slow beauty of your Statue and its silent hope.
O my country, I would slink into the crevices of your
egoism,
And squat on the doormat of your excellences.
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
But what shall I do when mad spring comes,
And blossoms come,
And wild sap comes —
But my lover comes not?
O my country, I might be a thin thread in your flag,
Or the little wind blowing your ships to sea;
But what shall I do when the spring comes in,
And flowers shoot up in me?
OLD MAN
Dawn sprang wildly to her lips,
And the little hard breasts burst as a waterfall over the
rocks.
I, the dark pine at the precipice edge,
Lunged and was still;
Then swiftly, as wild birds go to the kill,
Toppled, and ran with her youth to the sea.
They said I was wanton and cruel
To have taken her youth at the height,
To have matched the great might
Of my years
With her slender beauty and tremulous fears.
I tell you, I lunged and was still;
Then swiftly, as wild birds go to the kill,
[12]
Loureine Aber
Toppled, and ran with her youth to the sea. . . .
Pity me!
GIRL
Dreamily, girl —
Duskily, night,
Cover your dead.
Make a plot by the old stream's head,
Plant him and pray
Till worlds make way
And the blooms come.
Duskily, night —
Dreamily, girl.
DEATH
I am waiting for the white winds to come,
White with the long-whispering dust,
Withered under hoofs and feet,
White with the mountains that blow their sleep
Into the sea.
I am waiting for the white winds to come,
Lifting their hands as beautiful women clad for the moon;
And soon, ah soon,
Lifting my heart to be ashes and wind.
Loureine Aber
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
POEMS
JOY
Joy, Joy, run over me
Like water over a shining stone;
And I beneath your sweet shall be
No longer hungry and alone.
The light at my heart's gate is lit —
My love, my love is tending it!
CEREMONY
The unpeopled conventional rose garden
Is where I shall take my heart
With this new pain.
Clipped hedge and winter-covered beds
Shall ease its hurt.
When it has grown quiet,
I shall mount the steps, slowly,
And put three sorrows in the terra-cotta urn
On that low gate-pillar,
And leave them there, to sleep,
Beneath the brooding stillness of a twisted pine.
FIRST COMER
Gold bee,
You cling too still and drowsily
Maurine Smith
In the frosty noon.
Think you
The dandelion is a sun
To warm your body through?
WIND
Gulls take veering way
Through the fresh day;
Crisp brown oak-leaves whirl and rise.
Though my heart flies,
I must go
Carefully and slow.
Eager is the wind, shy
As any butterfly —
I'll not blur life with my frosty breath,
Nor think again of death!
SWALLOWS BRUSH A POOL
Let there be end of talk of good and evil,
Thirst, hunger and the rest . . . Beauty has given
The white gift of a cherry petal
To brood upon.
Maurine Smith
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THREE SMALL POEMS
TO GET WISDOM
I will spread out my mind
As the wind spreads the skies;
I will make my heart Argus,
Full of love's eyes:
So shall I grow
Abysmally wise.
MEEKNESS AND PRIDE
Meekness and Pride
Are fruits of one tree;
Eat of them both
For mastery:
Take one of Pride —
Of the other, three.
COURAGE
Courage is armor
A blind man wears,
The calloused scar
Of outlived despairs:
Courage is Fear
That has said its prayers.
[16]
Karle Wilson Baker
NOT IN THE WHIRLWIND
Do I speak soft and little —
Do I offer you a drop of honey in a bent brown leaf?
Yet I too have been rent by the whirlwind:
I have lain trembling under its bello wings;
I have endured its fangs;
I have heard it hiss and groan, "Bitterness, bitterness!'*
But all I have left,
After its searchings and its rendings,
May be told in a soft voice
And is sweet —
Sweet,
Like a drop of thick honey in a bent brown leaf.
Karle Wilson Baker
KEEP MY HAND
Keep my hand, because I am afraid
To be alone —
I am afraid of all the dreams I made.
If you were shown
Dream after little dream that I made gay
To keep my spirit strong upon the way,
You would hold my hand closer than you do
Within your own!
Louise Dr is coll
[17]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
UNDER THE CLIFF
SHADOW CANYON
The earth has carved a hollow cup,
In which, most delicately set,
Tall redwood boughs are lifted up,
To form a sky-enlacing net.
There, on the ground made green with fern,
The sunshine lies in pools of light;
And iris holds a fragile urn,
With morning's gems of dew bedight.
There is no sound but water going,
And sunlight thrilling through the air.
There is no breath but breezes blowing,
And wild quail rustling to their lair.
Here is a deep and drowsing haven,
That woven sun-rays pierce and cross;
And on the peaceful trees are graven
The little footprints of the moss.
Sweet dreaming canyon, shadow-bound
Yet sunshine-stippled all the day,
The calm skies circle you around,
But you lie deeper hushed than they!
[18]
Miriam Allen deFord
THEMES
"I remember" and "I wish" —
Of such stuff are poems fashioned;
Poems lyric with regret,
Vibrant poems, dream-impassioned.
In your honor and your praise
I would strike a richer chord,
Sing: "I have you and am yours,
O adorer and adored!"
WILL IT BE LIKE THIS?
Will it be like this?—
Climbing the hill at midnight,
While the rain seeps from the plumaged pepper-trees,
And the damp air is rank with eucalyptus;
And our little house black and untenanted,
Soundless, where your hurrying footsteps
Used to run to the door to greet me;
Black, and cold, and I alone there?
Will that be the way of it,
On that silent day when I shall begin waiting
For Death to release me to you ?
Miriam Allen deFord
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
SIC PASSIM
The Angel. Now here's the road to Allencourt,
And here's the road to Tyre.
And he who goes to Allencourt
Is purged of all desire.
The Youth. But what of him who goes to Tyre,
Among the cedar trees?
The Angel. Why, he who goes to Tyre has none
But just himself to please.
While he who goes to Allencourt
Across the Hills of Pain
Must love his fellow very well,
And count no thing as gain
That wounds another. He must keep
His eyes upon the crest
Of that high hill, where he at last
Through virtue shall find rest.
The Youth. But what of him who goes to Tyre,
Along the road of ease ?
The Angel. Why, he who goes to Tyre has none
But just himself to please;
While he who goes to Allencourt,
And does not lose his way
Among the thorns and brambles, comes
To rich reward some day.
[20]
Joseph Andrew Galahad
The Old Man. Ah, why are thorns and brambles set
To make the road a care ?
The Angel. Why, man himself, most carelessly,
Has placed the brambles there.
The Youth. But what of him who goes to Tyre
Beside the sunny seas?
The Angel. Why, he who goes to Tyre has none
But just himself to please.
The Old Man. And what's the toll to Allencourt?
The Youth. And what's the toll to Tyre?
The Angel. Why, he who goes to Allencourt
Is purged of all desire.
The toll is love — a brother's love —
For man in full sincerity.
And all the peace that God has willed
Is the reward — eternally.
But toll upon the other road
Is crucible of burn and freeze:
For he who goes to Tyre has none
But just himself to please.
While he who goes to Allencourt
Is purged of all desire . . .
The Old Man. Lord, lead me on to Allencourt!
The Youth. For me, I go to Tyre.
[21]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
RECALLED
You see it not . . . ? This Ivose of Rhone
Has something of the flow
Of light — like a liquid lacquer on the wall.
And old Madrid — I swear, it shone
More with your light, your glow,
Than that of the sun. Why do your eyelids fall ?
You-hear it not . . . ? The Prado was
A sweeping meadow then:
The swing of the tunes of time was in your tone.
No dream comes to you now because
You hear my voice again —
No dream of a youth you passed at dusk alone?
Three hundred years . . . ! you mark them not?
And yet — you loved me then,
Who now in the light of mullioned windows stand.
And it is you who have forgot
That once, O sought of men ! —
When I was the king of Spain I kissed your hand.
Joseph Andrew Galahad
[22]
SEA QUATRAINS
i
Too fast the silly white-caps run
Their helter-skelter races;
They stumble when the goal is won
And fall upon their faces.
ii
A purple light is shaken over
The greener ocean shadows,
Like clover on the cooler depths
Of grass in upland meadows.
in
The sea hangs kelp upon the sand
Like garlands on a grave,
Mourning the dead and silent land
With every living wave.
IV
The breakers thunder in the night
With which the sea is drenched.
Only one plunging line is white;
Even the stars are quenched.
v
The fairest ship ever a wreck
Had not so white a sail
As this fair wave cast up to break,
Driven before the gale.
Grant H. Code
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
FRAGILITIES
SONG
These are the words of the wind :
Over your white body shall pass
Whorls of water, whorls of light,
Of the lustre of blown glass.
These are the words of the wind.
You are beloved of the silence
And the grey still rain.
Once the sun loved you utterly,
And shall love you again.
These are the words of the wind:
Over your white body shall pass
Whorls of water, whorls of light,
Of the lustre of blown glass.
These are the words of the wind.
LAKE
You are a broad white lake,
Silent.
On your surface people launch their brown sun-warmed
souls.
Reflected in you, they see themselves
Tall, profound, mystical.
[24]
Nelson Antrim Crawford
COMPANIONSHIP
In the intertwirling smoke of our cigarettes
Is a caressing sense of intricate congruity.
There is sea-blue in this quiet place,
And infinite crisp echoes of music,
Bound together with cords of uttermost fragility.
IMPOTENCE
While you lived
I could make you neither glad nor unhappy.
Now you are dead
I can neither lull nor awaken you.
Always I am impotent.
BRANCHES
Pierre Gris,
When an old man,
Saw winter branches
Brown, grey, dulled silver.
These, he said, are the no longer green
Hopes of my youth.
They seem to interlace,
But I remember that that is
Illusion.
Nelson Antrim Crawford
[25]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
HESPERIDES
FRAGMENT XXXVI
/ know not what to do:
My mind is divided.
Sappho
I know not what to do —
My mind is reft.
Is song's gift best?
Is love's gift loveliest?
I know not what to do,
Now sleep has pressed
Weight on your eyelids.
Shall I break your rest,
Devouring, eager?
Is love's gift best? —
Nay, song's the loveliest.
Yet, were you lost,
What rapture could I take from song?—
What song were left ?
I know not what to do:
To turn and slake
The rage that burns,
With my breath burn
And trouble your cool breath —
So shall I turn and take
Snow in my arms,
(Is love's gift best?)
[26]
H. D.
Yet flake on flake
Of snow were comfortless,
Did you lie wondering,
Wakened yet unawake.
Shall I turn and take
Comfortless snow within my arms,
Press lips to lips that answer not,
Press lips to flesh
That shudders not nor breaks?
Is love's gift best? —
Shall I turn and slake
All the wild longing ?
Oh, I am eager for you !
As the .Pleiads shake
White light in whiter water,
So shall I take you?
My mind is quite divided;
My minds hesitate,
So perfect matched
I know not what to do.
Each strives with each:
As two white wrestlers,
Standing for a match,
Ready to turn and clutch,
Yet never shake
Muscle or nerve or tendon;
So my mind waits
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
To grapple with my mind —
Yet I am quiet,
I would seem at rest.
I know not what to do.
Strain upon strain,
Sound surging upon sound,
Makes my brain blind;
As a wave line may wait to fall,
Yet waiting for its falling
Still the wind may take,
From off its crest,
White flake on flake of foam,
That rises
Seeming to dart and pulse
And rend the light,
So my mind hesitates
Above the passion
Quivering yet to break,
So my mind hesitates above my mind
Listening to song's delight.
I know not what to do.
Will the sound break,
Rending the night
With rift on rift of rose
And scattered light ?
Will the sound break at last
As the wave hesitant,
[28]
H.D.
Or will the whole night pass
And I lie listening awake?
SONG
You are as gold
As the half-ripe grain
That merges to gold again,
As white as the white rain
That beats through
The half-opened flowers
Of the great flower tufts
Thick on the black limbs
Of an Illyrian apple bough.
Can honey distil such fragrance
As your bright hair? —
For your face is as fair as rain,
Yet as rain that lies clear
On white honey-comb
Lends radiance to the white wax,
So your hair on your brow
Casts light for a shadow.
AT BAIA
I should have thought
In a dream you would have brought
Some lovely perilous thing:
Orchids piled in a great sheath,
[20]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
As who would say, in a dream,
"I send you this,
Who left the blue veins
Of your throat unkissed."
Why was it that your hands,
That never took mine —
Your hands that I could see
Drift over the orchid heads
So carefully;
Your hands, so fragile, sure to lift
So gently, the fragile flower stuff —
Ah, ah, how was it
You never sent, in a dream,
The very form, the very scent,
Not heavy, not sensuous,
But perilous — perilous! —
Of orchids, piled in a great sheath,
And folded underneath on a bright scroll,
Some word:
Flower sent to flower;
For white hands the lesser white.
Less lovely, of flower leaf.
Or,
Lover to lover — no kiss,
No touchy but forever and ever this!
H.D.
[30]
COMMENT
POETRY AND THE ALLIED ARTS
POETRY would like to celebrate its ninth birthday
*• by inaugurating a closer affiliation with the allied
arts of music and the drama — perhaps also the dance.
If the movies, and the scarcely less photographic commer-
cial plays, are banishing poetry from one end of the stage,
it must needs go around to the other door, and re-enter
hand in hand with the opera and lyric song, with the
ballet, and perhaps, paradoxically, symbolic pantomine.
Times are changing, and the arts with them — the poet,
the composer, the dancer should prove their pliancy,
their mobility. They should not — indeed, they cannot —
stay apart; they must get together and co-operate, and
accept each other's influence.
At present our poets and composers move in different
orbits, have scarcely a bowing acquaintance with each
other either personally or professionally. POETRY would
be grateful for suggestions as to the best available method
of establishing closer relations.
Not long ago Musical America published an article
by Charles Albert Case, a well-known tenor, entitled
The Quest of the American Song, and sub-titled A Chal-
lenge to Poets rather than Composers. Mr. Case thinks
that the American public wants American songs, and
that the singers are eager for this change from the usual
polyglot programs, but that it is impossible to make up
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
a sufficiently interesting and varied recital without
foreign aid. And for this condition he thinks our poets
are more to blame than our musicians. He says:
The fact that there are few American songs which are truly great is a
challenge to American poets rather than to American composers. The
question "what to sing" is the most vital and the most persistently
intrusive one that a busy song recitalist has to face. Naturally American
singers want very much to sing American songs, and most of us do sing
them, but in building our recital programs we invariably find ourselves
limited in the number of such songs we can use; for we must avoid singing
a succession of songs in the same humor, and when one is face to face
with the assembled material one finds that the contrasting elements
which make for essential variety in the "group unit" are astonishingly
lacking.
Mr. Case then contrasts our meagreness with German
and French richness, and continues:
Being a loyal American, I admit it reluctantly, but there is far less
variety in American songs, even when one plans to choose a group from
several different composers, than one can find in any single one of the
greater German song-writers. . . .
We have some splendid American songs and some of them are truly
noble, but most of them are not good enough. Many of the most
successful of them are settings by other than American poets. Some of
the best of them are not even in English!
Mr. Case then reminds us that a good song must unite
two arts — a fundamental truth which both singers and
auditors too often forget. He inquires, "What con-
stitutes a good song?" and answers his query thus:
A good poem adequately set to music. There is the whole matter in a
nutshell.
The many bad American songs are bad either because the text was
trivial to begin with, or else was carelessly read and consequently
inadequately interpreted in music. In some cases the text was even
[32]
Poetry and the Allied Arts
"adapted" — distorted, pinched and pulled into the approximate shape
of a ready-made melody. Ready-made melodies are like ready-made
clothes. They fit nobody because they were made to fit everybody.
Schubert read Mueller, Goethe, Heine, Rueckert, Uhland, Shake-
speare. Schumann read Rueckert, Geibel, Uhland, Eichendorff,
Moerike. Chausson read DeLisle and Gautier. These men read the
best poetry of their time, and they read it with true understanding and
genuine respect. What greatness there was in them lay largely in their
power to discriminate, to select fine poetry from the mediocre, and then
to bend to the task of making worthy musical settings. Too often our
young Americans write as though they thought the lyrics of which they
try to make songs were not good enough for them. . . .
I have frequently been asked by young aspiring composers to help
them find words to set to music. They say: "You know — something you
consider singable. I haven't time to read." This is rank impudence. '
I never offer such people much sympathy. I do not think they should
be encouraged. It seems to me that one must read much poetry to
understand a little. Reading, and reading with unusual intelligence, is
part of a song-writer's job.
Thus far Mr. Case's indictment accuses the composers,
but he concludes with a fling at the poets:
I have real sympathy for the trained, educated, honest-intentioned
American composer who reads native poets and finds so little to inspire
him to exercise his genius. Surely his material is limited. Eventually
we shall have truly noble American songs. But first there must be
noble American poetry. From the mass of it the song-writer must
choose with a fine exercise of discrimination. We have many Americans
who have the taste to choose and the ability adequately to set beautiful
poetry to music. But American song-writing is at the same stage of
development as American poetry. Let us hope that some of the lyrically
gifted will start soon to write about something besides the sunset and
the skyline from the Jersey shore, or the sensation of ascending Wool-
worth tower in a modern elevator!
Now, with all due deference to Mr. Case and his
"trained, educated, honest-intentioned American com-
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
poser," we doubt whether either one of them has sym-
pathetically investigated the extraordinary range and
variety of modern American poetry. We doubt whether
either one of them, having discovered a poet suggestive
for his purpose, has ever tried to get acquainted with
him, even if he was a neighbor, and discuss this highly
interesting esthetic problem on which the future of
American song depends.
There is among American artists- — poets, musicians,
and all the others — a curious professional aloofness which
fights against co-operation. The architect makes his
design, the sculptor models his isolated figure, the painter
paints his easel picture, all separate and alone — they do
not get together, as in the Phidian or the Gothic age, or
the Renaissance, to pool their energies and make a
grand, complete and monumental building. In the
same infertile way the poet writes his poem apart in his
traditional garret; and the musician, seeking a song
poem, or a ballet motive, or an opera libretto, reads in
his library uncharted seas of poetry, history and romance
instead of going where modern poetry is created and
swinging into its current, so that the two arts may move
along together and mutually inspire each other.
Among themselves poets — and doubtless musicians,
painters, and the rest — are free-and-easy enough in
intercourse and criticism. But this professional aloof-
ness, this shyness, comes in the way of attempts at co-
operation. A distinguished Chicago composer says he
[34]
Poetry and the Allied Arts
is "very familiar" with the work of certain equally dis-
tinguished Illinois poets, though, to his regret, he has
never succeeded in harnessing up their poetry to his
music; but we doubt if he has ever attempted to work
together with any modern poet, in the frank give-and-take
of such a partnership, toward the production of a wholly
modern and American work of art. When I protest
against his going back to the nineties for a pseudo-
romantic motive for a ballet, when I suggest Stevens or
Kreymborg, H. D. or Edna Millay, he answers by what
might be called a flank attack:
I am very grateful to you for the copies of POETRY which you sent
to me containing the Stevens and Kreymborg pieces. I like particularly
the Three Travelers, although I doubt whether I could improve it any
with music.
It seems to me that the thing we must all remember in talking about
an opera libretto is the fact that we must depend for our effect on the
poetry or the drama of the action rather than on the poetry or drama of
the words. Therefore, the ideal opera librettist would be the poet gone
dumb who, by his simple gesture, could make us jump through any
hoop he pleases.
But even if this composer and others are turning
toward pantomime and ballet rather than opera, pre-
ferring the orchestra to the human voice, even so they
cannot eliminate the poet; for though no word be said,
no song sung, the imaginative invention of some poet,
dead or living, must furnish the motive, the story, the
plot. And no doubt the ballet of the future will include
the poem either as an introductory recitative or a series
of lyric, perhaps choral, interludes; as in Rimsky-Kor-
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
sakov's ballet-opera, The Golden Cockerel. Thus it is for
the composer to choose whether he will be true to his own
age and race by linking up with modern poets and de-
riving his stimulus from imaginations now actively
functioning; or go back to dead poets for his motive, and
thereby run the risk of endangering the vitality of his
own art, of not connecting it up with either the present
or the past.
But however important ballet and pantomime may
prove as motives for modern music, it is safe to predict
that the human voice will not lose its prestige. And it
must be safe to predict that the sooner our composers
look to their poet-neighbors for the texts of opera, oratorio,
cantata, song-cycle, ballad, madrigal, song, instead of
searching all ages, myths and languages of the past, the
sooner will our musical art become as up-to-date and as
racially expressive as the musical art of Russia.
Something has been done, no doubt. The present
writer would be ungrateful not to recall Mr. Chadwick's
fine choral and orchestral setting of the lyrics in The
Columbian Ode. Another effective instance is John
Carpenter's beautiful setting of Tagore's lyrics from an
early number of POETRY. And we are permitted to
announce an oratorio, which is to be the joint creation
of Louise Ayres Garnett and Henry Hadley, the text of
which will appear, under the title Resurgam^ in POETRY
for December. But such instances are isolated cases;
they do not yet represent a general tendency.
[36]
Poetry and the Allied Arts
If POETRY can do anything toward such a tendency
by making poets and composers more aware of each
other, bringing them more in contact personal and
spiritual, we should be most happy to offer to the utmost
any service in our power. And we shall be very glad
of discussion and suggestions. H. M.
INFLUENCE OF THE ART-THEATRE ON POETIC DRAMA
If the new movement in the theatre had accomplished
nothing else, it would nevertheless be justified by the
release it has brought to poetic drama and to the poetic
mood in drama. The new movement, long since estab-
lished in continental Europe, still struggles precariously
in the virgin soil of America. It exists, however; and
having existed thus far, it probably will continue to exist
until in time it flourishes.
Meanwhile, by the creation of a modern technique,
it offers poetic drama in English the first justifiable hope
of escape from the senile lethargy into which three cen-
turies of imitation had plunged it. Strictly speaking,
there had been no poetic drama since the Puritans stopped
the rich stream of Elizabethan eloquence by closing the
theatres in 1642. Occasionally a dramatist, deriving his
method from a compromise between the continentals,
the Greeks and Shakespeare, had made a play in verse;
or, more stagnantly, had built a romantic hodge-podge,
verbose and rhetorical, around the pseudo-realistic
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
formula of the days of gas-lamp illumination. But there
had been no impetus, no technical incentive, towards a
renascence of poetic drama until the new movement
cleansed the theatre by challenging theatric values.
"To save the theatre," said Eleanora Duse, "the
theatre must first be destroyed." And the younger men,
the revolutionists, set themselves to destroy it in theory,
and to recreate it in practice and theory both, by the
simple but incisive idea of re-theatralhation. No better
proof could be offered of the sterility of poetic drama than
the fact that these men were all, without exception, men
of the theatres-directors, scenic artists, actors — none of
them playwrights. In other words, the new movement
differed from any earlier developments of the kind, so
far as I know, in being almost wholly independent of the
drama. The emphasis was shifted decisively from the
drama to the theatre as the dominant art form.
Now, that habit of mind which insists that the theatre
shall be the handmaid of the arts, and particularly of the
art of writing, is apt to view such a transfer of emphasis
with alarm. For the theatre to assert its own inherent
vitality is permissible so long as it does not intrude this
vitality into the sacred traditions of the drama. But
the new movement involves an esthetic too fundamental
not to re-open the entire problem of dramatic construc-
tion. Concerned chiefly with the production of the
play in the theatre, it uncovers an esthetic resource that
touches the very definition of poetic drama.
[38]
Influence of the Art-theatre on Poetic Drama
The reform in stagecraft is a protest against the fal-
lacy of a realistic technique, against that ineptitude of
the mise en scene which has made "theatrical" a syn-
onym for the imitation of beauty by tinsel and exagger-
ation. It is toward a simplified and therefore an
allusive and poetic decoration, toward an emotional
and therefore a poetic use of light, toward a rhythmic and
therefore a poetic movement. In synthesizing these vis-
ual elements into an organic whole, the new stagecraft has
released in them a dramatic value entirely apart from
representation. Just as poetry is the rhythmic expres-
sion of a theme to be developed by words, so these visual
elements in the theatre serve both the purpose of repre-
sentation and of rhythmic beauty. Thus, the background
may be both a statement of locality, and a design holding
the production in key. Movement may be utilized not
only for its obvious and objective purpose, but also for
the intrinsic beauty of motion. Light, treated emotion-
ally, is capable of following, emphasizing, or even leading
the mood of the action.
I have attempted briefly to indicate the trend of the
new stagecraft because in this discovery of an independent
esthetic resource in the visual elements of the theatre
originates the essential difference between the new tech-
nique and the old, as it affects the dramatist. The central
rhythm of the play, instead of being developed through
words only, is developed through all the media of pro-
duction— through light, stage decoration and movement
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
as well as through the spoken word. These visual elements
become a part of the inner structure of the play; and
because of their poetic quality they bind the theatre
inseparably to poetry, to poetic drama, making the
theatre a place well fitted for the renascence of poetic
drama.
But with these additional factors of expression, it is no
longer necessary for the dramatist to trust so exclusively,
and cling so tenaciously, to words. In the Elizabethan
drama even the locality of the scene was often stated in
words: every mood, every emotion was projected verbally.
It was a drama of eloquence; and as such it suited, as no
other form could, the torrential flood of Elizabethan
poetry. But modern poetry, irrespective of the drama, is
more restrained; it tends to leave much unsaid, to project
the meaning by ellipsis and overtones. Unless I am mis-
taken, though I know little of the technique of poetry,
this brevity is sometimes carried to extreme lengths, in
which the imagination of the reader supplies much more
at the poet's instigation than the poet himself expresses.
It is a subtle technique; and it is pre-eminently the
technique of the dramatist.
With this distinction: that, instead of restraining verbal
expression to stimulate the imagination of the reader, the
dramatist uses words cautiously in adjustment to the
other media of his expression. To take an obvious, and
well understood, example: a gesture is sometimes equal
in effectiveness to many words. In the theatre, where
[40]
Influence of the Art-theatre on Poetic Drama
economy of expression is imperative, gesture and words
will often complement each other without duplication.
And what is true of gesture becomes true in the art-
theatre of all phases in movement, of stage decoration, of
light; and on occasion of music.
The effect of this upon the poetry of the poetic drama,
and especially upon verse structure, is significant and far-
reaching. It necessitates the development of a verse form
that will admit of distortions, interruptions and irreg-
ularities. These are more apparent than real. As soon
as the poetic drama is conceived as a fusion of many arts
into an organic whole, the rhythm of the play becomes an
inclusive rhythm to the progression of which all the media
are contributory and. in a sense subordinate. The irreg-
ularities in such a drama would be due to the separation
of the verse from its theatric context. When the play
came into being in the theatre these irregularities would
disappear, merging into the larger current of rhythmic
beauty. To the dramatist this may seem the weakness
or the strength of the new poetic drama — that it comes to
fulfilment only in the theatre, as a symphony lives only in
the orchestra.
Blank verse, which alone of the standard forms has
been accepted as a proper medium for the poetic drama in
English, depends for acceptance upon an insidious flexi-
bility. This flexibility serves the purpose of the theatre
so long as the characters keep talking. But talk they
must; and the terrified volubility of the poetic drama is,
POETRY: A Magazine 0} Verse
I think, one of the reasons why it has been in general a
form displeasing to modern audiences. This is no fault of
blank verse, which has been deflected from its original and
legitimate intention to serve as best it might an art that
lacks its own form. It has thus created a compromise
between the printed page and the theatre which has made
the poetic drama neither fish nor flesh, neither wholly
satisfactory for reading nor wholly satisfactory for acting.
Moreover, the need for well-rounded periods has reacted
upon the dramatist by giving him a false sense of
untroubled leisure. The time element, which scarcely
exists in the printed page, is in the theatre of the utmost
importance. The reader may take his own pace: the
auditor must listen; he must accept .the pace of the actor.
The verse is spoken apparently with a retarded movement,
and must therefore be quantitatively less, and more com-
pact for the purpose. Such a compactness is hostile, one
would say, judging by examples, to the mood of blank
verse. One need only refer, among many instances, to the
plays of Stephen Phillips or Zoe Akins, each of whom has
a keen dramatic instinct; or to that parody of Elizabethan
grandeur, that reductio ad absurdum of rhetoric in a theme
not without power, Caius Gracchusy to note the clogging
result of the intrusion of the stricter verse forms into the
theatre. It may almost be stated as a generality that,
other things being equal, the more smoothly a play reads
the worse it will act.
[42]
Influence of the Art-theatre on Poetic Drama
A new verse form that will be native to the theatre, that
will be an inseparable component of the flow of the com-
plex rhythm of the play, cannot be created out of hand.
It too, like the modification of painting for stage decora-
tion, of illumination for emotional lighting, must develop
through knowledge of the exigencies of the medium. To
understand the poetic theatre is to understand the use of
poetry in that theatre. In America the dramatist has
grasped neither the technique nor the possibilities in
expression that it offers him. Toy plays, Columbine
plays, gay and adolescent trifles, thin tragedies — all
superficial experiments in the externals of the new stage-
craft— follow one another in an almost (but fortunately
not quite) unbroken succession.
In a recent article the most brilliant director that the
new movement has produced this side the Atlantic,
Maurice Browne, summarizes thus the situation in respect
of finding a drama for the art-theatre:
A fight which has hardly begun: the fight for the play. That is where
the Chicago Little Theatre failed, and where all the artist-groups in
America have failed, except perhaps the Provincetown Players.
But it may be true that out of a clearer understanding
will come the dramatist who will evolve the form which
his medium demands. And after him — the deluge.
Cloyd Head
[43]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
REVIEWS
MUSEUM SHIPS
Ships in Harbor^ by David Morton. G. P. Putnam's Sons.
What is there in David Morton's verse that seems to
save it, that intervenes in moments of irritation with its
punctual urbanity? There is not an original line in it.
Not one cry, one intense expression comes from it; one
vision, that the poet has kept from his privileged dreaming,
which can draw the mind an inch out of even the shallowest
rut.
Is it its cleanly manufacture, its unstraying measures
and kempt familiar figurines? To me its charm has been
a charm too soon worn out — the charm that sometimes
attracts us to a diffident guest when we are overborne by
the intrusions and ineptitudes of the vivacious, when the
quiet and subdued deceptively appear to be powerful and
profound.
It is fatal, however, to turn closely to the poems them-
selves for verification. They are demure enough, but thin
and fragile; and made with earnest and helpless plagiarism.
Never the robust piracies of a Shakespeare or Sterne, but
a pallid imitativeness that paints the past more ruinous
with perfunctory restorations, and blows about it feeble
ghosts — pale, mute, and not recognizable as ghosts should
be, of any of the shapes of destiny.
The book is called Ships in Harbor — there is such a poem
in the book, and other occasional verses on ships. But
[44]
Museum Ships
the reader who expects salt and storm, or anything
authentically of the sea, should look elsewhere — in the
dubious prose of Joseph Conrad, for instance. There are
some conventionally nautical words and phrases, and the
tidy thoughtfulness about mystical things that gives to
diffident, cornered people their misleading impressiveness.
It makes David Morton talk twice, on successive pages, of
"weightless cargoes" — and one might add lifeless crews,
and meaningless uses, and tinsel. The sea is brought in
because it is on the same wall with Greece and Rome,
spring and patriotism; and not being so bent with overuse,
is more convenient to hang poems upon. Sonnets — for
David Morton writes mostly in sonnets.
We agree that grammar is spoken language, stagnant;
out of which nevertheless speech drips and sometimes
splashes. We agree that rhetoric is literature, stagnant;
that as there can be limitless variations of the correct
sentences, phrases, clauses and what-nots of grammar, so
there can be a limitless variation of forms of rhetoric.
These verses are rhetoric, often skilful and surprising,
often mildly intricate; but never poetry.
There should be a word bearing the same relation to
subject matter which grammar and rhetoric bear to
language. Pageant, perhaps; but pageant is free, ringing,
and dramatic. Pageant is play, and this other thing
pretends solemnly to poetry; but uses pageant properties.
It rounds up all the popular places and heroes, the story-
book locales and personae, and treats them with apologetic
us]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
sophistication, and with a snuffling sentimentality very
wide of the crude romantics of the pageant crowd.
The favorite property is the Past. After reading this
book through (a Spartan exercise) I turned the pages
casually at various places to see whether the Past appeared
as often as I thought. I read, in On Hearing a Bird at
Night:
Out of what ancient summers of soft airs.
Christ, Dante, Athens, Time, Roman, pyramid, Phidias,
are all in one sonnet called Moments; Pan and the Gods
are in Redemption; and in Encore^
This old slow music . . . with dancers who were graceful long ago.
Does Mr. Morton make a confession in Inviolate?
For present loveliness there is no speech:
A word may wrong a flower or face,
And stars that swim beyond our stuttering reach
Are safer in some golden, silent place.
Only when these are broken, or pass by,
Wonder and worship speak ... or sing ... or cry.
The thought seems more penetrating than it is. If the
present and the future are inviolate to the pen of the poet,
the past is equally so, and Mr. Morton should quietly
take to other things. He knows that the past is beautiful
only through the poets who recorded its beauty — and
ugliness. The Past is a convention; time is a unity, and
no fragment of it is less alive than another, unless one
wittingly puts on blinders.
To continue our census, this from Transfiguration:
[46]
Museum Ships
What old historic dust gives back the rose!
What crumbled empires yield the creeping vine!
And these from Survival and Ruins:
Lead back the tragic chariots of Troy !
The spring comes in to me like spring in Rome.
I might add, and so on and so on, because Mr. Morton's
obsession is the Past, and it stalks him like a shadow
everywhere he goes; although the other commonplaces of
poetry, the ready-rapture articles of every variety, are
not neglected, and although he succeeds as little in
vitalizing the past as the sea. Perhaps for him the sea
has run out, and the past has been neatly embalmed in a
general history. There is even a curious indifference about
them, as if they were a poetaster's shop-talk.
And, oh yes, the sonnets are very carefully made.
They are trim, rhythmic, proper sonnets in every respect.
Isidor Schneider
NEW FIRE
A Canopic Jar, by Leonora Speyer. E. P. Button & Co.
This is the first book of a mature woman too intelligent
to be content with gifts already fulfilled and creations
accomplished. The book, hiding "the hidden thing,
making protection for Hapi, who is within," indicates
careful research into the forms of verse, and contains
poems in various forms. The task of the reviewer is
somewhat to disentangle the set of perceptions for which
[47]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
the development of appropriate rhetoric will yield most
to her ambition.
Mrs. Speyer's ambition is neither historical, evangelical
nor journalistic, but esthetic. This in itself is noteworthy.
It is often said that pursuits and ideas must now be
estimated upon their contribution to the war problem,
the food problem, or the proletariat problem. If this
were true, every healthy-minded man should strive in a
chemical laboratory to find the secret lair of energy,
which men will control in the good day coming, so that
drudgery will cease, and food and power become so cheap
that they will not be worth fighting for.
But in the meantime, if conviction fails us, or an un-
scientific education has forever limited our activities,
there is a phase of thought in which a gifted woman may
participate as well as a chemist or war-correspondent:
these speculative adventures and flashes of interpretive
insight, which, when fixed in pattern or rhythmic utter-
ance, we call art. And if art is to remain as vital as
protozoology, or, for that matter, as prize-fighting, its
principal concern must be the search for new form, its
own lairs of energy, however useless in the end.
In this search Mrs. Speyer is engaged. For convenient
examination of the book, I shall take up certain qualities
in more or less arbitrary order. In the construction of
phrase which shall convey precisely a precise idea or
impression, not a matter of verse-technique alone, her
imagination is deft. Occasionally her abstraction is as
[48]
New Fire
sharp-edged as a tangible object: "O pompous cry, O
puny sin!" These are even stronger, and cling to the
memory:
I am the path that my own feet tread.
Gulls flap unevenly through the muffled hours;
Spaces listen in hiding.
Rhythm is of course the special problem of verse. Two
divisions of it may be dissociated: The first indicates an
inner logic not otherwise shown, or an emotion not other-
wise evoked, as in traditional or imposed forms. The other
fuses with the rhythm of the fact, as that the old man
walked amid the green rye, so that the old man may seem
to walk. Movement is duplicated by movement-of-
words. Coleridge is full of examples of this:
The moving moon went up the sky,
And nowhere did abide:
Softly she was going up,
And a star or two beside.
Of this rhythm, Leonora Speyer may become a dis-
tinguished exponent. The lovely after-battle poem,
April on the Battlefield—
And birds sit close for comfort
On broken boughs —
Squall, and First Snow on the Hills, indicate this ability.
Curiously, although an excellent musician, she does not
invent musical schemes which are interesting in them-
selves.
[49]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
The American genius has taken up satire. The axe,
which has rusted since Swift, but for such bourgeois
holidays as Thackeray afforded, is used with new intent
and no reformatory zeal. The bias given to perceptions
by scorn, not spleen, is recognized to be as true an
emotional bias as another; and perhaps, in a world of
newspapers and languid religions, the most pertinent of
all. In her speech, Leonora Speyer may capture the most
mordant and bewildering humor of her time. It is not
negative wit, and may not be completely conscious; but
it strips away all hoakum, however sweet, leaving our
intent and passion like a shell crusted with salt. There
are traces of this trenchancy in her verse:
O bottled widow's woe,
Standing in ostentatious row
Within the gloom
Of dear departed's tomb!
Evaporated lover's grief!
A Canopic Jar has unpretentious beauty and clear
thought, and no earmarks of vulgar success or sacrosanct
largeness. She seems able to endure the inward conflict
and sedentary work required even to commence art. And
one may be sure that she will not rest upon the achieve-
ment of this book, or repeat it in her second, betraying
those who have faith in her. Already her Magdalene
ballad in a recent issue of the Nation is a finer episodic
lyric than any in this book. She is able to create passages
of such intransient beauty as this:
[50]
New Fire
Does the heart grieve on
After its grief is gone,
Like a slow ship moving
Across its own oblivion?
Who shall say that her fire in the rushes, which gives so
fair a light, may not come to burn gold?
Glenway Wescott
PAGEANTRY AND RHETORIC
Rip Van Winkle^ by Percy Mackaye. Alfred A. Knopf.
Two Mothers (Eight Hundred Rubles and Agrippina), by
John G. Neihardt. Macmillan Co.
The talent of Percy Mackaye lies in the field of
pageantry; and it is no mean talent, as he proved in
his St. Louis masque. In pageantry the picture must
speak louder than words, and Mr. Mackaye unquestion-
ably speaks louder with pictures than with words. For
years he has been laboring to find his medium through
poetry. The sensibilities of an artist, and a laudable
ambition, have led him to fake poetry; but his words fail
to augment or enhance his pictures. Until he practically
discards the use of words, he will not be a free artist.
Rip Van Winkle has pageant values rather than poetic.
Written as light opera, it is patterned in the usual manner
— dialogues, lyrics, comedy, dance. It lacks the snap of
light opera, but its pictures and ensembles are distinctly
valuable as sublimated extravaganza, and poetically
effective as pageant material. The author has a vision for
pictorial symbolism in broad compositions filling large
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
canvases, for extravagant effects to be put across great
distances and to register in the conglomerate comprehen-
sion of fifteen thousand people.
The story of Rip Van Winkle is a tradition. It is
material for a drama if the protagonist, Rip — light-
hearted, humorous, pathetic, tragic — is sincerely and pro-
foundly characterized. Playing, drinking, dreaming — the
outcast — we want it all to the bitter end, not a sugar-
coated substitute. Mr. Mackaye's more palatable ar-
rangement of the story lacks the original tang. His
tampering with the legend is like changing the theme of a
play which has made the play. Washington Irving,
Thomas Jefferson, Tony Sarg's puppets, all retain the old
flavor. Mr. Mackaye's version is flat, lacks the old
richness.
In the beginning of Act ///, Rip for the first time takes
the characterization familiar to us — a fantastic figure
without locale. Later in the act he assumes the dialect
of a New England farmer, and at the close he is suddenly
transformed by the magic flask into a romantic youth.
Something of a fakir and something of an artist, Mr.
Mackaye paints living pictures on an enormous canvas in
a public park.
Eight Hundred Rubles > by John G. Neihardt, is a tragic
episode compact in scenario but unbalanced in its develop-
ment. The long speeches, the digressions, and the song
at the beginning of the episode, hamper the progression
at the start. They do not, to any extent, promote suspense
[52]
Pageantry and Rhetoric
nor establish the exposition. In so short a play, the
exposition must be precipitated into the drama immedi-
ately. Without premonition the tragedy is revealed, and
the play is over before we know it has begun. The verse
lacks ease, and the flow of line into line; it jolts over a
corduroy road.
In Agrippina he again indulges in long speeches, and
they in turn indulge themselves to the point of licentious-
ness in rhetorical luxury. The licentiousness of Nero
pales by comparison, and the delayed story grows dull.
The stories of these two plays seem far removed, as
does the verse; but it is possible that Mr. Neihardt's
spirit lives and breathes and has its being in the far
removed. All a poet can do, and all that one can demand
of a poet, is to react honestly. The sincerity of Mr.
Neihardt is generally acknowledged, but Bacchus cannot
be revived by filling his cup with grape-juice.
Laura Sherry
THE NOVELIST AS POET
As the Wind Blows, by Eden Philpotts. Macmillan Co.
Not a few novelists try their hand at poetry. Ap-
parently it seems to them somehow the fitting thing to do.
Commonly they write poetry which shows taste and
literary craftsmanship rather than emotional impulse.
Mr. Philpotts' book is of this kind. It manifests skill
in the handling of rhyme and conventional rhythms. It
has the sense of fitness which has characterized the
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
English literary tradition for generations. It has also
the "poetic" vocabulary and attitude which have been a
part of the same tradition. For example:
For June must joy though joy departs,
And life must laugh though sorrow smarts,
And buds must break as well as hearts.
Most of the author's work, of course, is better than this,
though still lacking in intensity and originality of expres-
sion. His lighter verse, such as Gaffer s Song and Scandal,
possesses humor and charm. As would be expected in the
work of a novelist, however, the narrative poems carry
most entertainingly the rather boyish naivete of subject
and style — Tiger, for example; or The Fruit of the Tree,
which solemnly offers the suggestion that if ape or sloth
had eaten of the Tree of Knowledge it might have ruled
the kingdoms of the world "with kinder wit than man."
In Tiger there is a good deal of spirit and vividness, sug-
gested by the rattling rhythm of the opening lines:
To the barking of the monkeys, to the shrieking of the birds;
To the bellow of the bison and stampeding of the herds;
At fiery edge of sunset, from the jungle to the wold,
Death stalks in shining ebony and orange-tawny gold.
N. A. C.
THE PROFESSOR AS CRITIC
The Function of the Poet and Other Essays, by James Rus-
sell Lowell. Houghton Mifflin Co.
The Kinds of Poetry and Other Essays, by John Erskine.
Duffield & Co.
[54]
The Professor as Critic
James Russell Lowell, during his Harvard period, was
the leading professor of English literature in the United
States. John Erskine, now professor of English in Co-
lumbia, has a distinguished position in academic circles
of the present day. The earliest essay in the Lowell
volume was originally published in 1845, the latest in
1894. The earliest paper in Dr. Erskine 's book first ap-
peared in 1912, the most recent in 1920. The two books
therefore afford opportunity to compare academic criti-
cal opinion of two quite distinct periods.
Few persons nowadays read Lowell 's criticism. The pre-
face to the present volume, contributed by AlbertMordell,
admits that some of Lowell's literary opinions "are old-
fashioned to us", though the learned commentator char-
acteristically claims that "Lowell, before Freud, under-
stood the psychoanalytic theory of genius in its connec-
tion with childhood memories." Whether or not Lowell
realized the influence of childish repressions, it is certain
that he is old-fashioned. He speaks a language that we
of today are not quite at home in and are not interested
enough to learn. His classifications, his reduction of
criticism to scientific laws, his rhetorical style, belong to
the journalism of an earlier day. We shall not again at-
tire our thought in this sort of raiment, any more than
we shall wear the kind of clothes that Mr. Lowell wore.
This does not mean that Lowell's critical work was
valueless. It was not. He contributed to American crit-
icism a degree of scholarship and fairness; and, except
[55]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
when puzzled by the intrusion of a man of genius like
Poe, he welcomed, sometimes very cordially, the new
writer. He did much to turn criticism away from the per-
sonal blind alleys into which it had previously been so
often led. He is a figure of interest in the history of crit-
icism, but we do not turn to him for guidance today.
Dr. Erskine's book belongs to its own time as much as
Dr. Lowell*s. The difference is that Dr. Erskine's day
is ours. His four essays make an interesting book, with
a flavor of sly humor now and then which adds a zest to its
solid value. I think the universities should require every
student who expects to teach English literature to read it,
not because it is the best book on poetry of the present
day, but because it is the best on the subject for the sort
of person who usually teaches literature. But the pub-
lishers will probably not get out an extra edition on the
prospect of orders from the universities. They doubtless
know that Lowell's book is more likely to get the aca-
demic orders than is Erskine 's. Dr. Erskine has the qual-
ity, never forgiven by the true academician, of not being
interested in what everybody else has forgotten.
The Erskine book is also suggestive for the poet; espe-
cially the closing essay, Scholarship and Poetry ', in which
the author shows the value to the poet of an unpedantic
literary background. The essay on The New Poetry is
hospitable to the new, but contains little material which
the ordinary student of the movement does not already
know. I must, however, quote one delicious sentence:
[56]
The Professor as Critic
" Many of the new poems do look at first a bit outrageous,
especially to old-fashioned readers who have not read
widely in old-fashioned literature."
Lowell was in tune with his time, and Erskine is with
his. It is unfortunate that much academic criticism of
today is living in Lowell *s time instead of Erskine 's.
Nelson Antrim Crawford
NOTES
Mr. Wallace Stevens, of Hartford, Conn., has appeared often in
POETRY since 1914. Two years ago his Pecksniffiana received the
Levinson Prize. Mr. Stevens has been a frequent and valued contributor
to the special magazines, but he has not yet yielded to the solicitation of
his admirers so far as to publish a volume.
H. D. (Mrs. Richard Aldington), originally of Philadelphia but now
usually resident in England, is also a familiar contributor since her first
appearance in POETRY'S fourth number. Her book, Sea Garden, is
published in America by the Houghton Mifflin Co.; and her transla-
tions from Euripides have been issued in pamphlet form by The Egoist.
Karle Wilson Baker (Mrs. Thos. E.), of Nacogdoches, Texas, is the
author of Blue Smoke (Yale University Press).
Miss Loureine Aber, of Chicago, will issue her -first book before
Christmas through Ralph Fletcher Seymour.
Miss Louise Driscoll, of Catskill, N. Y., has contributed often to this
magazine and others. Her tragic dialogue, Metal Checks, received a
prize from POETRY as the best poem printed in its War Number — Nov.
1914, and it remains one of the finest poems suggested by the great
catastrophe.
Mr. Nelson Antrim Crawford, of the faculty of the Kansas State
Agricultural College at Manhattan, received last year a prize in a Kansas
contest for the best poem published during the year by a resident of that
state. The prize was awarded to The Carrying of the Ghost, which our
readers will remember.
Miriam Allen deFord, who recently married Mr. Maynard Shipley, is
[57]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
now a resident of San Francisco. She has written verse and prose for
the radical papers.
Other contributors appear for the first time in this issue. Of these:
Maurine Smith was a highly gifted student at the University of
Chicago, and a valued member of its Poetry Club, when she died about
three years ago. Her friends have collected her best poems with the
intention of publishing a small volume to perpetuate her memory.
Mr. Joseph Andrew Galahad, of Portland, Oregon, has contributed to
various magazines.
Mr, Grant H. Code, of Cambridge, Mass., is in the faculty of Boston
University.
Perhaps we should also remind our readers that Mr. Cloyd Head, of
Chicago, who contributes the art-theatre article to our prose section, is
the author of that powerful modern one-act tragedy, Grotesques, which
received the Levinson Prize in 1916; and that Mrs. Laura Sherry, of
Milwaukee, is the director of the Wisconsin Players, an organization
which has been for years one of the most efficient and enlightened of the
art-theatre companies in this country.
BOOKS RECEIVED
ORIGINAL VERSE:
The Blue Ship, by Herbert Jones. John Lane.
Eyes of Vigilance, by Furnley Maurice. Sydney J. Endacott, Mel-
bourne, Australia.
Ways and Means, by Furnley Maurice. Sydney J. Endacott.
The Contemplative Quarry and The Man with a Hammer, by Anna
Wickham. Harcourt, Brace & Co.
Sonnets to B. B. R., by Laban Lacy Rice. Richard G. Badger.
Poems, by Stewart Mitchell. Duffield & Co.
The Journey — Odes and Sonnets, by Gerald Gould. Yale Univ. Press.
The Captive Lion and Other Poems, by William Henry Davies. Yale
University Press.
Curtains, by Hazel Hall. John Lane Co.
Ireland Unfreed — Poems oj 1921, by Sir William Watson. John Lane Co.
Wampum and Old Gold, by Hervey Allen. Yale University Press.
Second April, by Edna St. Vincent Millay. Mitchell Kennerley.
In Gossamer Gray, by Oscar Williams. The Bookfellows, Chicago.
[58]
think your July number is, not only the best issue you have ever printed, but
the best issue of any poetry magazine that I have ever seen.
William Stanley Braithwaite
Vol. XIX No. II
POETRY for NOVEMBER, 1921
PAGE
The Lions Edwin Curran 59
The Jilt I-VI— The Blunted Age Agnes Lee 69
From the Day-book of a Forgotten Prince . Jean Untermeyer 74
A Fillet of Thorn Anita Grannis 75
The Wages of Sin Jessica Nelson North 76
Fog Kathryn White Ryan 76
Geyser John R. C. Peyton 77
Gargoyle Kate Buss 77
Don Juan in Portugal Florence Wilkinson 78
The Passers-by Dorothy Butts 80
The Parade — To the Hills around Northampton — A Van-
ity— Audience — Listening — May Basket — The Transient —
Difference— Please
Poems Henry Bellamann 85
Gargoyles of Notre Dame — Edges — Lullaby — Peaks — God —
The Artist
From Queen Anne to George the Fifth H . M. 90
Reviews:
Drinkwater as Poet and Playwright .... Laura Sherry 94
Of Dreams and Stitches Pearl Andelson 100
Correspondence:
Poet and Composer as Allies . . . .Louise Ayres Garnett 102,
Reactionary Composers Kay Boyle 104
Announcement of Awards 107
Our Contemporaries:
A New "Youth" 115
Notes and Books Received 115,116
Manuscripts must be accompanied by a stamped and self-addressed envelope.
Inclusive yearly subscription rates. In the United States, Mexico, Cuba and
American possessions, $3.00 net; in Canada, $3.15 net; in all other countries in the
Postal Union, $3.25 net. Entered as second-class matter Nov. 15, 1921, at the
post-office, at Chicago, 111., uuder Act of March 3, 1879.
Published monthly at 543 Cass St., Chicago, 111.
Copyright 1921, by Harriet Monroe. All rights reserved.
VOL. XIX
No. II
A Magazine of \ferse
NOVEMBER 1921
THE LIONS
THE jungle glistens like a cloud —
Purple-cool, tree-deep, lake-pearled;
Where lions lurk and thrash and crowd,
Like lands that battle for the world.
Behold, one lion leaps for his prey,
Trotting like a saffron mist,
As savage nations in our day
Pounce on some weak antagonist.
Across the jungle-painted grass
His roar breaks through the tropic air;
And he runs like a tawny flame —
Swift yellow stroke of lightning there.
His cry is like the thunder's sound,
Shaking leaf and bough and bole;
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
And he is part of Africa —
The yellow monarch in her soul.
Painted birds fly through the trees
And stain the sky with brown on blue,
Hammering with their wings the breeze,
Hitting songs across the dew.
Parrots gaudy as a star
Tap their bells and chatter sound.
Each insect sweeps his dim guitar
Like music hidden in the ground.
The tawny lion goes like a shot —
A daub of gold against the green,
Scenting a wounded bleeding doe
That he is following unseen.
A spangled serpent lights a tree,
A coiling flame around it, curled;
But the old lion goes great and free,
The master of his jungle world.
Bravely born and bravely bred,
Proud as a diamond of his fire,
This yellow monarch of the south
Goes like the hosts that swarmed to Tyre.
Hungry to kill, he scents the air,
And roars into beginning night,
His blond mane tossing up its hair,
His eyes two pools of blazing light.
[60]
Edwin Curran
He stops and lips the evening gale,
Reading the wind across the trees;
Giant cat in his tawny mail,
Spelling out the trail-warm breeze.
Then on he darts as though with wings,
To find his prey and drink the blood
And feast upon the harmless things
That God has put into the wood.
A gorilla slouches through the bush;
A leopard's eyes shoot stars of light;
The deep luxuriant forest hush
Hides serpents beetle-colored, bright.
The crane nods sleeping, spindle-shanked;
Gray monkeys troop and clack and peer;
A jungle stream goes emerald-banked,
Purring like a wild-cat near.
The cinnamon-colored land awakes
Around the lion fold on fold;
Yellowing with fruit, blue with lakes,
Stuck with fireflies burnished gold.
Gray monkeys watch the lion and talk,
Lassoing trees with leather tails;
Some far palms by the seaside walk,
And near-by sing the nightingales.
The moon hangs like a petal of gold
Broken upon the western sky.
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
The blue dusk deepens fold on fold,
The shattered day lies down to die.
Here in this wild primeval place,
Savage, wooded, poisonous, still,
Far from mankind and human face,
The old lion goes to hunt and kill.
His prey is near, the scent is strong,
He roars out in his ghastly mirth.
There, bleeding like a shattered song,
His wounded doe is run to earth.
But as he leaps to take its throat
A younger lion leaps up and cries;
And there the two lions stand like stone,
The fires of ages in their eyes.
It took the centuries to make
These lions' sun-colored bodies bright,
These great-teethed felines from the brake,
Tawny, crouching, cruel as night.
Their eyes turn red — these cats of brown
Swift as wind, lithe as air,
Savage-maned and monarch-crowned,
With blazing eyes and yellow hair.
The painted snake makes not a sound;
The frightened birds shake in the tree:
Like two great russet clouds they bound,
These monarchs, for the mastery.
[62]
Edwin Curran
The teak-tree groans, the gum is still,
The coffee- tree nods to the duel;
An elephant calf stares from a hill,
A lizard watches from a pool.
White silver moon, an eye of snow,
Looks from the dusk with beauty hung,
Her pale lids open and aglow
Where starry ladders are far-flung.
The lions' steel sinews knot in cords;
There is a crash of yellow forms;
The zebu and chimpanzee run;
The jungle with the battle storms.
A roar that rocks the ground is heard,
And monkeys chatter, parrots flee.
The coiled snake and the gaudy bird
Slink from their everlasting tree.
The colors of the painted land
All disappear as quick as light;
The great palms tremble, and the hand
Of God draws over all the night.
The dotted turtles hunt the ground,
Now rocking with the battling pair;
The night birds, startled, make no sound,
The vultures scent the bloody air.
Hyenas wait to eat the dead
And pick the polished bones and wail;
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
A python crawls with silken tread
On silver plates of sliding mail.
The wild things of the jungle know
A battle of the kings is on;
The zebras cry, trie tree-cats yell;
The tall giraffe has swiftly flown;
The spiders hang on polished webs —
Greenish discs of jeweled light;
A frog is croaking in his well,
The fireflies shower through the night.
The two huge cats are at their duel —
Two yellow whirlwinds, hard as stones;
Snapping, biting, wild and cruel,
Tearing flesh and crunching bones.
Jaws upraised and crashing shut,
Lifting, sinking, slashing there;
Paws like razors slitting skin,
Teeth like knives of white that tear.
The painted flowers drip with blood,
The hiding snake is crushed below;
The lizard stamps into the ground;
The trees shake as when whirlwinds blow.
The monkeys swing away and run;
The wildcat looks and leaps away;
The leopard, spotted with the sun,
Slides by into the mist of gray.
Edwin Curran
The poisonous flies have scented blood,
And elephants have come to peer;
Ant-eaters look into the wood
To see the battle of the year.
The scorpion squirms into the view,
And things unspeakable, to see —
Speared and horned and crusted blue,
The toad and reptile infantry.
The jungle sees the battle rage
Intense, ferocious, swift and fast —
A terrible and an awful sight,
So horrible toward the last
The lions have cowed the very night,
And stunned the shadows and the trees:
A scuffle like the break of worlds,
The shattering of centuries.
But the old lion shows greater skill,
With harder blows and mastery;
His teeth were, longer trained to kill,
His strength upholds his majesty.
Yet the young lion is quick and strong —
So wiry lithe he seems to float;
He worries the old lion for long —
Till the old lion leaps at his throat.
They wave in battle, spinning round
Together, snarling, thundering, bright,
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
Thrashing through the dry dead grass;
Until the day has turned to night,
And left the young lion dead and still —
In ribbons, mangled on the sod,
His broken body cold and chill —
The old lion still his lord and god.
The old master of the forest stands
With one paw on the fallen breast —
The monarch of the jungle lands
Whose victory challenges the best.
A king is dead — long live the king!
He roars, his eyes like coals aglow.
He calls his mate, a lioness there,
To come and feast and eat the doe.
He calls his lady through the night,
And she replies and comes to him,
Where the dead doe lies still and white,
To banquet in the shadows dim:
Like nations, when the war is done,
Who gather at the feasting board
To dine upon the hard-won prey,
Each like a monarch and a lord.
The snake slips back into his tree,
The monkeys chatter now in peace;
And over the blue woods there falls
The age-old night of centuries.
[66]
Edwin Curran
The fireflies hang their lanterns back
To star the dark; the beetles bell;
The lizards creep, and nightbirds sing;
The snail is dancing in his shell.
The yellow floods are still and quiet;
The sky is blue like trembling glass;
Beasts, birds and toads and insects riot
Beneath the stars in jungle grass.
After the battle night alone;
Moon-mist, ghostly poison-flowers;
Trumpeting of beasts that moan
Through creeping crawling crimson hours.
A shaky moon rocks in the night,
A grumbling sea, far palms, the crash
Of monkeys chattering as they fight;
Gray serpents going like a flash;
Slow turtles, swifter bats on wing;
Worms creeping back, and spiders, flies;
Lizards with poisonous following,
And fanged things in their paradise.
Slimy silken bellies squirming,
OfFal-scented beasts of prey;
Hungry, lethal toads and reptiles
Who move by night and hide by day:
Tearing flesh of birds that nest,
Rending bones that drip with blood.
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
So the jackals strike and quest
In the world's jungle brotherhood.
But must these creepers in their turn
Be conquered in the coming light,
As new hope rises on the world
And the old lions go with the night?
Yet who can tell what signs of death
Await the nations one by one?
Ah, what will happen in earth's dark night
Before the rising of the sun?
Edwin Curran
[68]
THE JILT
Let other feet go drudging
About the house he built!
A free girl, a jilted girl —
I'm glad he was a jilt.
We quarrelled till it almost
Destroyed my breath of life.
He nagged me and bullied me,
As if I'd been his wife.
ii
We grew cold and bitter
The more we would explain,
And if we held our tongues
The worse it was again.
He flashed a cruel sign,
I flashed a cruel word,
And neither could forget
The blame the other heard.
in
But his eyes could be tender with love, and his voice —
how tender!
Some words he sang are with me the whole day through.
[69]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
I hang out the linen and burnish the brass and copper,
And they won't go out of my head, whatever I do.
Strange how they come when I feel alone and forsaken,
How they wake me up when the dawn in my room is
hazy,
How they drug me asleep when the night has darkened my
pillow!
Ah, a song will sing in your head when your heart is
crazy !
IV
What can I do but sit here and shake
And let the windows rattle mournfully,
While Sunday brings him never and Monday brings him
not,
And winter hides the town away from me? —
Dreaming how he drew my soul from my lips,
Seeming just to hear forevermore
What my heart tells the clock, what the clock tells my
heart,
Dreaming back the springtime at my door?
Why should I curl my hair for him ?
He said the trouble couldn't be mended,
He said it must be good-by and go;
And he took up his hat, and all was ended.
[70]
Agnes Lee
So all was over. And I'm not dead!
And I've shed all the tears I'm going to shed!
And now he's wanting to come again?
Perhaps he's sorry, perhaps he misses
The hill-top girl. Well, let him come!
But no more love and no more kisses —
Whatever the future, gay or grim,
Why should I curl my hair for him ?
VI
I shall go out in the sun today.
I don't know whether to laugh or pray,
For along the waking paths of spring
Bird calls to bird till the branches ring.
Something stirs me — spring's own will —
To wander to the edge of the hill,
Where I can see as I look down
Patches of green on the gray old town.
THE BLUNTED AGE
[The old man sips his broth and reads his paper before
the fire. His daughters whisper at a window. One of them
holds a letter.}
First Daughter
I dread his knowing.
[71]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
Second Daughter
She was his favorite sister —
Older than he, and very far away.
Think of it — no one with her at the last!
Better delay the telling . . . such a sorrow . . .
First Daughter
Ah, you remember how he loved our mother!
And yet, last summer, after she had died
He never seemed to take it hard at all.
He seemed too much resigned, too much himself.
It would have killed him twenty years ago!
Second Daughter
It is the age they come to. Something goes out,
Goes mercifully out. I often think
They learn to take death as they take their broth,
Their daily walk, their game of solitaire.
First Daughter
And you and I, sister? Already youth
Slips far and far behind us. Shall we, too . . . ?
Second Daughter [Tearfully]
How can you say it? How can you say it? Oh!
First Daughter
Here comes old Nurse Lucretia up the street,
Heavy with her dull robes, and hurrying
To be the first to bear the word to him.
Second Daughter
Sign to her, wave her away, wave her away!
He has seen her close so many dead eyes !
[72]
Agnes Lee
First Daughter No,
She has passed along, she was not coming in.
Second Daughter
Hush, he may hear!
First Daughter His mind is on his paper.
Second Daughter
Make some good reason, take the paper from him
Before he reads . . . the names. Who knows but
hers
Might be already there?
First Daughter It is too late.
His ringer finds the column.
The Old Man [Calling] Here ! See here !
Why, Adelaide is dead! My sister Adelaide!
Daughters
O father, father!
The Old Man I suppose it's true.
First Daughter
A letter came. Now read it, deary, read it.
The Old Man
No, let it wait. So Adelaide is dead!
Well, she was restless — go and go she must,
First to this place, then that place, till at last
She settled in Nevada. As for me,
Here I am still, and I shall count my hundred.
Well, well, well, well, so Adelaide is dead!
Agnes Lee
[73]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
FROM THE DAY-BOOK OF A FORGOTTEN
PRINCE
My father is happy or we should be poor.
His gateway is wide, and the folk of the moor
Come singing so gaily right up to the door.
We live in a castle that's dingy and old;
The casements are broken, the corridors cold,
The larder is empty, the cook is a scold.
But father can dance, and his singing is loud.
From meadow and highway there's always a crowd
That gathers to hear him, and this makes him proud.
He roars out a song in a voice that is sweet —
Of grandeur that's gone, rare viands to eat,
And treasure that used to be laid at his feet.
He picks up his robe, faded, wrinkled and torn,
Though banded in ermine, moth-eaten and worn,
And held at the throat by a twisted old thorn.
He leaps in the air with a rickety grace,
And a kingly old smile illumines his face,
While he fondles his beard and stares off into space.
The villagers laugh, then look quickly away,
And some of them kneel in the orchard to pray.
I often hear whispers: "The old king is fey."
[74]
Jean Starr Untermeyer
But after they're gone, we shall find, if you please,
White loaves and a pigeon, and honey and cheese,
And wine that we drink while I sit on his knees.
And, while he sups, he will feed me and tell
Of Mother, whom men used to call "The Gazelle,"
And of glorious times before the curse fell.
And then he will fall, half-asleep, to the floor;
The rafters will echo his quivering snore. . . .
I go to find cook through the slack oaken door.
My father is happy or we should be poor.
His gateway is wide, and the folk of the moor
Come singing so gaily right up to the door.
Jean Starr Untermeyer
A FILLET OF THORN
Tell me, how can I sing
Who have not tasted pain ? —
Who, having grieved an hour,
Laugh and am glad again?
It will take a winter of frost,
Aching and storm-filled years,
Before I am lord of life,
Before I am king of tears.
Anita Grannis
[75]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
THE WAGES OF SIN
God the Inscrutable
Looked on complacently
The while young Denison
Slipped all his debts by careful insolvency,
Broke his wife's heart, and ruined the serving girl.
But Lobster Salad and Iced Watermelon —
That was too much for even a godhead:
"I'll smite him for that," quoth God the Inscrutable.
And the wretch died in torment
At two in the morning.
Jessica Nelson North
FOG
The sea is a meadow, pale meadow of silence
Where flowers are blooming, white flowers of sound.
And deep in the petals, the pale listless petals,
Lost ships fumble grumbling, with blindness half crazy.
Does He muse, the Creator, as He peers in the vapor ?-
"So bumble bees trouble the heart of the daisy."
Kathryn White Ryan
[76]
GEYSER
Presto!—
A crystal dancer
Shimmers into the air,
Waving veils of mist.
Stricken,
She quivers —
Sinks —
Falling upon herself,
Dead.
John R. C. Peyton
GARGOYLE
Your tongue hangs out,
You gloat
And shout,
You leer a ribald sophistry
At me,
From where,
Half goat,
You stare
And lean in horizontal glee.
Kate Buss
[77]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
DON JUAN IN PORTUGAL
At every pelhourinho's ledge
Faces to set my teeth on edge —
Gray gossips, like a dusty hedge,
Whisper and crackle.
I lean at Alcobaca, dim
With fig-leaves twisted round its rim.
Pauses a slim
Tall maid. Her name? — A Latin hymn,
Gloria da Madre de Deus;
A white-rose face dipped tremulous —
A profile carved as nobly clear
As love-child of Aurelius.
White-clad, barefoot and straight she stood,
Vase-bearing nymph ripe to be wooed
In some delicious interlude.
What need now to remember more? —
The tiled and twisted fountain's pour,
The vase forgotten on the floor,
The white street ending in her door;
Her head, a dark flower on a stem;
Her diadem
Of heavy hair, the Moorish low estalegem;
[78]
Florence Wilkinson
Outside, the stillness and white glare
Of Alcobaca's noonday square;
My hands that dare —
The beauty of her loosened hair:
White shift, white door, the white still street;
Her lips, her arms, her throat, her feet;
After a while — the bread and meat,
A dewy jar of cool red wine,
Olives that glisten wet with brine.
White rose of Alcobaca — mine —
We kiss again above the wine!
The red wine drunk, the broken crust,
We parted as all lovers must.
Madre in gloria, be thou just
To that frail glory —
A white rose fallen into dust!
Florence Wilkinson
[79]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
THE PASSERS-BY
THE PARADE
Faces, laughing and torch-lit,
Passing and passing —
Laughing and torch-lit and passing!
Voices, crying and shouting,
Dying and dying —
Crying and shouting and dying!
Drums, beating and thumping,
Retreating, retreating —
Beating and thumping, retreating!
Gone! There remains but the heat
Of the August night-wind
Blowing a leaf down the street.
TO THE HILLS AROUND NORTHAMPTON
Little New England hills,
How tenderly
You gather in this bit of world
To comfort me,
Encircling all I love
As I would do
Had arms the reach of heart !
Small hills of blue,
Dorothy Butts
If, having grown to be
More tall than you,
I shall be forced to see
The farther view,
How shall I feel
The solace of your rounded form against the sky,
Unless I kneel?
A VANITY
It is a vanity to make
The little waves on my small lake
Speak from their "deep spring depths."
What can they have to say,
Blown down the winking bay
The first half of the day,
Blown back all afternoon?
See — in the early moon,
Wind-driven home, they leap
And scramble on the shore —
And sleep.
AUDIENCE
Of what account the leafing trees —
Dead leaves in autumn ? What were these,
Were there no poet's heart to please?
Of you and me what can be said,
Who are not, are, and then are dead —
Without a poet overhead?
[81]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
LISTENING
Into the night I sent my call
For you, and hung my head
When there was no reply.
Tonight the singing sky
Is calling me instead —
Cry upon ringing cry.
Although I do not hear your voice,
My head is high.
MAY BASKET
I love you, dear;
And all the little world
Loves my simplicity.
For in my love
There are no passions whirled
In wild complexity.
No mystery
Of "Does she love?" and "Whom?"
Needs fathoming.
I gather love,
And ever find more room
For gathering.
[82]
Dorothy Butts
Will you take this basketful today,
Of old love and new flowerets, and say,
"This much she loved me during May?"
THE TRANSIENT
Dear, take my love and do not hesitate.
You think that I shall always wait,
I am so calm.
(It is to reassure, and to inspire
New confidence in you.)
Quick, take my love before it is too late !
Here are my hands held out to give to you
Their treasures — some old, some new,
All dear to me.
Oh, do not agonize me by delay,
And musing which to take!
Quick! — say I gave them to you, passing through.
DIFFERENCE
If you will wander, so shall I —
In opposite directions ply
Our irresistible two ways
Into the nights, into the days.
The east and west shall draw apart,
Like magnets, your heart from my heart.
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
How vain our tears now we have seen
That east and west have common lures.
You were my magnet — I was yours,
With all the world between.
PLEASE
Give me the old familiar things,
Though they be very plain:
The quaint old tune Joanna sings,
The small house in a lane,
Whose fragrance meets the open door;
The faded carpet on the floor,
The patient peace of furniture —
Familiar things I can endure.
I have been brave a long, long while,
Heard praise, and scorning afterward;
I have met eyes that did not smile,
And now I ask for my reward.
I know the panoramic strand
Of happiness, and griefs sequence.
Rough grains have scratched my venturous hand.
I beg no tribute nor defence;
I only ask familiar things —
The quaint old tune Joanna sings.
Dorothy Butts
POEMS
GARGOYLES OF NOTRE DAME
I watch them shuttle and weave and run
Like dust before a scolding wind:
Boats on the water,
Leaves on the bank,
And men on the streets and square.
Leaves and snow and leaves again,
And men.
Boats to the sea,
Leaves to the wind,
Men to gibbet and wheel —
To thrones,
To bed,
To Pere Lachaise.
Muddy tracks in the snow,
And blood on the wheel,
And rotting leaves on the tiles —
The wind and rain will sweep them away
As a soft curled plume might sweep
Flecks from a silken gown.
Shuttle and weave and run —
Boats to the sea,
Leaves to the wind
And men to Pere Lachaise.
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
EDGES
Edges are more beautiful than anything —
Edges
Where the quiet deep shallows into loveliness,
Where the clouds feather to wavering silver,
And color kisses its brighter self.
Life is most whitely light
Where its low edge
Melts in the still pool of death,
As the sky-rim sinks
In a moon-filled sea.
LULLABY
Tears for your pink, curled hands —
They must strain to hold
The smoke-thin garments of a dream.
Tears for your still eyes —
They must be pierced
By the keen blades of beauty.
Tears for your flower feet —
They must bloom like first spring
On wintry plains.
Tears, tears for your eyes,
And pink, curled hands,
And blossom feet — tears!
[86]
Henry Eellamann
PEAKS
Quiet faces,
That look in faith
On distance,
I will come to you
And gaze upon that peace.
I cannot tell
If it be wind you see
Across the summer grain,
Or the shaken agony
Of driven seas.
GOD
I often spend week-ends in heaven,
And so I know him well.
Most times he is too busy thinking things
To talk;
But then, I like his still aloofness
And superior ease.
I can't imagine him in armor, or in uniform,
Or blowing like a windy Caesar
Across the fields of Europe,
Or snooping in my mind
To find what I am thinking,
Or being jealous of the darling idols
I have made.
If ever that slim word — aristocrat —
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
Belonged to anyone, it is to God.
You should see him steadying the wings
Of great thoughts starting out
On flight-
Very like a scientist trying a machine.
Patrician, cool, in a colored coat
Rather like a mandarin's;
Silver sandals — quite a picture!
I can't see him
Fluttering in wrathful haste,
Or dancing like a fool.
I don't go there often —
Only when I'm at my best.
I save up things:
Pictures of the sea wild with white foam,
Stories of engines beating through the clouds,
News of earth in storm and sun,
Some new songs — the best.
He's fond of being entertained
With what I choose to tell him of myself—-
Very kind about tomorrow,
Indifferent of yesterday.
He's like that—
God in his heaven — alone.
I know, for I made him, put him there
Myself.
[88]
Henry Eellamann
THE ARTIST
What would you do —
If you had ear and brain attuned superbly
To all the iridescent humming-birds of faint
And delicate overtones
That play like spirit flames
Above the music?
Suppose your eyes could see
What mine see when a little wind passes,
And all the garden is suddenly barred and starred
With flying color.
Suppose the tilting planes of dogwood bloom,
In the green spring mist of young leaves,
Caught your breath as though a hand
Held your throat —
Or that the red haw veiling herself in May
Kept you awake at nights
Remembering her bridal look.
Oh, suppose this world of nuances,
Opal-soft and frail and swift,
Were for you a reality more hard
Than things you call reality,
And you lived always among the deaf and blind —
What would you do?
Henry Eellamann
[89]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
COMMENT
FROM QUEEN ANNE TO GEORGE THE FIFTH
THE death of Austin Dobson early in September com-
pelled us all to turn and count the milestones. Was it
possible that he had lived till yesterday — this artist in
triolets — lived to bridge over, with his trim little silver-
silken foot-path, the depth on depth and height on height
of wild and thunder-echoing change which lie between his
time, his mood, and ours? Was it possible that a poet
who reached backward even from Victoria to light his
little candle at the wax taper of Queen Anne, that such
an one could have lived through impressionists and
futurists, through fin-de-siecle lassitude and Celtic revolt,
through imagists, vers-libristes, aeroplanes, submarines,
Russian revolutions and the world war — lived unper-
turbed in his eighteenth-century garden, a loyal citizen of
an extinct world!
However, in the seventies and eighties Austin Dobson
was a "new movement." Swinburne had been showing
what might be done with English rhythmics; now Dob-
son, only three years younger, would open a fresh chapter
by following the footsteps of Theodore de Banville in
adapting to modern uses the old French forms of those
fifteenth-century rhymers Marot and Villon. His art was
of a neatness, a nicety; and all the circumstances of his
life encouraged and developed its precision, its good-
mannerly grace. A comfortable little government office,
[90]
From £fueen Anne to George the Fifth
with three-fourths of his salary continuing on retirement
at sixty; a comfortable pension of two hundred and fifty
pounds for his services to literature; a comfortable home
and family and "troops of friends"; and a comfortable
by-gone period to retire, into out of this troublesome
modern world. Too comfortable perhaps — apparently a
bit enervating; for his books of verse and prose all ante-
date his retirement from office at the turn of the century.
Through the last twenty eventful years this poet has had
little to say.
A master-miniaturist? — perhaps not quite, because his
eighteenth-century portraits, ballads, dialogues are
scarcely the real thing after all, any more than the "period
rooms" which our master-decorators create today. They
were done with zest, but not with the eighteenth-century
faith — their fragile artificiality lacks the true DuBarry
bloom. A master of vers de soci'et'e? — possibly again not
quite, because the master, even in that genre, always
makes you believe, or at least suspect, that he is really
in love, or in joy, or in grief, in some wistful corner of his
gay but battered heart; whereas Dobson merely plays
with pretended emotions — he is always frankly in cos-
tume. And as is the way with masqueraders, he usually
makes too many bows and gestures, he slightly over-acts
the role.
The poems in French forms also — the ballades, villa-
nelles, rondeaux, though done with superlative deftness,
remain literary exercises.
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
Always in costume, did I say? Before Sedan is a poem
of simplicity and sincerity, with no superfluous words to
mar the sad little story. And in this briefer poem, The
Cradle ', there is a quietly restrained feeling:
How steadfastly she'd worked at it!
How lovingly had dressed
With all her would-be-mother's wit
That little rosy nest!
How longingly she'd hung on it! —
It sometimes seemed, she said,
There lay beneath its coverlet
A little sleeping head.
He came at last, the tiny guest,
Ere bleak December fled;
That rosy nest he never pressed —
Her coffin was his bed.
In the best of the gayer poems also one may find a
hint of feeling, a kind of artistic sincerity, as in an idyl by
Boucher or Fragonard; that is, behind the shepherdess
symbol is a certain wistfulness of dream. We all remem-
ber The Ladies of St. James — here is the first of its seven
stanzas :
The ladies of St. James's
Go swinging to the play;
Their footmen run before them,
With a "Stand by! Clear the way!"
But Phyllida, my Phyllida!
She takes her buckled shoon,
When we go out a-courting
Beneath the harvest moon.
This poem seems to me Dobson's high-water mark — I
[92]
From Queen Anne to George the Fifth
cannot find any other in his two volumes of quite so fine a
quality. The Ballad of Beau Brocade, Une Marquise, and
some of the Proverbs in Porcelain, are as lightly touched
off, but their artificiality is less skilfully disguised.
It is interesting to note how many of the muse's gayer
fashions of the last half-century were set by Dobson.
First, the old French forms, which soon became a fever, a
mania, until every magazine poet in two continents was
writing rondels and villanelles — a trick easily learned, and
tiresome unless turned off with the rarest grace. Then
the library fashion of bookish poems, including the
Horation fashion of light-winged tributes, imitations or
free translations in the manner of the Augustan bard —
fashions so effectively followed in Chicago by Eugene
Field and B. L. T. of happy memory, and still pursued,
often afar off, by every "colyumist" in the land. Indeed,
most of the journalist-poets would confess that they had
gone to school to Dobson, and that on the whole the
discipline had been salutary.
The name of another venerable English poet leaps to
one's mind by way of contrast — a poet also born in 1840,
and now still sturdy in his eighty-second year. Thomas
Hardy's mind, from youth to age, has looked forward,
never back. He lit his torch at truth's camp-fire, and he
has carried it ablaze toward the new age — no abyss or
peak of change could find him unready or afraid.
Hardy, in his youth a man of our time or beyond;
Dobson, in his old age a contemporary of Pope and Gay —
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
was there ever a sharper sting of difference ? The differ-
ence between a great soul and a little one, between a seer
and an entertainer. However, each in his own way has
been true to his vision. One may grant to each the
epitaph Dobson begged for himself—
Saying, "He held his pen in trust
To Art, not serving shame or lust."
But one must grant to Hardy also some more heroic
line. H. M.
REVIEWS
DRINKWATER AS POET AND PLAYWRIGHT
Pawns (four one-act plays), by John Drink water. Hough-
ton Mifflin Co.
Mary Stuart, by John Drinkwater. Houghton Mifflin Co.
Poems, by John Drinkwater. Houghton Mifflin Co.
Does Mr. Drinkwater, poet, use his prose material for
his plays ? Is it not the duty of a poet to continue being a
poet in the theatre? Mr. Drinkwater should suspend
business temporarily, take an inventory, and separate his
art material from his merchandise. Strong speeches,
prompted by fearless thinking, project themselves through
the mass of his work, but they are in great danger of being
engulfed in heavy waves of conventional mediocrity.
Indeed, the proportion of poor stuff is so great that one
becomes prejudiced against the whole unless one reads
carefully.
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Drinkwater as Poet and Playwright
In Pawns, a volume of one-act plays, The Storm de-
mands some consideration because of its theme and a
small section of its dialogue. It is reminiscent of Synge's
Riders to the Sea, and of course it suffers by comparison.
However, in this bit of the opening dialogue he has caught
the quality and rhythm of the Irishman, and it leads one
to believe that Mr. Drinkwater could write if he would
orientate himself:
Alice. I have prayed these hours, and now I'm tired of it.
He is caught in some grip of the rock, and crying out,
And crying, and crying; and none can hear him cry
Because of this great beastliness of noise.
Sarah. Past crying now, I think.
Joan. There, take no heed
Of what she says — it's a rusty mind she has,
Being old, and wizened with bad luck on the hills.
But he fails to sustain this simplicity of speech and the
atmosphere of the storm, or to develop the tragic theme
with power. The speeches drag out archaically. The
Stranger, one of the characters, states:
I was a dream,
A cold monotony suddenly thrust
Into a waking world of lusty change,
A wizened death elected from the waste
To strive and mate with eager lords of tumult.
Beauty was winged about me, darkling speed
Took pressure of earth and smote against my face;
I rode upon the front of heroic hours.
And through the remainder of the volume Mr. Drink-
water does not attempt to pull himself out of archaism.
In the other plays he adds rhyme, which doesn't help any.
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
The title The God of Quiet sounds like Lord Dunsany,
and it is possible that Lord Dunsany might have dis-
guised the triteness of the theme. The theme — the return
to quiet, to peace after war, the futility of war, the
ineffectual result of fighting, the planting of revenge
which instigates the eternal round of war, peace, war —
must antagonize the artist. Weak propaganda for peace is
a just cause for inciting belligerency, and this play is full
of it.
Old Beggar. It is the quiet mind that keeps
The tumults of the world in poise.
Soldier. It is the angry soul that sleeps
Where the world's folly is and noise;
King. For anger blunts us and destroys.
Citizen. We are little men to be so proud.
Young Beggar. We are fools: what was so long to build
We break.
With the padding and piling of long speeches on the
same theme, one feels that Mr. Drinkwater should have
followed the trail of his King:
You god of quiet, some day shall men have spent
All the wild humorous blood of argument.
A Night of the Trojan War is a tragic episode and a good
theme, but one is reminded of a better handling of it by
Henri Barbusse in one of his short stories. Cophetua^ the
last play in the volume, must have been written in the
author's salad days.
If one may continue to suggest other authors for the
handling of Mr. Drinkwater 's ideas, James Joyce would
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Drinkwater as Poet and Playwright
be a good bet to develop the theme in Mary Stuart. Not
that Mr. Drinkwater is incapable of handling it — the
following speeches lead one to believe in him. If such
speeches could grip him and control him to the end of a
play, we should have something to reckon with:
Mary. My love is crazed, a turbulence, without direction. It was
made to move in long deep assonance. I who should be love, may
but burn and burn with the love that I am not.
Mary. Darnley, Riccio, Bothwell — there's a theme for a great heart to
play! And there's so much to do. I have talent — as rare as any in
Europe. It should be my broad road — that and my love. And I
cannot use it, for my love is beaten up like dust, blinding me. To be
troubled always in desires — that's to be cursed, not wanton. Little
frustrations — and it should be the wide and ample movement of life.
Certain speeches have the depth and sweep of drama,
they have the flesh and blood of drama; but they should
be incorporated in another play.
The prologue is in modern dialogue, but without distinc-
tion; and it does not insinuate itself into the "dream."
The dream is lugged in on a dray. It fails to win you
with its spell because there is no magic. The modern
characters in the prologue argue a theme old in point
of time, but modern because it has yet to be developed
and established. As if afraid of its modernity, these
characters thrust it back into an old story with conven-
tional manners, dialogue, and wit. Whereas the vitality
of the theme could break old molds, and precipitate itself
without apology into a great, free, modern expression.
The play ends with the voices coming back out of the
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
"dream." This is handled effectively, it has the glamour
of hallucination; but Mary's spirit's answer to Hunter's
real question breaks the spell. It would be more dramatic
and in better taste to let the play end with Hunter's
"My God! — What's that?" and leave Mary's answer to
the imagination of the audience.
We seem to be passing through the phase of "sightless
thought" in the theatre — the gathering of material from
history, from industrial, psychological or sociological
problems, and making copybook sketches of life instead
of evoking the unseen through the magic of art. Because
the art-theatres are endeavoring to reserve the theatre for
works of the imagination, they are branded high-brow.
As a matter of truth, the recorders of facts, the chroniclers
of the literal, are the high-brows, the remote ones. As
Mr. Drinkwater says in his poem History , feeling, beauty,
fancy —
Such are the things remain
Quietly and forever in the brain,
And the things that they choose for history-making pass.
The book of poems opens with Reciprocity, which com-
mends itself to the reader's good-nature. It is pleasing,
and springs from feeling. The poem History beckons
with so pleasant a smile, and is really so charming, that
one trips gaily over the trite poems which follow, until
one receives a nasty bump in Reverie. After reading —
And only beautiful can be
Because of beauty is in me —
[98]
Drinkwater as Poet and Playwright
it is hard to press on. But if one is to be a critic one must
have the unflinching endurance of M. Jules Lemaitre —
"What if I were perchance doing my part in killing a
masterpiece!"
The book of poems has many pages. We have a large
group in the folk-song manner, two sonnets (we swing
into their familiar melody with indifference), a group of
love-poems tempered with pastoral coolness — songs fash-
ioned circumspectly without unchaperoned passions.
The long poem, The Fires of God, goes the way of too
many long poems — limping, strutting and striding.
Seven-league boots would compass the same journey in a
few powerful steps. However, the ambling in Travel Talk
is pleasant and restful, as ambling in relaxed moods
always is. And The Carver in Stone, another too long
poem, has beauty and an insinuating subtlety in its
development. The Building is full of nice suggestions, and
significant repetitions which give heft to its balance and
harmony.
Mr. Drinkwater, in both his plays and his poems, has
many moments of clear thinking, but when he summons
his naked truth and meets it face to face one feels that he
is inadequate. However, some of his thought digs so
deep, and has such power that one hopes sincerely that
his prayer will be answered —
Give us to build, above the deep intent,
The deed.
Laura Sherry
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
OF DREAMS AND STITCHES
Curtains^ by Hazel Hall. John Lane Co.
Comes Hazel Hall with her little book, every word and
emotion of which is poignantly authentic. The usual first
book of verse is conglomerate, and leaves its reader with
the confused sense of having listened outside the tower of
Babel. But this is the crystallization of a personality-
one emerges from it as though one had sat opposite the
woman sewing in her little room, plying her needle or
stopping to thread it, and talking in a voice at once sad
and indomitable.
Her judgment of the world is keen and impartial. She
knows it by its footfalls. The step tells more than the
chiselled expressionless face:
They pass so close, the people on the street!
Philosophy comes in through the open window. Inevi-
tably,
Only one sound drifts up to me,
The blend of every tread in one,
Impersonal as the beat of the sea.
Often the poet's strength suggests itself even more in
rhythm than in word, as in the three lines quoted above,
and again:
The beat of life is wearing me
To an incomplete oblivion,
Yet not to the certain dignity
Of death.
In Curtains > which is Part I of the little book, a certain
wistfulness pervades, something compounded half of sad-
[100]
Of Dreams and Stitches
ness and half of hope. She is never bitter — even from
Defeat she wrenches power:
Time's soft fingers gently close
Over my outstretched hand, and in
Their certain touch I feel repose.
In Part II: Needlework her touch is even surer, even
more deft. I know nothing more definitely and delicately
of woman than this handful of pages.
Every poem in the little volume is quotable. We have
selected The Long Dayy one of the less familiar, for beauty
of form as well as for its representativeness:
I am sewing out my sorrow,
Like a thread, wearing it thin;
It will be old and frayed tomorrow.
Needle, turn out; needle, turn in.
Sorrow's thread is a long thread.
Needle, one stitch; needle, two.
And sorrow's thread is a strong thread,
But I will wear it through.
Then not only will sorrow
Be old and thin and frayed;
But I shall have tomorrow
Something sorrow has made.
There is something in these poems as personal as the
warm and vibrantly sympathetic touch of a hand. The
poet has given of herself with generosity, and she leaves
one with the sense of being near and intimate. More as a
confidant than as some strange reader, one listens with
wonder to her fragile fancies, so musically given forth, and
weeps at her isolation. Pearl Andelson
[wi]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
CORRESPONDENCE
POET AND COMPOSER AS ALLIES
Dear Miss Monroe: As a writer of both music and verse,
your discussion of Poetry and the Allied Arts in the October
issue of your magazine has an especial interest for me.
You quote Mr. Case as to the difficulty of arranging a
program of American songs possessing sufficient variety of
mood and treatment. I believe one reason for this, in the
case of the individual composer, is that a publisher be-
comes accustomed to a certain style from a certain musi-
cian, and when the musician changes his idiom the pub-
lisher waggles a disapproving head. It is difficult to
break away from old patterns and be received as the
weaver of new, and often one's best work is a long time
finding itself in print.
One of the reasons operating against poet and musician
combining more freely is the scant recognition, even
obliteration, often accorded the poet-member of the
partnership. I am moved to a comment not pleasant to
make, concerning as it does my own kinsmen. Obser-
vation has forced the conclusion that many musicians are
a somewhat insular folk; or should one say indifferent?
Surely not ignorant — at any rate, something that begins
with I. They are apt to have a kind of unilateral art-
sense, a squint-view, as it were, at creative .expression, a
proneness to feel not only that music's the thing, but the
whole thing. It is a not uncommon experience to -see the
[102]
Poet and Composer as Allies
text of a long work printed in a program headed by the
name of the artist who has set it to music, the poet's name
appearing not at all. Time and again song-poems are
anonymously printed, singly and in groups, in the original
or in translation; and the reader is left to infer — if he
give it a thought — that the words had "jes* growed."
There is small doubt that the verse yoked to music is
often, one may say usually, of negligible inspiration; but
if it be given the dignity of program-printing, certainly
the authorship should be acknowledged. I look forward
to the time when the poet, in his association with music
will be considered worthy of his hire, be that hire nothing
more than recognition of authorship; to the time when all
programs shall print, between the title of a song and the
name of its composer, the bracketed name of the poet; and
when all music critics, not merely the distinguished few,
know something of the fellow-arts as well as of music.
Music-publishers have done much to accent the value
of the text by giving it separate printing in song publica-
tions. William Arms Fisher, a composer of songs and the
editor of an eastern music house, takes the broad view that
in a song the words are of chief import.
The creative publisher of sweeping vision and the will to
dramatize those visions, can do much toward bringing to-
gether poet and musician and all allied artists. My
collaboration with Henry Hadley in the writing of an
oratorio, Resurgam,- to which you referred, was originally
due to the initiative of Mr. Fisher. He asked me for the
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
text for a cantata, and, following his usual method of pre-
senting his wishes infectiously and with a large measure of
faith, launched the undertaking almost coincidentally
with the reading of the letter. When the text was finished
he invited Mr. Hadley to make the music. Thus was a
happy unity established: music, poetry, opportunity — for
certainly the editor or publisher stands for opportunity.
After the production of the cantata and one other piece,
Mr. Hadley wrote proposing that we do an oratorio to-
gether. He said he had "always wished to express in
music the sombre passing of mortal life and the glory of
immortality.'* Upon completion of the text I urged him
to make suggestions, and while he was at work on the third
section he asked for the interpolation of a contrasting
mood. Certainly the text was improved by the suggested
addition. I was kept in touch with the music from time
to time, being told for what voices in solo, chorus, etc.,
the various parts of the poem were scored.
There is no question in my mind that co-labor between
artists increases the joy which should be the well-spring,
and not a by-product, of art-creation.
Louise Ayres Garnett
REACTIONARY COMPOSERS
Dear Editor: It has occurred to me many times, and
with even greater force since reading your Comment in
October's POETRY, that the present unalliance in America
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Reactionary Composers
between modern poetry and modern music is primarily
due to the complacency of the reactionaries of the musical
world. By this I mean not only the reactionaries among
the composers and critics, but those in the audiences
themselves, who insist, consciously or unconsciously,
that our operatic, song and orchestral compositions
should remain more than a little antiquated, scented
with lavender, while the contemporary arts are keeping
pace with the complexities of civilization.
I am aware that the thought which must be uppermost
in the convictions of the conservative-minded person is
that a torrent has swept into modern art, literature,
poetry, sculpture, and even into the drama; something
a little ribald, lacking in dignity and beauty as he has
known it. And it is perfectly proper, doubtless, for
those who are so inclined to hold back a bit before plung-
ing into the swirl of this new movement. There is,
of course, always the possibility that each apparent step
forward is in reality merely a mood which has taken
possession of the reasoning faculties among the free
spirits of the generation, and which will prove in time
to be just a slight stumble, possibly in the right direction,
occurring before the next legitimate step of progress is
finally achieved.
On the other hand, it is quite as true that unless there
is a tendency in the arts to reflect the spirit of the age —
unless they are vividly interpretive, it is evident that
they are without constructive value.
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
From this hypothesis let X equal progress plus logical
development, and behold we have those who would solve
the problem! Sherwood Anderson is the forerunner of
one group, Amy Lowell of another; then there are the
followers of Picasso and Brancusi, of Maurice Browne,
and countless others. Whether or not they gain a foot-
hold is as much our concern as theirs, for they are our-
selves, our explanation, the story which the future
generations shall read of us. And meanwhile music
stands like a Boston bas-bleu, her skirt a little shortened
because of the influence of Korsakov and Dvorak, but
still wearing her New England rubbers.
This, perhaps, is the explanation of the answer I have
so often received in talking with American song-writers.
I have asked them why they do not set such and such a
poem to music, and the inevitable answer is given to me:
"It isn't adaptable." Adaptable to what? Certainly
not adaptable to the music of fifty or twenty-five years
ago; no, even not adaptable to the song-music that we
loved last year. It must be something so splendidly
new that modern music will be able to touch the out-
stretched hand of modern poetry. Kay Boyle
Note by the editor: A word of encouragement comes to us from an
enthusiast who has worked for years toward a closer alliance between
American poetry and music — Eleanor Everest Freer, a Chicago com-
poser who has used effectively many fine modern poems as the text for
songs. Mrs. Freer has urged especially that operas and concert numbers
should be sung in the English language and has inaugurated the Opera-
in-our-language Foundation to that end.
[106]
ANNOUNCEMENT OF AWARDS
For the ninth time the editors and advisory committee
of POETRY face the agreeable but difficult duty of awarding
our annual prizes. Nine years ago prizes in this art were
practically unheard-of in America, although many annual
prizes and scholarships in painting, sculpture, architecture
and music had been liberally endowed in perpetuity-
awards now ranging in value from one hundred dollars to
two thousand or more, even to the richest of all, the three-
year scholarship of the American Academy in Rome,
which carries studio, board and lodging, and a liberal
income.
From the beginning we have believed in such awards,
as both a stimulus to artists and a kind of advertisement
to the public; and have argued that they are as well
deserved, and as effective for these purposes, in poetry as
in the other arts. We rejoice that the tide is beginning to
turn, and hope that it may prove strong and high. The
Dial's announcement of an annual purse of two thousand
dollars to be given to some one of its contributors is not
aimed at poets exclusively, but poets at least have a
chance at it; and the five hundred dollars, with which the
Poetry Society of America has of late annually crowned
some book of American verse, has an air of permanency
although not yet permanently endowed.
In his letter Concerning Awards in our September
number, Mr. Aldis asked the following question, which
[107]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
the editor promised to answer, or at least discuss, in
November:
Could you devise and suggest some plan by which prizes would not
be awarded for an individual poem, but based on broader considerations
of personal production and talent, youth and need?
In reply we would suggest that magazine editors and
other publishers of verse are usually so well informed as
to the "talent, youth and need" of their younger contrib-
utors that they would have no difficulty in awarding on
that basis as many scholarships or "encouragement
prizes" as they might be entrusted with. Every year
POETRY has observed this rule in awarding its young
poet's prize, always wishing it had eight or ten such
prizes, instead of one, wherewith to aid a little with honor
and money a few young poets on their stern and rock-
bound path.
The difficulty is not here — it lies not in making the
award, but in getting the money for it. And patrons of
the arts are not wholly to blame for omitting poets from
such annual endowments, because this art has as yet few
permanent institutions to which people of wealth might
give or bequeath such a fund in trust. The Poetry Society
of America would accept such a trust with joy, but it is
too strongly localized in New York, and too academic in
its present tendencies, to inspire strong hope of its exercis-
ing a progressive influence. Still less confidence could be
felt in the National Institute of Arts and Letters, or its
sacred inner circle the Academy, whose leadership is so
[108]
Announcement of Awards
hopelessly old-fashioned that it has not yet recognized the
fellowship of women in the modern arts.
POETRY of course would rejoice to become the dispenser
or initiator of such a fund, and would engage to satisfy
any possible donor as to its disposition both during and
after the continuance of the magazine. Some trust
company of repute should be custodian, the interest to be
paid annually by direction of the committee of award.
In choosing this committee, the first rule should be that
none but poets, poets of recognized standing and au-
thority, should be eligible; and, second, this committee of
poets should be instructed that the original and experi-
mental work is to be honored rather than the conservative
and assured.
The first committee of award might be chosen by the
editor and donor, aided by such expert advice as they
might call in. This committee — say of three, or possibly
five poet-members, to be chosen from widely separated
localities — should be self-perpetuating, but under a time
restriction: that is, every three or five years one member
should drop out on the election of a new one.
Such a committee of award would not derive from
POETRY, and the possible discontinuance of the magazine
would not interrupt it in the least. However, if the donor
should happen to like POETRY and wish to endorse its
policy, its editor might become ex officio a member of the
committee.
Another method of selecting a committee of award was
[109]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
suggested by a lawyer of my acquaintance. Let the
presidents of three widely separated institutions — say, the
Universities of California and Illinois, and the Poetry
Society of America; or Harvard, the University of Chicago,
and the Poetry Society of South Carolina; or any other
representative three — let such a group of colleges or
societies be requested each year by the custodian of the
fund (the trust company) to appoint each a member of
the committee of awards, such committee-member to be a
poet of high repute, one not a member of their faculty or
board of officers. And let this committee bestow the
award.
Either of these methods would seem to promise as much
progressiveness and fluidity, and freedom from local
prejudice, as any artistic endowment in perpetuity can be.
It would be for the donor to decide whether his gift or
bequest should be used for scholarships — that is, student
awards to young poets; or for awards of honor, so to speak,
to poets who have done high service in the art. If the
award should be generously large, the honor would become
correspondingly conspicuous, and this fact would be a
strong influence toward the worthy disposal of it, as in
the case of the Nobel Prize.
We strongly hope that some man or woman of sufficient
wealth may be moved to follow this suggestion — someone
who would like to turn out of the beaten paths with his
gift or bequest, and do something original and construc-
tive and inspiring.
[no]
Announcement of Awards
With this rather long preliminary, we now proceed to
award POETRY'S three prizes for poems printed in its pages
during its ninth year — October 1920 to September 1921.
As usual, poems by members of the jury are withdrawn
from competition — in this case That Year, by Marion
Strobel, a group of seven poems in the February number;
and Eunice Tietjens' translations, from the French of
Antonin Proust, of Modern Greek Popular Songs, printed in
November of last year. Indeed, no translations are con-
sidered for prizes.
We are enabled once more, through the liberality of
Mrs. Edgar Speyer, of New York, to award the "young
poet's prize," which for the past four years has been
given, "as a mark of distinction and encouragement, to
the young poet, comparatively unknown as yet, who, in
the opinion of the jury, most deserves and needs the
stimulus of such an award."
Hoping that our contributors and readers will grant to
the members of the jury honesty of judgment, and will not
demand infallibility, we now announce the awards:
The HELEN HAIRE LEVINSON PRIZE 'of two hundred
dollars, for a poem or group of poems by a citizen of the
United States, is awarded to
LEW SARETT
of Evanston, Illinois, for his poem, The Box of Gody pub-
lished in the April number.
This prize was founded in 1913 by Mr. Salmon O.
[mi
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
Levinson of Chicago. Previous awards have been as
follows :
1914 — Carl Sandburg, for Chicago Poems.
1915 — Vachel Lindsay, for The Chinese Nightingale.
1916 — Edgar Lee Masters, for All Life in a Life.
1917 — Cloyd Head, for Grotesques.
1918 — J. C. Underwood, for The Song of the Cheechas.
1919 — H. L. Davis, for Primapara.
1920 — Wallace Stevens, for Pecksniffiana.
The prize of one hundred dollars, offered by an anony-
mous guarantor for a poem, or group of poems, without
distinction of nationality, is awarded to
FORD MADOX HUEFFER
of London, England, for his poem, A House, published in
the March number.
This prize, or other prizes similar in intent, have been
previously awarded as follows:
1913 — Vachel Lindsay, for General William Eooth Enters
into Heaven.
1915 — Constance Lindsay Skinner, for Songs of the
Coast-dwellers .
1915— "H. D.," for Poems.
1916 — John Gould Fletcher, for Arizona Poems.
1917 — Robert Frost, for Snow.
1918 — Ajan Syrian, for From the Near East.
1919 — Marjorie Allen Seiffert, for The Old Woman.
1920 — Edna St. Vincent Millay, for The Beanstalk.
[112]
Announcement of Awards
The prize of one hundred dollars, offered by Mrs.
Edgar Speyer, under conditions noted above, for good
work by a young poet, is awarded to
HAZEL HALL
of Portland, Oregon, for her group of seven poems,
Repetitions, published in the May number.
Six other special prizes, usually of one hundred dollars
each, have been previously awarded: to Louise Driscoll,
for Metal Checks, as the best poem of the war received in
competition and printed in our War Number of Novem-
ber, 1914; to Wallace Stevens, for Three Travellers Watch
a Sunrise, adjudged the best one-act poetic play received
in a prize contest — July, 1916; and four times to young
poets, viz. :
1916— Muna Lee, for Foot-notes— HI, IV, VII.
1918 — Emanuel Carnevali, for The Splendid Common-
place.
1919 — Mark Turbyfill, for poems of 1917-18-19.
1920 — Maurice Lesemann, for A Man Walks in the
Wind.
Besides the above three awards, the following poems
receive honorable mention:
Boys and Girls, and The Way Things Go, by Genevieve
Taggard (June and February).
Down the Mississippi, by John Gould Fletcher (October,
1920).
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
A Hymn J or the Lynchers, by Isidor Schneider (October,
1920).
Gallery of Paintings, by Marjorie Allen Seiffert (July).
Swift's Pastoral, by Padraic Colum (January).
Under the Tree, by Elizabeth Madox Roberts (July).
The Heart Knoweth its own Bitterness, by Aline Kilmer
(May).
Poems, by Yvor Winters (December).
A Song for Vanished Beauty, and An Old Tale, by Marya
Zaturensky (September).
Sappho Answers Aristotle, by Maxwell Bodenheim (May).
Twenty-four Hokku on a Modern Theme, by Amy Lowell
(June).
Tanka, by Jun Fujita (June).
In Maine, by Wallace Gould (November).
Still Colors, by Elinor Wylie (April).
Advent, and The Cornfield, by Charles R. Murphy (August,
and October 1920).
Cape Helles, by Morris Gilbert (June).
Without Sleep, and The Poet at Nightfall, by Glenway
Wescott (September).
Communion, by Hildegarde Planner (February).
(The editor regrets that the extreme length of the
poems by Mr. Sarett and Mr. Hueffer makes it impossible
for us to reprint the prize poems of this year. We must
refer our readers to our April, March and May numbers.)
OUR CONTEMPORARIES
A NEW "YOUTH"
We welcome the advent of a new monthly — Youth: A
Magazine of the Arts — and wish it high inspiration and
long life. The editors are H. C. Auer, Jr., and Sam
Putnam, the business manager is Henry Drews, and the
place of publication is 70 East Elm Street, Chicago. The
first number, October, which appears as we go to press,
contains prose and verse by Ben Hecht, Elsa Gidlow,
Emanuel Carnevali, John McClure, Pierre Loving, Henry
Bellamann, Jun Fujita, Oscar Williams and others; and
pictures by Wallace Smith, Steen Hinrichsen and Fred-
erick Dalrymple. The list of contributors, present and
future, looks promising, and the size and format are con-
venient and in good taste.
NOTES
Mr. Edwin Curran, who is a telegrapher in Zanesville, Ohio, has
published privately two small books of verse, First Poems and Second
Poems, since his first appearance in POETRY in March, 1918. In spite
of their modest backing and poor typography, these have attracted a
good deal of notice from critics of authority.
Agnes Lee (Mrs. Otto Freer), of Chicago, is the author of several
books of verse, the latest being The Sharing (Sherman, French & Co.)
Jean Starr Untermeyer, (Mrs. Louis U.), is the author of Growing
Pains, published in 1918 by B. W. Huebsch; and a new book of later
poems will soon appear.
Florence Wilkinson (Mrs. Wilfred Muir Evans), of New York, is
the author of The Ride Home (Houghton Mifflin Co.), and of a number
of novels and plays.
[115]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
Mr. Henry Bellamann, who is at the head of a music school in Colum-
bia, S. C., has written verse and prose for the special magazines and
music journals. His first book of verse, A Music-Teacher s Note-book,
was issued in 1920 by the Lyric Society.
Miss Kate Buss, of New York, is the author ofjevons Block (McGrath-
Sherrill Press, Boston).
Mr. John R. C. Peyton is a young poet of Chicago.
The other poets of this number are new to our readers.
Miss Dorothy Butts, a native of San Francisco, but now resident in
New York, graduated last June from Smith College.
Kathryn White Ryan (Mrs. Edward Ryan), went to New York from
Denver two years ago, and has since published a few poems and prose
sketches in some of the magazines.
Miss Jessica North, who is the private secretary of President Judson
of the University of Chicago, has also published poems in magazines.
Miss Anita Grannis, of New York, divides her time "between the
University of New York and Richmond Hill House, an East Side settle-
ment in the congested Italian colony."
BOOKS RECEIVED
ORIGINAL VERSE:
Out of Misty by Florence Kilpatrick Mixter. Boni & Liveright.
The Golden Darkness, by Oscar Williams. (The Yale Series of Younger
Poets.) Yale University Press.
Selected Poems, by Yone Noguchi. Four Seas Co.
Rhymes and Ramblings, by H. W. Stewart. Alexander McCubbin,
Melbourne, Australia.
Mexican Moonlight, by Russell Meriwether Hughes. Richard G.
Badger.
New England Days, by Hellyn George. Four Seas Co.
Songs for Parents, by John Farrar. Yale University Press.
Yuletide and You, by Henry E. Harman. Stone Publishing Co., Char-
lotte, N. C.
ANTHOLOGIES:
Irish Poets of Today, compiled by L. D'O. Walters. E. P. Dutton & Co.
New Voices (New Edition, Revised and with New Material}, by Marguerite
Wilkinson. Macmillan Co.
[116]
Mr. Ford Madox Hueffer, the distinguished English poet, novelist and critic, wrote \ ' :>
us last July:
If American periodical literature has today a little peak, a little group of
journals, raising it to the level of the best of European cosmopolitanism, or at any
rate in that direction, it is because you and your small paper showed how, editor-
ially and economically, it could be done.
Vol. XIX No. Ill
POETRY for DECEMBER, 1921
PAGE
Resurgam Louise Ayres Garnett 117
I: Birth— II: Life— III: Death— IV: Re-birth
The Hostage Walter de la Mare 124
Supernal Dialogue Harriet Monroe 125
Two Negro Spirituals Fenton Johnson 128
A Dream — The Wonderful Morning
Handful of Ashes Dorothy Dow 130
The Captive — Waiting — Futility — Bound
From a Bay-window Pearl Andelson 133
Autumn Rain — Steeples — Portrait of an Old Lady — To a
Dead Love — To Felix — April Snow — Solace — Beach Song —
Song on Death — Out of a Cavalcade of Dust
Grey Crust Laurence Vail 136
Two Poems Henry Saul Zolinsky 137
Will Power— Pain
Arpeggio Winifred Waldron 138
Semper Eadem Paul Tanaquil 138
Neuriade Emanuel Carnevali 139
Lake — Sleep — Aubade — Encounter — Sermon — Hope —
Insomnia — Smoke — Funeral March — Italian Song — Old
Accustomed Impudent Ghost — Invocation to Death
Renewal of Youth H. M. 146
Alexander Blok Glenway Wescott 149
Reviews:
A Flourish of Trumpets Marion Strobel 151
Fletcherian Colors Laura Sherry 155
Minor Chords Isidor Schneider 158
Post-martial Emotion Baker Browne!! 162
Color Sonatas Nelson Antrim Crawford 165
The Prematurity of Immaturity . . . . Isidor Schneider 167
Correspondence :
The Allied Arts Again I Charles Albert Case 169
The Allied Arts Again II Bertha Wardell 171
Notes and Books Received 173, 174
Manuscripts must be accompanied by a stamped and self-addressed envelope.
Inclusive yearly subscription rates. In the United States, Mexico, Cuba and
American possessions, $3.00 net; in Canada, $3.15 net; in all other countries in the
Postal Union, $3.25 net. Entered as second-class matter Nov. 15, 1921, at the
post-office, at Chicago, 111., under Act of March 3, 1879.
Published monthly at 543 Cass St., Chicago, 111.
Copright 1921, by Harriet Monroe. All rights reserved.
VOL. XIX
No. Ill
A Magazine of \fersc
DECEMBER 1921
RESURGAM*
I! BIRTH
OUT of the dust Thou hast raised me, God of the
living;
Out of the dust Thou hast raised me and brought me to
the light of morning.
My eyes are full of the wonders of creation,
And my spirit leaps within me.
I behold Thy glory lifted into mountains,
Thy kindness deepened into valleys,
Thy hospitable mercies poured unmeasured in the seas.
In plenteous ways Thou hast devised the telling of Thy
dreams,
Entreating beauty from the clay,
And quickening man from out his dusty silence.
^Copyright, 1921, by Louise Ayres Garnett. All rights reserved.
[117]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
Thou floatest flakes of color in the air, and, breathing on
them,
Wingest them to life;
Thou callest the dazed leviathan up from the watery
reaches,
And summonest vasty creatures who come lumbering past,
Astonished at their being.
Who am I, Lord of Creation, that Thou shouldst think
upon me?
Beside a mountain or a soaring bird, what am I that Thou
shouldst give me place?
I can praise Thee, O God !
I can praise Thee to the summit of my singing;
With the flesh of me, with the breath of me, with the
height of me !
Increase my stature even as the trees,
Increase my stature till I pass the oak and glimpse the
towers of heaven !
With the waters of gratitude I brim my cup and pour it
at Thy feet;
For thou hast shared the gift of life, and my spirit sings
within me!
n: LIFE
Into the noon of labor I go forth that I may reap my
destiny.
[118]
Louise Ayres Garnett
Sorrow is my lot, and labor my achievement,
The beauty of God's handiwork my compensation.
Something within me springs like a fountain and urges me
to joy;
Sorrow is as beauty and labor as reward.
Thou art become a greater God, O God, because of my
endeavor.
Listen through my ears, Thou of my singing sanctuary,
Listen through my ears that I hear Thy silent music;
Look through my eyes that I vision the unseen;
Speak through my lips that I utter words of gladness.
Walk Thou with me, work Thou through me, rest Thou
in me,
That I may make Thee manifest in all my ways.
I will praise Thee, praise Thee with the labor of my hands
And with the bounty of my spirit!
m: DEATH
Into the valley land my feet descend, and man may not
go with me;
But Thou, O God, companion me in love that I be un-
afraid.
The dream of death has flowered in my soul and sounds of
earth fall dimly on my ears.
Slowly the sun goes westering in the hills, and the crimson
pageant of my passing hour
[119]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
Flames in their deeps and moves across the sky.
Something within me reaches back to birth and fills me
with exulting.
As the waters of a river, sweep the wonders of creation
through my being,
And life and death are so inseparate I know not each from
each.
And yet a mighty fearing falls upon me.
Shadows descend and blur the crimson hills.
A wind flung from a womb of ice
Blows from the shores of nothingness.
The shadows shed their shoes of stealth;
They run in naked swiftness from the hills
Calling the hosts of darkness.
The winds sing a song of fury,
The winds arise and shout their passion down the world.
Drained in a pitiless draught
Are the splendors of the skies.
Towers of cypress touch the heights;
Even in a battlement of gloom
The towers of cypress overwhelm the heavens.
My peace is perished,
My dreams are fallen from me.
Into the night no planet speeds its glory;
The stars are drowned.
Lonely the hulk of a broken moon
Lifts its bloody sail.
[120]
Louise Ayres Garnett
Merged into rushing torrents are the shadows and the
winds;
The shadows and the winds plunge high upon the shore
And swallow all the world.
Why hast Thou hidden Thyself, O God?
Why hast Thou turned Thy face aside
And burdened me with night?
Where is my dream of death,
And where its sanctuary?
The heat of hell assails me;
I am consumed in bitterness and pain.
Reveal Thyself, O unforgetting Spirit!
Reveal Thyself that I may be enshrined
In the beauty of Thy presence.
Drive forth this mocking counterfeit of Death,
For it is Thou who art my Death, O living God,
It is Thou who art my Death, and only Thou!
My fearing passes from me:
As a heavy mantle falling from tired shoulders,
My fearing slips away.
Candles are set at my feet that I be not lost forever.
Thou hast heard my cry, O Great Bestower !
Thou hast heard my cry, Thou hast lifted me up,
Thou hast delivered me!
Now does the hush of night lie purple on the hills.
The moon walks softly in a trance of sleep;
[121]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
Her whiteness cools the passion of the skies.
I hang my quiet lute upon her curve
And let the night winds chant my requiem.
Waters of peace arise and drift me down the spaciousness
of silence and of sleep;
God lights H s solemn watch-fires overhead to keep the
vigil of man's mystery.
In the triumph of surrender I take Thy gift of sleep.
Lean low, Thou Shepherd of my dreams; lean low to meet
me as I lift on high
The chalice of my dying.
iv: RE-BIRTH
I feel my spirit stir and half awake,
Then look in bright bewilderment at dawn.
O waking past all dreaming!
0 Love Imperious that hast called me forth from out my
valley's shadow!
A mighty whirlwind, breath of the living God,
Sweeps from beyond the barricades of night, and, stooping
low,
Lifts me. from out my dust and sets me free.
1 feel the Power that moors me to Itself;
That keeps the rhythmic pattern of the stars;
That spins, like a fiery plaything in the air,
[122]
Louise Ayres Garnett
The earth that was my home.
My hour is great with leisure;
My day is manifest.
O clamorous world! — thy wasting fires
Have burned themselves to ashes.
0 foolish pomp! — thy futile stride
As an image in a glass has passed away.
Time's mystery and menace are resolved:
The Now of Man is God's Forevermore.
My heart is as a forest treed with wonder.
The cymbals of my joyance make a stirring sound,
My singing shakes the day.
1 know myself at last:
Thou, glorious One, hast revealed me to myself.
As new-born planets sang in ecstasy,
So sing the voices of my thankfulness.
I praise Thee!
I glorify Thee!
Thou art the Singer, man Thy Song;
My spirit on its summit shouts Thy name!
0 Singer, Who hast sent me forth,
1 am returned to Thee!
Louise Ayres Garnett
[123]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
THE HOSTAGE
In dead of dark to his starry North
Saint Nicholas drew near —
He had ranged the world this wintry night,
His elk-bells jangling clear.
Now bitter-worn with age was he,
And weary of mankind, for few
Had shown him love or courtesy.
His sacks lay empty — all save one;
And this to his affright
Stirred as he stooped with fingers numb,
Ablaze with hoar-frost bright.
Aghast he stood. Showed fumbling thumb,
Small shoulder, a wing — what stowaway
Was this, and whence was 't come?
And out there crept a lovely Thing —
Half angel and half child:
"I, youngest of all Heaven, am here, to be thy joy," he
smiled.
"O Nicholas, our Master Christ thy grief hath seen;
and He
Hath bidden me come to keep His tryst, and bring His
love to thee:
To serve thee well, and sing Nowell, and thine own son
to be."
Walter de la Mare
[124]
SUPERNAL DIALOGUE
Two beings
Stood on the edge of things —
Their breath was space >
And their eyes were suns.
I It was this way he passed —
I know the sound.
// More worlds —
He can not forbear —
I Look down this lane —
It was dark till he passed.
Do you see — anything?
// Seeds of light — glowing, whirling —
A handful.
/ Separating now.
// Fierce fire-balls —
So many — so many. Will he get what he wants —
The perfect flower?
/ Flower of delight — to bloom beside his throne ?
Sometime he will.
{A pause}
I Look — that little one —
Burning, aching —
Trailing its tiny orbs —
[125]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
II Which one?
7 See — scarlet — oh, alive!
Deep in that right-hand cluster near the dark.
// With tiny trailers — will it be one of them?
That clouded one, maybe?
/ Look — it foams down.
The clouds lift-
There are seas —
II Lands — a creeping green —
Sounds of air moving.
/ Hush — oh, whisper! — do you see
Dark specks that crawl?
And wings that flash in the air?
// Spawn — immeasurably minute.
What does he mean, the fecund one, creating without
reason or mercy?
/ He must — life is his song.
He dreams — he wills.
// Watch now — they change, those atoms.
They stand on end — they lay stone on stone —
They go clad — they utter words.
/ Proud — they take their spoil.
Kings — and slaves.
Harriet Monroe
II Oh queer — ingenious ! They gather in towns,
They filch our fires to carry them over land and sea.
/ They measure the stars — they love — they dream.
// But war — pain — obliterative war and pain.
/ So brief — each one a tiny puff — and out.
// Grotesque !
/ A few look up — salute us before they fall.
A few dare face him.
// Is it enough?
{A pause}
I It cools down — their whirling world.
It is silent — cold.
// Has he lost again? Can he fail?
/ Who are we to question? Though he fail again and
again—
// Yes, who are we?
/ He must go on — he must get the flower.
Two beings
Stood on the edge of things —
Their breath was space,
And their eyes were suns.
Harriet Monroe
[127]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
TWO NEGRO SPIRITUALS
A DREAM
I had a dream last night, a wonderful dream.
I saw an angel riding in a chariot —
Oh, my honey, it was a lovely chariot,
Shining like the sun when noon is on the earth.
I saw his wings spreading from moon to earth;
I saw a crown of stars upon his forehead;
I saw his robes agleaming like his chariot.
I bowed my head and let the angel pass,
Because no man can look on Glory's work;
I bowed my head and trembled in my limbs,
Because I stood on ground of holiness.
I heard the angel in the chariot singing:
"Hallelujah early in the morning!
I know my Redeemer liveth —
How is it with your soul?"
I stood on ground of holiness and bowed;
The River Jordan flowed past my feet
As the angel soothed my soul with song,
A song of wonderful sweetness.
I stooped and washed my soul in Jordan's stream
Ere my Redeemer came to take me home;
I stooped and washed my soul in waters pure
As the breathing of a new-born child
Fenton Johnson
Lying on a mammy's breast at night.
I looked and saw the angel descending
And a crown of stars was in his hand:
"Be ye not amazed, good friend," he said,
"I bring a diadem of righteousness,
A covenant from the Lord of life,
That in the morning you will see
Eternal streets of gold and pearl aglow
And be with me in blessed Paradise."
The vision faded. I awoke and heard
A mocking-bird upon my window-sill.
THE WONDERFUL MORNING
When it is morning in the cornfield
I am to go and meet my Jesus
Riding on His white horse.
When it is morning in the cornfield
I am to be there in my glory.
Shout, my brethren ! Shout, my sisters !
I am to meet the King of Morning
Way down in the cornfield.
Fenton Johnson
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HANDFUL OF ASHES
THE CAPTIVE
Beauty that shakes in lights,
Beauty that gleams in mists,
Loveliness of still nights,
Gold of the stars that twists,
Ribbon-like, into the sea .
Beauty is calling me.
Delicate crimson flames,
Jewels with long histories,
Mysterious oft-said names,
Blossoms beneath great trees,
Melodies deep and low,
Call me. I can not go.
Heliotrope, jasmine, rose;
Lovers, at crumbling gates;
Silence, when eyelids close;
Cliffs, where the sea-bird mates
Beauty holds these for me
Whose eyes are too blind to see.
Beauty, when sunbeams blur,
Calls me again and again.
I can not answer her.
Beauty shall call me in vain,
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Dorothy Dow
Sadly, from year to year . . ,
Passion has chained me here.
WAITING
If you should walk in the park and not find me,
Or go in the market-place and not see me,
Would you not search further?
Does not your heart tell you I am somewhere?
Go out on the long roads — I may be at the end of one.
The sea to the ship,
The river to the little boat,
The cloud to the swallow —
One for the other, always.
And I, for you, forever.
FUTILITY
The nights grow long and the days cold —
I dream of you and love.
The dead leaf, falling from the tree,
Is not more sad than memory;
Nor is the rising wind as bold
As were your lips on me. . . .
(What are you thinking of?)
The streets and trees and people pass
Like words beneath my pen;
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Symbols, below a painted sky—
I have no part in them. I lie
Futile as footsteps on the grass.
Wind-torn, storm-drenched; I long to die.
(You might remember . . . then.)
BOUND
Take away the magic
You have put on me:
I am held by whispers —
I, who would be free.
I who would be free and false,
Why must I be true?
I fear to move, for hurting
The clinging thoughts of you.
So the sunny branches
Beckon me in vain:
I, beside the hearth-fire,
Huddle to my pain.
Dorothy Dow
FROM A BAY-WINDOW
My world is a pane of glass. These only
Of the shadowy without are mine:
They that pass;
The gray birds fluttering by;
The cloud that sometimes sails
Over the chimney-bitten sky.
When all else fails.
AUTUMN RAIN
To eyes hollow
With the gray distress
The passing swallow
Is all but a caress.
STEEPLES
They gaily pass
Within
Who would be freed (en masse}
Of sin.
PORTRAIT OF AN OLD LADY
Up flutters a hand to caress —
Midway in the prayer —
Her Sabbath dress,
The frail gray of her hair.
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TO A DEAD LOVE
Why, O love,
Shall I not sing,
Who above her child
Would plant a flowering thing?
TO FELIX
Clear as water pooled in a cup
I hear your thoughts
Through all the spaciousness of my unrest.
You have no place
For the white bird at my breast,
Or the face your hands lift up.
APRIL SNOW
Oh, your words are bitter to me
As these last flakes of snow are
To the little shining buds; but no bud
That glistens like a raindrop on a tree
Is so fresh with love.
SOLACE
Knock at my pane
With your finger-tips,
O rain.
[134]
Pearl Andelson
BEACH SONG
What are they weaving under the water?
They make sheer laces and drag them down.
They ruffle a lawn with a great grieving.
What are they making — what manner of gown ?
What are they weaving, caught here,
Caught there, on the thin-washed blue?
Who is to be married or who is to be buried,
Under the water, under the water?
SONG ON DEATH
Death comes inexorably. His pale deft hand
Is never still. Swift and impalpable
He comes, taking what he will. Life is a circle
Which has gone its round. He tarries
Where old women sit, peering at the ground.
OUT OF A CAVALCADE OF DUST
In such a white procession,
In such a guise,
The dead might return
With pantomime of lips and eyes.
Pearl Andelson
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GREY CRUST
I am weary, unto desire of death,
Of the thought fretting in my body,
Of the body wrapped round my thought.
They go —
The curious panting creatures I would be —
Along the grey crust of the street.
I would be fused into her —
Girl going whither I know not!
I would have her shrill eager breasts —
Gusts of storm driving the sail of her blouse;
Her round polished knees, rising, moving like pendulums-
Engines urging the sail of her skirt;
Her sharp bird-like head cleaving the sail of the wind.
I would have the curious blood of her,
I would have her dream.
I would be fused into him —
Child carried in the arms of a mother,
Child carried whither he knows not! —
I would have the gurgling mirth
Emanating from gay-colored baubles;
The shiver, the sweat and the nightmare
Emanating from dark wrangling shadows:
I would have his untinted history,
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Laurence Vail
And the hunger
To seize the whole world by the mouth.
I would be fused into anyone going new ways.
Laurence Vail
TWO POEMS
WILL POWER
I would rather grind my teeth to powder,
I would rather tread barefoot on thin, sharp stones,
I would rather let the blood of my veins freeze to red ice,
And the muscles of my legs stiffen to cold stone,
Than be drawn by the warm breath
Of transient things.
I would rather —
But ... yet ...
I am being drawn ... I am being drawn . . '.
PAIN
It is
The hush that falls
When screaming chords, drawn taut,
Break with a sudden snap! — and then
Recoil.
Henry Saul Zolinsky
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ARPEGGIO
September
The bamboo stalks quiver —
Only one sways toward the moon face.
October
Spider telegraph wires
Flash from oak to sage!
November
Blackbirds printed on the sky.
Quick! — erase them for another print!
December
Tumble-weeds rolling 'cross lots,
And tumble-weed clouds on the mountain !
Winifred Waldron
SEMPER EADEM
Cheeks that are sunk and ashen,
Eyes that weep in vain:
Always the same passion
In the same futile fashion,
And the same pain —
Forever begun again.
Paul Tanaquil
[138]
NEURIADE
LAKE
Sitting on a bench facing God's beautiful lake,
A poem to God beautiful.
Lake Michigan,
The love a poor sick body held
(Sifted by the sift of a hundred nights of pain),
A poor sick body gave it all to you.
Your absinthe
Has intoxicated me.
Having risen out of your waters,
In front of my great eyes now
There is a mad blur of sunlight,
And the City spread out before me calling from a great
curve :
"Come, enter, conquistador!"
The line of your horizon, pure and long, hitched to the
infinite both ways,
Where the mist lies like Peace.
Swimming, I flirted with Death;
Saw death running over the shadow-laced ripples;
And turned around, as you threw water in my eyes,
And laughed at Death, as Death's brother, the devil,
would.
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You slammed open the doors of the sky,
And there stood the tremendous sun.
Lake, gilded in the morning,
I have come out of you,
A fresh-water Neptune;
And the water rang little bells
Trickling down
Along my flesh.
Lake, garden of the colors,
Sweet-breathing mouth of Chicago,
Words die in the fingers of a sick man,
As children dying on a poor father.
Take my promise, lake.
SLEEP
At the bottom of the abyss of sleep
A black cradle rocks.
Pain, slight, with evanescent fingers
Pushes it.
Under the cradle is earth,
To cover and stifle you.
AUBADE
The morning now
Is a white corpse —
The nightmares
[140]
Emanuel Carnevali
Killed her.
Vainly the breeze
Wafts a terrible sadness
Over her body.
ENCOUNTER
Little grey lady sitting by the roadside in the cold,
My fire is to warm you, not to burn you up.
Little grey lady in your little grey house in the warmth,
Your warmth is to loosen my frozen arms and tongue,
Not to drowse me.
SERMON
Chao-Mong-Mu freely laid his hands over the sky:
You do not know how to lay your hands over the breasts
of your beloved.
Chao-Mong-Mu made the tree dance at his will:
You do not know how to hug a rough tree and say
"darling" to it.
Chao-Mong-Mu magnificently ran a shaft of sunlight to
smash against the treetops:
You walk carefully, carefully, and fend off the sunlight
with your grey clothes, although you're very poor.
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Chao-Mong-Mu painted a sky that was a pink-fleshed
vase; then he became a very small thing and hid in
the vase :
You build yourselves immense houses to live in, and you
are afraid even there.
HOPE
Tomorrow will be beautiful,
For tomorrow comes out of the lake.
INSOMNIA
For a year his desperate hands beat the darkness. Then
out of their rhythm a monster was created:
Three claws on his breast, so that he could not with
facility heave it;
Three claws on his skull, so that he had waking night-
mares the year long.
When at last his hands dropped, the monster stooped
over him, and with his yellow beak plucked out his
white heart.
SMOKE
All the smoke of the cigarettes of dreamers went over
to the sky, and formed that blue vault you see up
there.
Emanuel Carnevali
FUNERAL MARCH
The great corpse
Is the crowd.
A whole day
It takes to bury it.
In the morning
They begin;
Not at night,
For they're afraid.
I'm here for ...
Oh, to wail a great goodbye,
ITALIAN SONG
Until your lips be red,
Until the winter-time,
Until the money be gone,
Until God see us:
Until God see us.
Until old age come, girl,
Until the other man come,
Until the jettatura get me,
Until God see us:
Until God see us.
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OLD ACCUSTOMED IMPUDENT GHOST
That morning the dawn arose from the sodden grey city
pavements,
And it was a sick grey breath.
I had spent myself asking the night for sleep.
Broken in pieces I was — only the evil spirit was whole
in me;
There was a curse on my bitten bloody lips. . . .
And then . . .
Oh, then the old accustomed, impudent ghost came in:
He wore my bagged, ragged pants, and was unshaven;
And his face was the one I had seen in the mirror
Too many times.
INVOCATION TO DEATH
Let me
Close my eyes tight.
Still my arms,
Let me
Be. .
Then,
Come!
Let me be utterly alone:
Do not let the awful understanding that comes with
The thought of Death
Bother me.
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Emanuel Carnevali
Your love was not strong enough to hold me.
Death takes things away:
I have them here in my hands,
The rags.
I do not understand the cosmic humor
That lets foolish impossibilities, like me, live.
I have made a mess of it,
But I am no debtor.
It's the yearning of a nervous man,
The yearning for peace,
The curiosity for a word:
Forever.
If She would only come quietly,
Like a lady —
The first lady and the last.
Just not to hear any longer
The noise swelling from the morning streets,
Nor the two desperate sparrows chirruping;
Just not to fear any longer
The landlady.
Emanuel Carnevali
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
COMMENT
RENEWAL OF YOUTH
THE Christmas season, winter-clad as it is, always
utters the prophecy of youth. Celebrating the birth
of a great renewer of life, it rings the first far-away bell,
waves the first red-and-green banner, to usher in the
springtime. It reminds us of the perennial miracle, the
unconquerable hope and joy forever freshly blooming in
the new life of this earth.
The passage of the generations — that is the great
poem. The long epic of birth, growth and decay — the
struggle of life to assert its dominion over destructive
forces, the momentary conquest and the final defeat —
this is the universal story of which all lesser tales are
mere chapters and paragraphs. Absorbed in our small
affairs, singing our individual little solos, we too often
miss the immense chorus vibrating grandly through the
ages — a chorus which accepts and harmonizes the whir
of the cricket and the long drum-roll of the stars.
Life's bitter and unceasing fight is against the forces
of decay: when it lapses, and turns to fight the forces of
growth, the result is confusion and disaster. Through
the battering by young minds alone may each generation
forget to grow old; therefore let youth be free and strong,
let it have room for its race and its shout, lest bars and
shackles enslave the next age.
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Renewal of Youth
The battering by young minds — perhaps an editor's
office, especially a poetry-editor's office, is the place
most accessible of all to such battering, the place where
some of the freest and strongest of young minds love to
put up their first stiff fight against the forces of decay.
Too often they find these forces entrenched in the editorial
chair, so that the battlefield is conveniently narrowed
down and the issue personified. And the editor, if he
waives all advantage of position, age, experience, etc.,
will have to put up the best fight he is capable of, and
often come out second-best at the end of it.
A recent article on This Youngest Generation by Malcolm
Cowley (New York Evening Post Literary Review of
October I5th) shows with what a simple gesture the young
mind can throw away the immediate past — at least of
its own race and language. Youth must avenge itself,
not on the honored dead, but on the too-much-honored
living; and so we find Shaw and Wells and Mencken and
all the Georgian poets and prosers — and, oh yes, Chester-
ton and Schnitzler and Nathan — cast into the discard,
while youth is reading Flaubert and Laforgue and Huys-
mans, diving deeper into the past toward Swift and
Defoe, Racine, Moliere, even Marlowe, Ben Jonson and
Shakespeare, and then coming up again to salute Remy
de Gourmont and certain new groups of French poets
to whom he showed the way. Through all this the
young writers are shaping their own ideals: there is to be
"a new interest in form," "a simplification of current
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life into something rich and strange"; "our younger
literature will be at least as well composed as a good
landscape — it may even attain to the logical organization
of music.'*
Form, simplification, strangeness, respect for literature as an art
with traditions, abstractness — these are the catchwords that are repeated
most often among the younger writers. They represent ideas that have
characterized French literature hitherto, rather than English or Amer-
ican. They are the nearest approach to articulate doctrine of a
generation without a school and without a manifesto.
Le rot est mort, but he has prepared the people for the
new reign:
The great advantage of this generation is the fact that a public has
been formed. It has been formed exactly by those inchoate realists,
like Dreiser, and by those anti-Puritanical critics, like H. L. Mencken,
against whom this youngest generation is in revolt. But gratitude
is not a literary virtue.
Yes, here as elsewhere gratitude is the rarest of the —
shall we say, not virtues, but graces? It is an education
in a still rarer virtue, and grace — humility, to note how
easily the rising generation puts the risen one in its place.
Shaw, Mencken, Dreiser — how they pawed the ground
and trod the air not so long ago! What rebels, icono-
clasts they were as they leapt all barriers toward the
glamourous goal of art! Now conquering youth is
mounted — soon he will ride them down with joy. Le rot
est mort — for what happy heir shall we soon be shouting,
" Vive le roil"?
[148]
Renewal of Youth
Yes, the wave-movement of the arts is one phase of
the universal epic. Birth, growth, decay; new birth,
fresh growth, and yet at last decay — the rule is for you
and me as well as another, and in each of us it is proved.
So hail to conquering Youth — even to sacred Infancy
in its mother's arms! May the newly risen or newly
born solve the riddles and sing the songs of the world!
May he rid the earth of war and disease, of poverty and
ignorance — famine of body and soul! May he complete
nature's beauty with the beauty of art, and nature's
truth with the truth of the spirit, and lead on the mil-
lennium to which we all aspire! H. M.
ALEXANDER BLOK
Alexander Blok's death in the late summer is a loss
not only to Russia but to world-literature. He was
forty-one years of age, and had achieved international
fame only during the last two years through the circula-
tion of his revolutionary lyric, The Twelve. He was the
first distinguished Russian writer to espouse openly the
Bolshevist cause, and was one of the few first-rate imagina-
tions which seem to have been sufficiently nourished
upon the black bread of revolution. In his youth he
was a writer of intense and remote lyrics, full of mystic
vision and the pungent odor of the flowers of evil. The
translators point out that Blok "owed a cultural allegiance
to the old order." But he had from the first, like the
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typical Russian peasant, adored the Christ hanging in
tormented effigy at the wind-raked cross-roads, and
marching before the poor, their Brother of compassion;
and it was inevitable that Blok should not despair of
the blind, violent, but spiritual people, discovering in
their wild fury the elements of redemption.
For the world of intellectual irony seemed to him
rotten and ready for destruction. The nineteenth
century, he wrote, "has cast upon the living face of man
a blinding mask of mechanics, positivism, and economic
materialism, and has drowned the human voice in the
rumble and roar of machinery." As to whether Blok
felt before he died that the administrators of this revolu-
tion were betraying their ideal, "loving Her in heaven
and betraying Her on earth," opinions seem to differ.
Certainly there is little likeness between the cold, dedi-
cated Cromwellian executives who now direct the Soviet
government, and the twelve mystic roisterers of Blok's
The Twelve, writen in 1918.
This poem, the Russian edition of which exceeded
two million copies, was recently translated by Miss
Deutsch and Dr. Yarmolinsky. It portrays the pro-
cession, through the streets of Red Petrograd, of twelve
holy ruffians, looting, killing, singing. The scheme of
the poem is bold and flexible, including revolutionary
songs, an episode of low passion and jealousy terminated
by murder, and penetrating lyric passages with a move-
ment like the folk-song. There is occasional convincing
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Alexander Blok
symbolism, as when the old order is personified by a
mangy cur: "Beatings are the best you'll get." Behind
all the lurid light and noise is the huge bare vision, the
flat endless unmoved steppe:
Hutted Russia
Thick-rumped and solid —
Russia, the stolid.
In the storm and cold the blackguards stumble on, like
disciples of a starved gray-bearded introspective Dionysus.
At the end of the poem, they meet their master, in-
scrutable, pitying, crowned with flowers — the white
untouched Christ, bearing the red flag:
In mist-white roses garlanded,
Christ marches on. The twelve are led.
The Twelve is a stirring battle-song which will not soon
be dissociated from the history of these mysterious
blood-dripping days. The translation, while it gives
little impression of beauty as English verse, permits
the smoky fire of the original to shine through.
Glenway Wescott
REVIEWS
A FLOURISH OF TRUMPETS
Second April, by Edna St. Vincent Millay. Mitchell
Kennerley.
If I could only sound a fanfare in words! If I could
get up on some high place and blow trumpets, and shout
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and wave my hands and throw my hat! If, too, I could
gather together all those of my dear friends who have
said: "Oh yes, I like poetry well enough — Longfellow,
and Byron and those; of course I admit I can't under-
stand this modern stuff!" And if I could gather together
all the shrugging shoulders, all the supercilious smiles,
and all those brows which have knitted at the mention
of poetry, and could read to them — or get Edna St.
Vincent Millay to read to them, if it were only possible! —
her latest book, Second April! And then if I could give
it to all those hungry people who have not the money
for beauty, and give it to children — even be generous
with it! — and let it lie on the library table of the fashion-
able house, beside the Golden Treasury •, where it might
be picked up by the casual caller so that he would get
drunk in a new way! And later, after the shy emotions
and the jaded ones have had their dance in the sun, if
I could get away to some deserted place of beauty, and
hold a solitary revel, an orgy of poetry!
And yet even if the copies of Second April rained down
like manna, I suppose there would still be some, among
the most needy, to spurn the fare, some who would look,
and look in vain, for intricacies of form, for startling
words, for grotesque similes, for splashing impressionistic
phrases. And there would be those who would think
an occasional sonnet indecent, because it flings high,
unashamed, the joy of living!
Not with libation, but with shouts and laughter
A Flourish of Trumpets
We drenched the altars of Love's sacred grove,
Shaking to earth green fruits, impatient after
The launching of the colored moths of Love.
Love's proper myrtle and his mother's zone
We bound about our irreligious brows,
And fettered him with garlands of our own,
And spread a banquet in his frugal house.
Not yet the god has spoken; but I fear,
Though we should break our bodies in his flame,
And pour our blood upon his altar, here
Henceforward is a grove without a name —
A pasture to the shaggy goats of Pan,
Whence flee forever a woman and a man.
Perhaps, there would be some to belittle the group of
memorial poems, each one of which is so childlike in its
simplicity — so utterly, utterly poignant:
Heap not on this mound
Roses that she loved so well;
Why bewilder her with roses,
That she cannot see or smell?
She is happy where she lies
With the dust upon her eyes.
And the stark tragedy of the Chorus:
Give away her gowns,
Give away her shoes;
She has no more use
For her fragrant gowns.
Take them all down —
Blue, green, blue,
Lilac, pink, blue —
From their padded hangers.
She will dance no more
In her narrow shoes;
Sweep her narrow shoes
From the closet floor.
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And there would be the happy young girl who confided
to me that she could not see anything particularly wonder-
ful or apt in the sentence, "Life in itself is nothing — an
empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs."
To what purpose, April, do you return again ?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots.
Life in itself
Is nothing —
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.
Yet in spite of them all, and I believe there could only
be a few — the meticulous, the unfortunates whose emo-
tions have irretrievably atrophied — in spite of them,
and right in their faces, I would shout aloud, blow
trumpets, wave hands, and scatter Edna St. Vincent
Millay's Second April over the world!
Marion Strobel
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Fletcherian Colors
FLETCHERIAN COLORS
Breakers and Granite, by John Gould Fletcher. Mac-
millan Co.
This volume of poems, while not a definite attempt to
comprehend and express the spirit of America, by com-
bining various groups leaves a general impression. The
spirit which speaks loudest, however, is a universal one,
although our ardent patriotism usually leads us to confine
it to America.
It is a palimpsest which no one reads or understands, which none has
time to heed, a loom-frame woven over with interspersed entangled
threads, of which the meaning is lost, from which the pattern is not yet
freed.
They are a great shallow sea, crinkling uneasily as if some giant's
body were wallowing beneath.
The shuttles clatter and clamor and hammer at the woof of day and
night. But the being — the thing that will master all the ages — still
refuses to be born.
One does not squeeze this essence from the book,
but finds it imbedded in long descriptions, externally
conceived; often with the eye of a decorator nicely
designed, more often with the hand of an artisan who
labors over his pile of adjectives and colors and leaves
a jumble.
Down the Mississippi is the best group. It has a
sculptural quality in spite of certain passages which,
with their natural southern heat, threaten to melt the
modeling into a mass. But it is an excellent group. A
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fine conception of a great river, moulded and colored
by sensitive hands, guided by sympathetic eyes.
Of his prose poems — The Building of Chicago^ The Old
South and The Song of the Wind— The Old South is the
most completely satisfying. It has quality and cadence
and flavor. It charms and saddens, and leaves a stagnant
pool in the spirit. The other prose poems in the volume
work out of inspiration hours. There are some interest-
ing photographs, some historical descriptions. An effort
is made at times to heighten them to the point of poetry
by the use of the names of strong colors, but the words
are cold, they do not flush from within. The lines are
sterile, and hanging decorations on them does not make
them burgeon.
In New York, this sentence begins well:
Ivory and gold, heart of light petrified, bold and immortally beauti-
ful, lifts a tower like a full lily-stalk.
Then it grows hysterical:
With crammed pollen-coated petals, flame-calyx fretted and carven,
white phoenix that beats its wings in the light, shrill ecstasy of leaping
lines poised in flight, partaken of joy in the skies, mate of the sun.
We frequently encounter this violent use of language,
but for the most part the poet's carousals in the names
of colors fail to intoxicate him.
In The Grand Canyon of The Colorado
Yellow, red, grey-green, purple-black chasms fell swiftly below
each other —
and
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hammered from red sandstone, purple granite, and gold —
fail in their purpose, while
It was hidden
Behind layers of white silence
paints a picture.
Again, take from The Well in the Desert,
The desert below him seems burning: ashen-yellow,
red-yellow, faint blue and rose-brown —
and
At the horizon
The heat rose and fell,
Sharp flickering arpeggios . . .
Not a cloud-flake breaks with its shadow the great space
of sky and of earth.
The last two are Japanese prints, while the first is a
colored photograph.
Mr. Fletcher's use of colors makes one feel their limita-
tions; only occasionally does one feel their infinite variety.
The poems to the eye seem unrestrained, but there
is not the flamboyant coloring of youth in these pages.
Taking the volume as a whole, one feels a prodigal use
of words of color but a paucity of colored words. If
the Japanese prints, a few of which it undoubtedly
possesses, were selected from the whole we should have
a slimmer volume but a more rarely beautiful collection.
Laura Sherry
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
MINOR CHORDS
Bluestone^ by Marguerite Wilkinson. Macmillan Co.
Selected Poems ^ by Lady Margaret Sackville. E. P. Button
&Co.
These two books have no likeness of matter or manner
that innately justifies their being written about together.
My apology is that the authors of both are women, and
that the books are both provided with prefaces so pro-
vocative that they stimulate attention perhaps more than
the poetry itself.
Marguerite Wilkinson's preface is autobiographical, like
her verses. It invites us into her workshop, as in her
poems she invites us candidly into her homely house of
life — into the kitchen and living-rooms and the empty
nursery — to show us the vistas she likes, her porch and
garden, her big husband, to chat a little about her ances-
tors and the poor and the weather, and to confide the
mournful secret of her childlessness. In her workshop she
lets us stand by while, between the stages of her demon-
stration of lyric-making, she gives an informal lecture.
To report the lecture briefly, for a summary may be
made in a sentence — the poet may help himself by finding
the tune which exists for each expression, and building
them up together. She says:
What happens is simply this: While I am making a lyric, after the
mood becomes clear, after the idea and image emerge from consciousness,
I sing it, and sometimes slowly, sometimes quite rapidly, the words take
their places in lines that carry a tune also. I am not giving conscious
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Minor Chords
effort to the tune; nor am I making an intellectual effort to combine
words and music to get a certain effect. I am not thinking about the
music. I am making a single-hearted and strong endeavor to say or
sing what is felt or thought.
This leaves one well elbowed for reflection. Is this the
way epics and folk-songs were written — did the bards and
skalds and troubadours make their resonant verses thus?
Is it analogous to the activities of any other poet — say
Kreymborg, or Vachel Lindsay, in their somewhat readier
improvisation ?
As for the poems themselves, they are individually
undistinguished. But a full sequential reading of them
makes one aware of a bright, impulsive, open temper-
ament, a small clear voice singing a small clear soul. It is
frank and personal in the way that women are frank and
personal, not a challenge but a confidence. It is auto-
biography as self-concerned and intimate, in its demure
scale, as that of Benvenuto Cellini.
Mrs. Wilkinson writes most stridently, most rhetor-
ically, when, as in the title-poem, she invokes ancestors.
Songs from beside Swift Rivers is a pleasant, energetic
group, although it contains the worst thing in the book,
The Really Truly Twirly-whirly Eel. In Preferences, Long
Songs, Songs of an Empty House, Songs of Laughter and
Tears, Whims for Poets and California Poems she does
better work. These in a certain way satisfy if they do
not thrill us; they are, if not original, personal. Here she
is busy on her autobiography; she tells a small old story,
offers a bright comment.
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
The closing poem, however, The Page ant > is to my mind
the finest of the book. It is almost the only impersonal
poem. It is not new or profound; but it is a conceit such
as comes coolly from the hands of women whereas men's
hands mold sweatily and hard; also men's eyes are sneer-
ingly careless while women's are maternally watchful. I
will quote the second stanza, and take my leave of a book
pleasant but not upsetting, containing some singularly
inept verses which, however, may help in the final witnessing
of an unheroic, untormented and engaging personality:
Forever is a broad road where have met together
Brave Deeds in red robes and Deeds of golden fire;
Grave Deeds in silver gowns, quaint Deeds in motley,
Quiet Deeds in homely gray that only saints admire;
Gentle Deeds that love the green raiment of the summer;
Pure Deeds in very white without the chill of snow;
Squalid Deeds in dull rags, pitiful and ugly:
Down the broad highway they go.
The testimonial to Lady Margaret Sackville's Selected
Poems is written by no less a doctor than Wilfrid Scawen
Blunt. It is short and perfunctory, having the familiar
sound of the literary ballyhoo. It begins by calling her
ladyship the best of England's woman poets. Being quite
ignorant of the poetry young Britannia is writing, I can-
not enter into controversy. But I remember some sharp
work by the feminine Sitwell; and some interesting percep-
tions in quotations from Charlotte Mew; and even though
the women of talent, like the men, are diluting their poetry
in the traditional English schooner, the novel — Virginia
Wolf, May Sinclair, Dorothy Richardson, E. M. Delafield
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Minor Chords
and others — there must be women who are writing poetry
less pallid and Hellenic, and more original than this.
Mr. Blunt, like other comfortable people, is waiting for
the world to quiet down to "its ancient bourgeois ways of
peace, prosperity, romance, and beauty." We may look
for the blooming of an art that will cover the ruins, a
peaceful bourgeois poetry written in the benignant,
lattice-tempered "daylight of sound rhyme, metre and
melody/' like Lady Sackville's. It will even be free from
the rhetorical independence of blank verse, which is "not
really verse at all even in master-hands; say, rather, a
dignified kind of prose pompous in recitation and, for
common reading, dull."
Mr. Blunt is sure it will emerge from the bewildered
forms of the "delirium" — such profound, powerful, deny-
ing poetry as is being written by D. H. Lawrence, the
imagists, the Sitwells and Aldous Huxley. I gather that
Mr. Blunt means them although he mentions no names.
Their work is a delirium to him because their subject-
matter is not the Greek hash served up by a muse whom
people have made a slavey, but fresh fodder pungently
spiced that gives savor and nourishment; because their
measures are ungentle, and their language cleaned and
filtered of the debris of overlapping preciosities.
In spite of this survivor of the nineties, such feeble voices
as Lady Sackville's will inevitably be silenced by the
"delirium." True it is a voice of some subtle cadences; of
a tone pleasing and serene. It even murmurs some
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
exquisite lyrics, offers some sonorous recitations, makes a
shy jest. But it observes all the politeness of conven-
tional rhyming; it never leaves its orderly park of culti-
vated flower-beds exhaling a luxurious odor, with nymphs
and fauns pensive among the trees, fastened forever in the
postures of elegantly sylvan courtship.
There is a staid, deliberate and wise sentiment in the
war poems. They are not poignant or biographical, but
they are pitying, even querulous, comments upon an
organized cataclysm. They are bright bits of emotion,
like bright colors against an elegant but monotonous
background.
Lady Sackville's poetry has none of the impulse and
swing of Marguerite Wilkinson's. It is impersonal and
detached, and does not leave us as a palpable presence.
But it has greater delicacy, mellower polish, maturer
choice of material. One can see in these books an analogy;
for England and America, if England did not have its own
r voltes and America its bland traditionalists.
Isidor Schneider
POST-MARTIAL EMOTION
Aurelia and Other Poems, by Robert Nichols. E. P.
Button and Co.
From the ardors and endurances of war this poet, like
many another, has retired into his sensibilities. It is
a luxury no doubt justified in one who suffered so severe
a war experience as Robert Nichols, but it is a disappoint-
Post-martial Emotion
ment to many who read his first book. From this earlier
book there were two courses possible: one, to retain the
war experience, if not its incidents, as a structural fact
in his future work; the other, to throw it away as one
would a soiled and bloody shirt and return to the cool,
sterile delicacies of his domestic experience. With the
exception of the beautifully reminiscent Yesterday, the
poet in this book has returned frankly to pre-war psy-
chology and subject matter. The book as a whole,
including, Four Idylls, Encounters, twenty-seven Elisa-
bethan Sonnets to Aurelia, The Flower of Flame, has
assumed in manner, emotion and subject the conventional
limitations of the finely wrought but minor poetry of
academic England.
If war came without welcome, a thick and bulging
episode in his experience, its subsidence at any rate has
not left the poet voiceless. The transition from his
engravings on the crude steel of war to their continuation
on the ivory of peace is no doubt appropriate to this type
of poet. Three strains of interest, none of them asso-
ciated with warlike violence, may be noted: A con-
templative and introspective interest, as in Night
Rhapsody:
How beautiful to wake at night,
Within the room grown strange, and still, and sweet,
And live a century while in the dark
The dripping wheel of silence slowly turns;
To watch the window open on the night,
A dewy silent deep where nothing stirs,
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
And, lying thus, to feel dilate within
The press, the conflict, and the heavy pulse
Of incommunicable sad ecstasy.
An interest in nature observation, as in From the Budded
Branch:
Below a beetle on a stalk of grass
Slowly unharnesses his shuttered wings,
His tiny rainbow wings of shrivelled glass.
He leaps! He whirs away. The grass-blade swings.
An interest in personal emotion, as in the tritely facile
Sonnets to Aurelia:
Whatever substances of love may dwell
Within the passionate heart of such as I,
Whatever waters of pure pity well
In the dark orb of a most loving eye,
I have yielded you. Whatever were the pain
If power within me so to do did live,
I, at your need, had made these yours again,
But now I know I have no more to give.
But the weaver of these has not yet a certain hand.
His imaginative facility, his ability to subordinate the
crude image to the structural idea of his poem without
diminishing its vividness, his technical excellence in
poetic detail, do not save him from casualness in the
larger principles of his work.
It is unfortunate that Robert Nichols should have
only the poised and static culture of his particular English
group to support him. Rarely if ever does he break
over the narrow boundaries of self-centered sophistication,
Post-martial Emotion
of fagged and too mature emotion. Mr. Nichols and
his group seem to be too little in literary touch with the
massive energies of contemporary life to be moved by
any great or unifying poetic idea. The environment is
luxuriously sweet to the minor poet, but its very gracious-
ness undermines stronger men. It is too small a pot for
great broth. In the gratuitous energy of great poetry
this book is lacking. Baker Browne/!
COLOR SONATAS
Poems, by Iris Tree. John Lane Co.
An organ exists which plays in color instead of in tone
and pitch. Its invention was a recognition of the synes-
thetic power which every artist to some extent possesses
—the power to translate images received through one
sense into terms of another sense.
If one could carry the principle of synesthesia invent-
ively several steps farther than the color organ, and pro-
duce a device that would interpret sound in terms of
fragrance, and color in terms of odor, and so on, one would
have something very like Iris Tree's book. It is, to quote
her own words, "a kaleidoscope of roaring color," using
the word "color" itself in a rather synesthetic sense. Such
figures as "scarlet rhapsodies and beryl-cold sonatas,"
"The pale smell of their falling blossoms," and "Its scent
is sweeter than ghostly music," are characteristic.
Rebecca West, I believe, once referred to the works of
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
Compton Mackenzie as not precisely novels but brilliantly
colored cushions. I have somewhat the same feeling
about Iris Tree's volume — it does not seem exactly a book.
It is not a cushion; sometimes it seems a tapestry, at
other times a bouquet of highly perfumed flowers, and
still again a series of ariettes. This is nothing against it;
anybody can make a book that seems like a book, but
few can make a book that seems like — well, perhaps "a
kaleidoscope" is the most inclusive term. The author,
in her own words, opens wide
the violet-petalled doors
Of every shy and cloistered sense
That all the scent and music of the world
May rush into the soul.
The poems are dazzling, arresting, with imagery now
a bit Keatsian in suggestion, but more often altogether
modern. Verses like these represent the author's method:
Moonlit lilacs under the window,
And the pale smell of their falling blossoms,
And the white floating beams like luminous moths
Fluttering from bloom to bloom.
Sprays of lilac flowers
Frothing at the green verge of midnight waves,
Frozen to motionless icicles.
Moonlight flows over me,
Full of illicit, marvelous perfumes
Wreathed with syringa and plaited with hyacinths;
Hair of the moonlight falling about me,
Straight and cool as the drooping tresses of rain.
The spiritual interpretations which the author makes
are as unvivid as her imagery is vivid. Neither "the dim
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Color Sonatas
psychic crystals" of her soul nor her wish that she were
"God in a colored globe" moves one to more than casual
interest. Perhaps this is partly because one looks for
sensuous instead of spiritual beauties in a kaleidoscope.
Illustrations and decorations usually spoil a book of
poems. In this case the decorations, done by Curtis
Moffatt, the author's husband, have the same quality as
the verses and add to their flavor.
Nelson Antrim Crawford
THE PREMATURITY OF IMMATURITY
Hidden Path, by Ned Hungerford. Privately printed.
It is hard to call this the poetry of a young man. There
is feeling and experience in it; it is immature not in knowl-
edge of life but in the mechanics of expression, in the
practice of poetic craftsmanship. Where other poets can
amble and even trip gaily and gracefully, in well trodden
and frequented ways, Mr. Hungerford plods lonely and
stumbling. He presents almost pathetically the figure
of a man desperately concerned with self-expression, not
as a necessity born with him but out of some troubling
circumstance. I feel that things are maddeningly dull
for Mr. Hungerford, wherever he is; that he has an insup-
pressible desire to find a kinder environment.
That is why opening his book gave me the thrill that a
man might feel if he picked up a stray message from a lost
man — say, something in a bottle, or between the halves
of a fruit. There is a distracting personal interest in
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every poem that makes its status as poetry unimportant.
And the regrettable element in the matter is that the
author deliberately aims to achieve this effect. He writes
in his introductory poem:
Reader . .
That these poems are now in your hands
Is proof that they are meant for you.
Whatever your race, color, or creed, you are brother
To him who wrote them,
And to him who placed them in your hands.
It is the old plea of the beginner not sure of his audience,
the old futile defiance of criticism, futile because of its un-
conscious confession of a lack of technique. Somewhere
else in the book, he makes the stock challenge:
O ready condemners,
Isn't it just possible
You and I are thinking of something
Entirely different?
The persistent illusion of being misunderstood (when
one is merely ignored), the illusion that others in his plight
may take heart from his avowals, is the inspiration of a good
many of these poems. Throughout, the reader is left with
the consciousness of listening to a muddled eager man,
who can hardly resist the temptation to buttonhole his
few auditors. The very titles of this and a previous book
— Hidden Pathy Uncertain Trail — give Mr. Hungerford's
own estimate of his literary journey.
If Ned Hungerford is comparatively young, he may
find out eventually whither he is bound, in which case he
[168]
The Prematurity of Immaturity
will regret publishing this misgiven itinerary. If he is
not a young man and is bogged fast in bewildering cross-
roads, the book will be one more of the crowded minor
fatalities on the literary front. From any standpoint it
is premature; it may have satisfied momentarily a crav-
ing to appear in print, but already it must have obliterated
that satisfaction by coming back in all its gruesome im-
maturity to haunt its author. It would have been passed
over in silence; but as it is typical of many books of verse
sent out in quest of reviews, the above remarks may serve
as a hint to other self-deceived, and often embittered,
would-be poets. Isidor Schneider
CORRESPONDENCE
THE ALLIED ARTS AGAIN
I
Dear Editor: It was with great interest that I read
in POETRY for October, your comments upon my Musical
America article. I am glad to have the opportunity
and the invitation to express an opinion I have long held.
I believe we should have something in the nature of
a National Committee for the Protection of the Native
Lyric from the Distortions Practised by Incompetent
Composers. Poets, when asked for permission to make
"settings'* of their words, often grant it graciously and
trust to luck. What a writer ought to do is to tell the
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
composer to make a setting and submit it to him for
approval. But as few poets are willing to profess expert-
ness in musical judgments, the writer usually has to
submit to whatever outrageous interpretation the com-
poser may perpetrate. I see no reason why a poet should
not say to a composer: "Yes, you may make a setting
of my poem, provided that, before publishing it, you
will submit it to a committee on which both poetry and
music are represented." Such a committee would be a
step toward establishing a standard, and perhaps it
might do a great deal, in ways other than censorship,
to stimulate the progress of American song.
One other thing might be spoken of as a possible reason
why there is not greater co-operation among poets and
musicians: often of late the poet talks business and pro-
poses a division of royalty, whereupon the negotiations
are soon at an end. There are different reasons in
different cases, but usually this happens because the
composer knows, if he has ever published anything, that
the royalty will be too small to divide — a fact which he
dislikes to confess, even to a fellow-artist. And he does
not want to be forced to keep books and mail out each
month a cheque which would probably fluctuate between
two dollars and six. If there is money in music-publish-
ing, the music-publisher must get most of it.
Referring again to your editorial, you express doubt
whether I have taken the trouble to get acquainted
with, or try to understand, contemporary poets. But
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The Allied Arts Again
I can plead guilty only in part — I have not been able
to keep pace with all our American poets, it is true, but
I have known some of them, and I am eager to meet
others and try to understand their art.
Instead of citing Carpenter's settings of the Tagore
things in your editorial, you might more fitly have men-
tioned his use of The Heart's Country , by Florence Wilkin-
son; or the delightful song Henry Hadley made last
year out of When I Go Away from You, by Amy Lowell.
Please let me say in conclusion that I never have said
there were not fine American songs. But they are
remarkably few, and remarkably hard to place effectively
in a recital programme. Charles Albert Case
Northampton, Mass.
ii
Dear POETRY: To all serious students of the dance, the
first sentence in your October article, "POETRY would like
to celebrate its ninth birthday by inaugurating a closer
affiliation with the allied arts of music and the drama —
perhaps also the dance" is encouraging. That "perhaps"
is deserved: only those who come in daily contact with
the too-popular belief that the door to real achievement
may be kicked open by a perfectly pointed toe, can
realize how far the dance has traveled from its dignified
origin. In alliance with that music and poetry to which
the dance really gave birth lies her only hope. Music
and poetry give the dancer a reason for existence.
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
We had the pleasure of working with Alfred Kreymborg
in the summer of 1920, and not only felt that we, as
dancers, had profited, but we gained an insight into, and
a feeling for, the rhythm of modern poetry that nothing
but the actual bodily expression of it could have given us.
We have been fortunate also in being associated with a
musician who has used pieces of Sara Teasdale's, Vachel
Lindsay's, Bliss Carman's, and other moderns, as themes
for dance-music.
Certainly poets, musicians and dancers need not fear
to join forces. They have the fundamentals in common.
With such different, yet harmonious, outward manifesta-
tions of those fundamentals, surely the result will not be
unworthy of poetry or music, and will surely be of infinite
value to the dance in its reinstatement among the arts.
We so often fail to say the pleasant things we think.
POETRY is a monthly refreshment. It is like a breath
from freshly opened flowers, or a drink of mountain water.
Bertha Wardell
Los Angeles^ Cal.
Note by the Editor: Another correspondent reminds us that Rupert
Hughes, well known both as novelist and composer, has used a number
of modern lyrics: for example, one of the editor's own, / Love my Life,
originally published in POETRY; and quite recently Evening in the West,
or better The Ivory Moment^ by John Drury, from the new Los Angeles
monthly, The Lyric West. Schirmer & Co. are Mr. Hughes' publishers.
[172]
NOTES
Mr. Lew Sarett, of Chicago, or rather of her neighbor-city Evanston,
has consented to act henceforth as a member of the Advisory Committee
of POETRY. Mr. Sarett is the author of Many Many Moons; and the
award of last month to his poem, The Box of God, makes him the latest
winner of the Helen Haire Levinson Prize. He has been, for the last
year, in the Public Speaking Department of Northwestern University.
In our advertising pages the Poetry Society of South Carolina makes
an announcement of great interest to poets. A prize of $250, donated
by W. Van R. Whitall, Esq., of Pelham, N. Y., is to be awarded an-
nually, under the Society's auspices, for the best poem sent in competi-
tion before Jan. ist of each year. Mr. Pelham makes sure of a com-
petent choice this year by appointing Miss Amy Lowell to the honor
of initiating the award by acting as the first judge.
Louise Ayres Garnett (Mrs. Eugene H.), of Evanston, 111., wrote
the poem Resurgam as the text of an oratorio for which Mr. Henry Had-
ley is now composing the music. In our November Correspondence
Mrs. Garnett told the story of this collaboration; and the complete work,
which will soon be published, may be regarded as an essay in that
closer alliance between poetry and music which the editor has pleaded
for in recent numbers of POETRY.
Mrs. Garnett has published, through Rand, McNally & Co., three
books of verse for children; and she wrote both words and music of
Creature Songs (Oliver Ditson Co.). The Macmillan Co. published
her play Master Will of Stratford, and The Drama has printed two or
three of her plays for children.
Mr. Walter de la Mare, the well known English poet, is the author
of numerous books of verse for adults and children; and his Collected
Poems — /po/-/p/<? were published in a two-volume edition by Henry
Holt & Co. in 1920.
Mr. Fenton Johnson, of Chicago, who stands facile princeps among
living poets of his race, is the author of three small privately printed
books of verse, the latest being Songs of the Soil (1916). He founded,
and edited for some time The Champion, a magazine for Negroes, and
he has been on the staff of The Favorite Magazine.
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
Mr. Emanuel Carnevali, of Chicago, has contributed verse and prose
to most of the special magazines, but has not yet published a volume.
In 1918 he received a Young Poet's Prize from POETRY.
Miss Winifred Waldron, of North Glendale, Cal., has printed poems
in various magazines. "Paul Tanaquil" is a pseudonym.
Of the poets who have not hitherto appeared in POETRY:
Miss Pearl Andelson, of Chicago, was until recently a member of the
Poetry Club of the University of Chicago, which has been a good training-
school for a number of young poets.
Miss Dorothy Dow, of Winchester, 111., has published little as yet.
Mr. Laurence Vail lives in New York.
Ditto Mr. Henry Saul Zolinsky, who, although only seventeen, has
already been newsboy, bell-boy, office-boy, electrician, shoe-salesman
and ad-solicitor; and who hopes to become a student again some day
and finish his interrupted course at college.
BOOKS RECEIVED
ORIGINAL VERSE:
Poems, by Claude Colleer Abbott. Basil Blackwell, Oxford, Eng.
Missing Links and Other Things, by Thomas F. McCarthy. Journal
Publishing Co., Devil's Lake, N. D.
A Brochure of Verse, by Ralph S. Woodworth. Privately printed,
Elkhart, Ind.
The Infant in the News-sheet: An Ode Against the Age, by Herman
George Scheffauer. Overseas Pub. Co., Hamburg, Germany.
Pagan Love Lyrics, by Alfred Bryan. Privately printed.
Little Visits, by Raymond E. Manchester. F. W. Orth Co., Cuyahoga
Falls, O.
Memorial Poems, by Henry Polk Lowenstein. Privately printed,
Kansas City.
Every Day Poems, by George Elliston. Stewart Kidd Co., Cincinnati.
Golden Mud, by Glenn M. Coleman. Privately printed, Mt. Vernon, la.
Scattered Leaves, (3rd ed.), by Edward C. Wentworth. The Book-
fellows, Chicago.
Shadows, by Susan Baker. Privately printed, Chicago.
(Other books received will be listed next month.)
[174]
Mr. Ford Madox Hueffer, the distinguished English Poet, novelist and critic, wrote
us last July:
If American periodical literature has today a little peak, a little group of
journals, raising it to the level of the best of European cosmopolitanism, or at any
rate in that direction, it is because you and your small paper showed how, editor-
ially and economically, it could be done.
Vol. XIX No. IV
POETRY for JANUARY, 1922
PAGE
The Witch of Coos Robert Frost 175
Songs of Night Marjorie Meeker 182
Ode to Myself Trying to Sleep — In Darkness — By a Window
— Song for a May Night — Color of Water — Lonely Sky and
Sea — Comrades
First Snow Esther Louise Ruble 1 86
Songs of the Plains Glenn Ward Dresbach 187
Two Poems Grace Fallow Norton 190
I Shall Remember — Shy Perfect Flower
To Sappho Julia R. Reynolds 191
Irish Song Helen Coale Crew 192
On the Wing Dorothy Keeley 193
Four Poems Ernest Walsh 194
I Ask for a Friend — Sonnet — The Fickle Lover — Collapse
Tableaux Ellen Margaret Janson 196
Scherzo — Tryst — Incense Smoke — Night in the City — The
Unknown
Poems William Carlos Williams 200
Wild Orchard — The Lonely Street — Spouts — The Widow's
Lament in Springtime
The Hope of Peace H. M . 204
Must Art Be Interesting? Baker Browne!/ 206
Reviews:
A Symposium on Marianne Moore H. M. 208
A Mystic Warrior Dorothy Dudley 216
Mrs. Wylie's Poems H. M. 220
Thoughtful Measures H. M. 222
Our Contemporaries:
New International Magazines 224
Various Prizes • . 227
Correspondence:
A Letter from Paris 228
Notes and Books Received . 232, 233
Manuscripts must be accompanied by a stamped and self -ad dressed envelope.
Inclusive yearly subscription rates. In the United States, Mexico, Cuba and
American possessions, $3.00 net; in Canada, $3.15 net; in all other countries in the
Postal Union, $3.25 net. Entered as second-class matter Nov. 15, 1912, at the
post-office, at Chicago, 111., under Act of March 3, 1879.
Published monthly at 543 Cass St., Chicago, 111.
Copright 1921, by Harriet Monroe. All rights reserved.
POETRY asks its friends to become
Supporting Subscribers by paying
ten dollars a year to its Fund. The
art of poetry requires, if it is to
advance, not only special sympathy
from a discriminating public, but
also endowment similar to that
readily granted to the other arts.
All who believe in the general pur-
pose and policy of this magazine,
and recognize the need and value
of such an organ of the art, are in-
vited to assist thus in maintaining
it.
VOL. XIX
No. IV
A Magazine of \ferse
JANUARY 1922
THE WITCH OF COOS
Circa 1922
I STAID the night for shelter at a farm
Behind the mountain, with a mother and son,
Two old-believers. They did all the talking.
The Mother
Folks think a witch who has familiar spirits
She could call up to pass a winter evening,
But won'fy should be burned at the stake or something.
Summoning spirits isn't "Button, button,
Who's got the button," you're to understand.
The Son
Mother can make a common table rear
And kick with two legs like an army mule.
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
The Mother
And when I've done it, what good have I done?
Rather than tip a table for you, let me
Tell you what Ralle the Sioux Control once told me.
He said the dead had souls, but when I asked him
How that could be — I thought the dead were souls,
He broke my trance. Don't that make you suspicious
That there's something the dead are keeping back?
Yes, there's something the dead are keeping back.
The Son
You wouldn't want to tell him what we have
Up attic, mother?
The Mother
Bones — a skeleton.
The Son
But the headboard of mother's bed is pushed
Against the attic door: the door is nailed.
It's harmless. Mother hears it in the night
Halting perplexed behind the barrier
Of door and headboard. Where it wants to get
Is back into the cellar where it came from.
The Mother
We'll never let them, will we, son? We'll never!
The Son
It left the cellar forty years ago
And carried itself like a pile of dishes
Up one flight from the cellar to the kitchen,
Another from the kitchen to the bedroom,
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Another from the bedroom to the attic,
Right past both father and mother, and neither stopped
it.
Father had gone upstairs; mother was downstairs.
I was a baby: I don't know where I was.
The Mother
The only fault my husband found with me —
I went to sleep before I went to bed,
Especially in winter when the bed
Might just as well be ice and the clothes snow.
The night the bones came up the cellar-stairs
Toffile had gone to bed alone and left me,
But left an open door to cool the room off
So as to sort of turn me out of it.
I was just coming to myself enough
To wonder where the cold was coming from,
When I heard Toffile upstairs in the bedroom
And thought I heard him downstairs in the cellar.
The board we had laid down to walk dry-shod on
When there was water in the cellar in spring
Struck the hard cellar bottom. And then someone
Began the stairs, two footsteps for each step,
The way a man with one leg and a crutch,
Or little child, comes up. It wasn't Toffile:
It wasn't anyone who could be there.
The bulkhead double-doors were double-locked
And swollen tight and buried under snow.
The cellar windows were banked up with sawdust
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And swollen tight and buried under snow.
It was the bones. I knew them — and good reason.
My first impulse was to get to the knob
And hold the door. But the bones didn't try
The door; they halted helpless on the landing,
Waiting for things to happen in their favor.
The faintest restless rustling ran all through them.
I never could have done the thing I did
If the wish hadn't been too strong in me
To see how they were mounted for this walk.
I had a vision of them put together
Not like a man, but like a chandelier.
So suddenly I flung the door wide on him.
A moment he stood balancing with emotion,
And all but lost himself. (A tongue of fire
Flashed out and licked along his upper teeth.
Smoke rolled inside the sockets of his eyes.)
Then he came at me with one hand outstretched,
The way he did in life once; but this time
I struck the hand off brittle on the floor,
And fell back from him on the floor myself.
The finger-pieces slid in all directions.
(Where did I see one of those pieces lately?
Hand me my button-box — it must be there.)
I sat up on the floor and shouted, "Toflile,
It's coming up to you." It had its choice
Of the door to the cellar or the hall.
Robert Frost
It took the hall door for the novelty,
And set off briskly for so slow a thing,
Still going every which way in the joints, though,
So that it looked like lightning or a scribble,
From the slap I had just now given its hand.
I listened till it almost climbed the stairs
From the hall to the only finished bedroom,
Before I got up to do anything;
Then ran and shouted, "Shut the bedroom door,
Toffile, for my sake!" "Company," he said,
"Don't make me get up; I'm too warm in bed."
So lying forward weakly on the handrail
I pushed myself upstairs, and in the light
(The kitchen had been dark) I had to own
I could see nothing. "Toffile, I don't see it.
It's with us in the room, though. It's the bones."
" What bones ? " "The cellar bones — out of the grave."
That made him throw his bare legs out of bed
And sit up by me and take hold of me.
I wanted to put out the light and see
If I could see it, or else mow the room,
With our arms at the level of our knees,
And bring the chalk-pile down. "I'll tell you what —
It's looking for another door to try.
The uncommonly deep snow has made him think
Of his old song, The Wild Colonial Boy,
He always used to sing along the tote-road.
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He's after an open door to get out-doors.
Let's trap him with an open door up attic."
Toffile agreed to that, and sure enough,
Almost the moment he was given an opening,
The steps began to climb the attic stairs.
I heard them. Toffile didn't seem to hear them.
"Quick!" I slammed to the door and held the knob.
"Toffile, get nails." I made him nail the door shut,
And push the headboard of the bed against it.
Then we asked was there anything
Up attic that we'd ever want again.
The attic was less to us than the cellar.
If the bones liked the attic, let them like it,
Let them stay in the attic. When they sometimes
Come down the stairs at night and stand perplexed
Behind the door and headboard of the bed,
Brushing their chalky skull with chalky fingers,
With sounds like the dry rattling of a shutter,
That's what I sit up in the dark to say —
To no one any more since Toffile died.
Let them stay in the attic since they went there.
I promised Toffile to be cruel to them
For helping them be cruel once to him.
The Son
We think they had a grave down in the cellar.
The Mother
We know they had a grave down in the cellar.
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The Son
We never could find out whose bones they were.
The Mother
Yes, we could too, son. Tell the truth for once.
They were a man's his father killed for me.
I mean a man he killed instead of me.
The least I could do was help dig their grave.
We were about it one night in the ce lar.
Son knows the story: but 'twas not for him
To tell the truth, suppose the time had come.
Son looks surprised to see me end a lie
We'd kept up all these years between ourselves
So as to have it ready for outsiders.
But tonight I don't care enough to lie —
I don't remember why I ever cared.
Toffile, if he were here, I don't believe
Could tell you why he ever cared himself. . . .
She hadn't found the finger-bone she wanted
Among the buttons poured out in her lap.
I verified the name next morning: Toffile.
The rural letter-box said Toffile Barre.
Robert Frost
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SONGS OF NIGHT
ODE TO MYSELF TRYING TO SLEEP
Draw in the threads of thought —
Each delicate filament,
Reaching into too many places,
Finding forgotten faces . . .
Draw in the long twisting thoughts you have sent.
Strange, that you lie here wondering
About things that don't matter;
Strange, that you lie here pondering . . .
And outside, the raindrops patter,
A fog is on the town,
And over the river
The drenched lights cross and quiver,
And the far harsh rumble of trams goes up and down.
Once, like a wind, beauty swept through you;
Once, like a small song that sings and sings,
Happiness crept through you;
Once, love seemed the reason for things;
And once you thought
Peace had come upon you . . .
And then all came to naught.
Draw in the threads of thought —
Each delicate filament,
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Marjorie Meeker
Quivering and bright;
Draw in the long twisting thoughts you have sent.
Cast all the tangled old dreaming and groping
To the still, deep,
Strange heart of Night
(Gentle forever to all grieving and hoping) —
And sleep.
IN DARKNESS
Deep in the heart of darkness I am lying,
Alone and still;
And all the winds of darkness and of silence
Work their will,
Blowing about me through the awful spaces
Of night and death;
Nor all immensity can touch or thrill me
To thought or breath.
Deep in the heart of darkness I am dreaming,
Quiet, alone,
Careless alike of tender words or cruel —
Even your own.
BY A WINDOW
The owl and the bat
Are alone in the night —
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What are they at
By the dead moon's light?
Hush! How the wings of the black bat whir!
(Oh hush, for the sleepers moan and stir!)
The moon is bleak,
Like a monk in a cowl . . .
What do they seek,
The bat and the owl?
What danger brews in the night, what sin?
(But hush, for the sleepers dream within.)
SONG FOR A MAY NIGHT
Heigho!
Many mysterious things I know!
I know why the moon is like a moth —
Do you?
I know why stars are many, and suns
Are few.
I know a place where a star fell down,
And made a hole in the middle of town,
And all the people jumped in. And so —
Heigho !
Other mysterious things I know!
Marjorie Meeker
COLOR OF WATER
You will be the color of water;
Your voice will be like the wind;
You will go where the dust goes;
None will know you have sinned.
None will know you are quiet,
Or fluent, or bound, or free;
None will care you are nothing;
You will be nothing to me.
Except a scarlet remembrance . . .
As if, in a dream of pride,
A poppy had flaunted her petals
One day to the sun, and died.
LONELY SKY AND SEA
O lonely, lonely sky and sea —
Where time is a wind that plays between,
Blowing the colored centuries by,
Tiny tragedies, quaint and mean —
Why are you waiting? What have you heard?
What majestic thing have you known,
That you watch each other, listening,
So long, so long alone?
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COMRADES
Time sweeps through me like a wind;
Space engulfs me like a sea.
Time and Space are at me always—
They will not let me be.
•I am weary, weary with years,
Troubled by immensity.
With eternities around me,
How can I be free?
Marjorie Meeker
FIRST SNOW
The night was hiding a secret
When it stole
Through the red gates of sunset,
Coming so silently.
We heard it whispering
To the bare trees.
And while we wondered,
The white souls of the autumn leaves
Came softly back,
Drifting, drifting.
Esther Louise Ruble
[186]
SONGS OF THE PLAINS
There's no hiding here in the glare of the desert-
If your coat is sham the sun shines through.
Here with the lonely things and the silence
There is no crowd for saving you.
When hearts love here the love lasts longer,
And hate leaves here a heavy scar.
But we, with the desert's beauty of distance,
Are always dreaming of places far!
If you have come to start a kingdom —
Our eyes have looked on Rome and Tyre !
But if you come with dreams for baggage,
Sit with us by the cedar fire!
ii
The sultry sudden darkness,
Like some black mantle thrown
From shoulders of a giant
On children left alone,
Falls over us; and, stilled with fear,
In dark we see, in silence hear!
Then rain ! — a sudden pounding
Of unformed maddened things,
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Pounding, splashing — stubborn
As vultures' heavy wings
That pound the air, too sure to hate,
In hunger, and move low, and wait!
in
Four old trees stand tall on a hill.
Wind swirls around them, never still;
And their heads together bow and sway
As if in talk of a game they play.
Sometimes they laugh and sometimes sigh;
And there beneath a low gray sky
I've seen them drop their leaves when thins
The gold and crimson, as near dawn
Wise gamblers drop their cards upon
The table, saying kindly, "Why
Quarrel with a game that no one wins!"
IV
The wood was so old that I thought
I'd hear it saying its prayers
In the aisles like cloisters wrought;
But I came on it, unawares,
Chuckling — like old men mellow grown —
Talking of youth on a hill alone !
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Glenn Ward Dresbach
The birds love you too,
Calling, "Sweet, sweet, sweet !"
In the windy lane
Where the tree-tops meet.
But I love you best,
Since my lips let pass
No song lest I miss
Your steps on the grass.
VI
I'll go where willows quicken
Their dances in the glow
Of morning, and the wild brooks
Make music down below;
For I am weary seeking
The things I may not know.
And I shall feel the silver
Of willow leaves, and hold
A drop of water winking
With rainbows yet unsold.
What more may all the world find
Now all its dreams are old!
Glenn Ward Dresbach
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TWO POEMS
I SHALL REMEMBER
Open to me the door of heaven
For an hour, an hour!
Let me pace the floor of heaven,
Let me pluck one flower!
Forever and forever heaven
Will live upon my lips.
I shall remember. Never heaven
Shall fail my seeking ships.
I shall be shod and swathed with heaven-
Ah, the blue filmy veil —
Because for an hour I bathed in heaven
Whose winds hurt and heal.
I shall remember. Songs of heaven,
I shall sing them still;
Like the silver throngs of heaven
I shall have heaven's will.
So open to me the door of heaven
For an hour, an hour!
Let me breathe the air of heaven,
Let me pluck one flower!
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Grace Fallow Norton
SHY PERFECT FLOWER
Shy perfect pearl-white flower, blooming alone
In northern woods where snow has sown
Its myriad seed — shy perfect flower,
Fragrant, alone —
Your dark leaves cluster close to hide you the more.
I part them and remember bright poppies on the plain.
They run in the wind, a ragged gypsy train;
They fling themselves at the feet of the golden grain —
When it is slain they too are slain.
Their life is a cry! Their life is a sudden scarlet stain!
Their dream-dark seeds have fearful power.
And you, shy perfect pearl-white flower?
Grace Fallow Norton
TO SAPPHO
Torn fragments of your woven words I read;
And less their throbbing cry has power to stir
My passion than to soothe me to strange peace,
Remembering the long silence fallen on you.
Julia R. Reynolds
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IRISH SONG
Where the highway steps along
(In Donegal, in Donegal!)
I gave my feet the choice o' way, wherever they would
roam.
They might have marched to Londonderry, Belfast,
Dublin . . .
The foolish, eager feet o* me, they marched straight home !
The little gown o* blue you wore
(In Donegal, in Donegal!)
Cried out to me, Come in! Come in! Your apron it said,
Stay!
The tying o' the plaid shawl across the warm heart o' you
Tied in-along the heart o' me — I couldn't get away.
I took off my wander-shoes,
(In Donegal, in Donegal!)
The highway stepped along alone, until it slipped from
view.
I laid aside my dusty dreams, hung up my ragged lifetime,
And rested feet and heart o' me before the sight o' you!
Helen Coale C -ew
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ON THE WING
A wind that blows from the sea, and smells
Of spring and fall together,
Runs racing up the yellow fields
Into the autumn weather.
And I run too, for I am young
And breathless with all living —
The trees are shouting as we pass,
The asters singing in the grass.
In half an hundred years from now,
When all my songs are sung,
I'll not be old and crossly sage,
I'll love the bright hill of my age
Under its winter sun,
And wave the gayest hand I know
To everything that's young.
Dorothy Keeley
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FOUR POEMS
I ASK FOR A FRIEND
I ask a girl, for a friend — a playmate
Full of May-blown dreams; and lilac in her hair;
With boyish ankles, intimately strange
And hands forever busy with applause;
And mothering, lash-screened, virgin eyes;
And a slim-breasted body made of joy.
Her coming would mean spring to my heart;
We'd give our souls a holiday, cut loose,
Arrange a rendezvous with Love somewhere —
And forget to keep it, being good friends.
I ask a girl, for a friend — a playmate
Full of May-blown dreams; and lilac in her hair.
SONNET
When Love unveiled her body to my sight
And in my heart a strange unquiet grew,
As soft winds stir the bosom of the night
And, after, spill their tears as drops of dew —
When first Love laid aside her woven dress
Of silken-tissued dreams and scented stuff,
And fastened my young eyes with loveliness
Until I thought one world was scarce enough
To hold such utter happiness and pain —
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Ernest Walsh
I begged the god of love to strike me blind,
And seal Love's image up within my brain,
Queen of my thoughts the kingdom of my Mind!
But when I took Love's body to my breast,
Her lips were bitter, and her face a jest.
THE FICKLE LOVER
I have made Life my mistress; built temples
Of song to her in my heart; paraded
Before her enemy, Death. And smiling,
Have kissed Life before Death's envious eyes;
Proud in my lust, gay in my strength, love-wise.
But often in my dreams I've wished to touch
The cool sophisticated lips of Death.
COLLAPSE
As an old tree bent by ages of winds,
So I am tired;
As an oak-leaf blown out upon the sea,
I am lonely;
As a storm-conceived adventurous wave
Divides before its thousand lonely deaths
On alien shores,
My life shall end.
Ernest Walsh
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TABLEAUX
SCHERZO
My soul is a dancer —
A dancer under shimmering willows in the sunlight.
The wind draws a bow across his violin.
He plays a scherzo —
Rippling notes on strings of silver.
Play faster, wind!
My feet are more swift than the leaves of the willow-
Shimmering, shimmering —
Amber shadows in the sunlight.
My feet are more swift than the laughter of waters.
Play faster, wind!
TRYST
I will wear my gown of dusk-blue silk,
And in my hair
A crescent moon, curved like a petal.
From the rim of the shadowy pool
I will pluck an iris —
Dusk-blue, shading to purple,
Faint-scented as the breath of sandalwood.
Softly
I will come through the drooping willows.
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Ellen Margaret Janson
The leaves will catch at my gown,
Dusk-blue
In the purple shadows.
The grasses will whisper, sighing,
As if they knew.
Down at the wall
I will wait alone in the darkness;
And close my eyes,
Dreaming that I hear your voice.
INCENSE SMOKE
One stick I lit in the bronzen image.
The smoke curls upward — lazily — between his lips;
Ivory, and the frail blue of shadows.
The image is speaking —
Words of lazy dream-blue smoke
Carved like ivory:
"Do you remember? —
The priests wore dragons, great jeweled dragons on their
robes.
They sang dreamily
To the god of the dim temple —
Chanting, chanting
Through the twisted smoke of incense.
But the god did not stir.
His eyes were like opals, veiled with lost mystery!"
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The smoke curls upward — drowsily —
Between his lips;
Mist-gray, and the amber of shadows.
The image is speaking.
Words of dim gray-gold smoke
Graven like amber:
"Do you remember
The offering you burned alone at dawn
To one who did not answer?
Across the ashes
You saw the sea-mist rising — rising —
Like the smoke of incense,
And cried out with the pain in your heart."
The smoke curls upward — dreamily —
Between his lips;
Ivory, and the lost blue of shadows.
NIGHT IN THE CITY
/
I hear them pass by the wall of my garden —
The swift whisper of silk,
And laughter —
Tinkling like the wind-bells on the shadowy terrace,
Tinkling and calling.
Their lanterns form a necklace
Of gems,
Ellen Margaret Janson
Low-strung across the dusk.
Their laughter dies away past the wall of my garden.
In the willow
The echo lingers —
The echo of laughter, failing
Into sudden weariness.
THE UNKNOWN i
I am the stir of garments that you heard
Pass by you in the wood.
I am the lips that smile, but speak no word
For evil or for good.
I am the voice that whispered in the long
Sweet twilights of the spring.
I am the haunting music of the song
I would not let you sing.
I am the finger beckoning in the street;
The strife, and the reward;
The quivering joy that stabbed you with its sweet
Sharper than any sword.
I am the dream that shines — a light apart,
When other lights are spent.
I am the pain that grips and breaks your heart
To save it from content!
Ellen Margaret Janson
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POEMS
WILD ORCHARD
It is a broken country,
the rugged land is
green from end to end;
the autumn has not come.
Embanked above the orchard
the hillside is a wall
of motionless green trees,
the grass is green and red.
Five days the bare sky
has stood there day and night.
No bird, no sound.
Between the trees
stillness
and the early morning light.
The apple trees
are laden down with fruit.
Among blue leaves
the apples green and red
upon one tree stand out
most enshrined.
Still, ripe, heavy,
spherical and close,
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William Carlos Williams
they mark the hillside.
It is a formal grandeur,
a stateliness,
a signal of finality
and perfect ease.
Among the savage
aristocracy of rocks
one, risen as a tree,
has turned
from his repose.
THE LONELY STREET
School is over. It is too hot
to walk at ease. At ease
in light frocks they walk the streets
to while the time away.
They have grown tall. They hold
pink flames in their right hands.
In white from head to foot,
with sidelong, idle look —
in yellow, floating stuff,
black sash and stockings —
touching their avid mouths
with pink sugar on a stick —
like a carnation each holds in her hand-
they mount the lonely street.
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SPOUTS
In this world of
as fine a pair of breasts
as ever I saw,
the fountain in
Madison Square
spouts up of water
a white tree,
that dies and lives
as the rocking water
in the basin
turns from the stone rim
back upon the jet
and rising there
reflectively drops down again.
THE WIDOW'S LAMENT IN SPRINGTIME
Sorrow is my own yard
where the new grass
flames as it has flamed
often before, but not
with the cold fire
that closes round me this year.
Thirty-five years
I lived with my husband.
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William Carlos Williams
The plum tree is white today
with masses of flowers.
Masses of flowers
load the cherry branches
and color some bushes
yellow and some red,
but the grief in my heart
is stronger than they,
for though they were my joy
formerly, today I notice them
and turn away forgetting.
Today my son told me
that in the meadows,
at the edge of the heavy woods
in the distance, he saw
trees of white flowers.
I feel that I would like
to go there
and fall into those flowers
and sink into the marsh near them.
William Carlos Williams
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COMMENT
THE HOPE OF PEACE
ALL the movements of the day — all the isms and
schools and drives — fade into insignificance compared
with the movement to get rid of war. This movement is
not out of place in these pages — in fact, it is immediately
the poet's business.
I am tempted to repeat now an editorial from POETRY
for September, 1914. In the first white heat of those
terrible first battles, I wrote this page on The Poetry of
War:
Poets have made more wars than kings, and war will not cease until
they remove its glamour from the imaginations of men.
What is the fundamental, the essential and psychological cause of
war? The feeling in men's hearts that it is beautiful. And who have
created this feeling? Partly, it is true, kings and their "armies with
banners"; but, far more, poets with their war-songs and epics, sculptors
with their statues — the assembled arts which have taken their orders
from kings, their inspiration from battles. Kings and artists have
united to give to war its glamour, to transmute into sounds and colors
and forms of beauty its savagery and horror, to give heroic appeal to
its unreason, a heroic excuse to its rage and lust.
All this is of the past. The race is beginning to suspect those old
ideals, to give valor a wider range than war affords, to seek danger not
at the cannon's mouth but in less noisy labors and adventures. When
Nicholas of Russia and William of Germany, in solemn state the other
day, invoked the blessing of God upon their armies, the emotion that
went round the world was not the old thrill, but a new sardonic laughter.
As Cervantes smiled Spain's chivalry away, so some poet of the new
era may strip the glamour from war. Tolstoi's War and Peace and many
lesser books are chapters of the new revelation, and modern science,
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The Hope of Peace
modern invention, have aided the race in its half-conscious effort to
unveil the bitter hideousness of the war-god's visage. But the final
word has not been said; the feeling that war is beautiful still lingers in
men's hearts, a feeling founded on world-old savageries — love of power,
of torture, of murder, love of big stakes in a big game. This feeling must
be destroyed, as it was created, through the imagination. It is work for
a poet.
There will be a new poetry of war.
The time for that poetry is now. It must be written in
peace, for when war begins there is nothing to do but
fight. War is no more inevitable between nations than
between individuals: as duelling was outlawed long ago in
all civilized states, and its elaborate and long-accepted
code of honor relegated to the scrap-heap, so shall war be
outlawed by the assembled nations of the world, and its
elaborate and long-accepted code of international law
become a dusty byword of history. War is an absurd
anachronism in this closely connected talking and trading
world; and modern science has made it an anachronism
poisonous and murderous beyond the maddest dreams of
the darkest devils of hell. It must end if the white race
is to preserve its numbers, its supremacy, its creative
energy and power, and the proud fabrics of its civilization.
We face a war to the death on war, and none can afford
to be a slacker in it. In this ultimate war the deadliest
weapon is the germ of thought in human brains. Only
the poet can spawn that germ, and send it flying forth
by invisible millions to mature in the minds of men.
Cervantes wrote Don Quixote, and suddenly a rotten
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thing, long ready for death, was dead. Let some poet —
or perhaps a number of poets in a number of arts — stab
with laughter or scorch with tears the rotten hulk of war,
and suddenly the world will know that war is dead.
H.M.
MUST ART BE INTERESTING?
Implicitly all interesting things have beauty, and the
most interested person is no doubt the most esthetic.
Such a thesis is not hard to support on the ground that
interest can relate only to things of immediate worth and
beauty. But to travel from this rather nervous doctrine
of values to the position that beauty is determined by the
interest it arouses is another and more complex matter.
Though Ford Madox Hueffer in his recent Thus to Revisit
reiterates charmingly, and with convincing disregard for
the logical responsibilities of his theme, that art must be
interesting, the shadow of an unsolved problem rather
obscures the result. He rests his proposition, it is true,
on human impulse, not on philosophical consideration;
but the question is not easily confined. In that spec-
ulative periphery of art where beauty dissolves into
metaphysics no problem is more persistent.
As a weapon against the absolutism in art which makes
no compromise with the public taste the book will be
effective. It undermines this stern and puritan dogma
with the suggestion that final values in art as well as in
other fields of human experience lie after all in human
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Must Art be Interesting?
nature itself. It abandons the rigorous heaven reserved
by the absolutists for the saved few, and returns frankly
to popular interest for its standard. To their ascetic
practice in casting off mundane and popular interests it
can oppose the Protagorean formula, "Man is the measure
of all things." But in liberating art from these moralisms
Mr. Hueffer imposes another moralism in his repeated
dictum, "Art must be interesting.'* Why after all must
these highly complex things, art and interest, always be
associated? That interesting things, as a matter of
descriptive fact, are in a measure beautiful does not imply
that art, as a matter of moral or artistic imperative, must
be interesting. Mr. Hueffer rather increases than dimin-
ishes the speculative difficulties and enticements of the
problem.
Overburdened beauty carries many theories on its back.
All of them, from absolutist to pragmatist, aim in some
way to find a functional value of beauty in the social
system. The mere act of erecting a rational theory about
it indicates an effort to organize beauty into a system of
human relationships. There remains to remark, no doubt,
that beauty is not a theory, that it is not subject to
theorizing, that it needs and possesses no justification in
the social order. But that too in its way is incorrect. In
this field rich with questions Mr. Hueffer's interesting
book quite appropriately asks what it cannot answer.
Baker -Browne!/
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
REVIEWS
A SYMPOSIUM ON MARIANNE MOORE
Poems, by Marianne Moore. Egoist Press, London.
Such contrary opinions of this provocative little pam-
phlet have reached us that perhaps the most suggestive
review will be a more or less questioning rehearsal of
them. Miss Moore's steely and recondite art has long
been a rallying-point for the radicals. Although her first
appearance was in POETRY — in May, 1915, most of the
entries in these twenty-four closely printed pages date
from Others and The Egoist, a few from The Dial and
Contact. Rumor has hinted that the selection and publica-
tion were made by certain friends of the author without
her knowledge.
If one were to accept the challenge of the title, and of
the geometrical verse-designs which frame these cryptic
observations, one might be led straight to the ancient and
rather futile inquiry, What is poetry? Poetry is evidently
a matter of individual definition. H. D., surely a critic
of authority, calls Miss Moore a poet, and a number of
young radicals are eager to pronounce her " a very great
poet," as Yvor Winters did in a recent letter. "With the
exception of Wallace Stevens," he wrote, "she is about
the only person since Rimbaud who has had any very
profound or intricate knowledge and command of sound;
and I am not sure but I think her about the best poet in
this country except for Mr. Stevens."
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A Symposium on Marianne Moore
A more moderate admirer, Miss Winifred Bryher, sends
us the following estimate from England:
This volume is the study of a Marco Polo detained at home. It is
the fretting of a wish against wish until the self is drawn, not into a
world of air and adventure, but into a narrower self, patient, dutiful and
precise. Those Various Scalpels is sharper than a diamond. It is as
brilliant a poem as any written of late years, and yet it is but a play
with the outside of substances and the inside of thoughts too tired to
feel emotion. And Dock Rats again, or England, are wrought as finely as
the old Egyptians wrought figures from an inch-high piece of emerald;
but they lack the one experience of life for which life was created.
The temperament behind the words is not a passive one, however
much environment may have forced meditation upon it as a form of
"protective coloration." The spirit is robust, that of a man with facts
and countries to discover and not that of a woman sewing at tapestries.
But something has come between the free spirit and its desire — a
psychological uneasiness that is expressed in these few perfect but static
studies of a highly evolved intellect.
Technically it is a triumphant book. There are scenes which are a
joy to remember; the shifting color of
wade
through black jade
of the crow-blue mussel shells —
And the vivid beauty of The Talisman:
Under a splintered mast,
torn from ship and cast
near her hull,
a stumbling shepherd found
embedded in the ground,
a sea-gull
of lapis lazuli,
a scarab of the sea,
with wings spread —
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
curling its coral feet,
parting its beak to greet
men long dead.
Miss Moore has preferred, to date, to express simply the pictorial
aspect of the universe, and she has fulfilled perfectly each self-imposed
task. Her Poems are an important addition to American literature, to
the entire literature of the modern world. Only, Marco Polo, your
sword is ready and your kingdoms wait. May it soon please you to
leave the fireside and ride forth.
But Miss Moore's admirers don't have it all their own
way. Here is the point of view of one of POETRY'S
associate editors, Marion Strobel:
Even a gymnast should have grace. If we find ourselves one of an
audience in a side-show we prefer to see the well-muscled lady in tights
stand on her head smilingly, with a certain nonchalance, rather than
grit her teeth, perspire, and make us conscious of her neck muscles.
Still, we would rather not see her at all.
Just so we would rather not follow the contortions of Miss Moore's
well-developed mind — she makes us so conscious of her knowledge!
And because we are conscious that she has brains, that she is exceedingly
well-informed, we are the more irritated that she has not learned to
write with simplicity.
The subject-matter of her poems is inevitably dry; the manner of
expression pedantic. She shouts at our stupidity: "Literature is a
phase of life; " " Words are constructive when they are true — the opaque
allusion, the simulated flight upward, accomplishes nothing." And we
yawn back at Miss Moore's omniscience.
And another poet-critic, Pearl Andelson, says:
Marianne Moore has much the Emily Dickinson type of mind, but
where Emily Dickinson's not infrequent obscurities arise out of an
authentic mysticism, Marianne Moore's are more likely the result of a
relentless discipline in the subtler "ologies" and "osophies." She is
brilliant at times to the point of gaudiness, although one feels that in
[2IO]
A Symposium on Marianne Moore
her brilliance she is most herself. As to form, the fact that she wavers
between prose and poetry is not disguised by the breath-taking line-
formation. Indeed, I should say the incongruous effect was heightened,
rather than diminished, by occasional rhyming. The same, for the
most part, may be said of content as of form. Such poems as Picking
and Choosing and Poetry are hybrids of a flagrantly prose origin.
Well, let us turn to the book — without prejudice one
way or the other. In the first place, the lady is delight-
fully independent; she says in Black Earth:
Openly, yes,
with the naturalness
of the hippopotamus or the alligator
when it climbs out on the bank to experience the
sun, I do these
things which I do, which please
no one but myself. Now I breathe and now I am sub-
merged; the blemishes stand up and shout when the object
in view was a
renaissance; shall I say
the contrary? The sediment of the river which
encrusts my joints makes me very gray, but I am used
to it, it may
remain there; do away
with it and I am myself done away with, for the
patina of circumstance can but enrich what was
there to begin
with. This elephant skin
which I inhabit, fibred over like the shell of
the cocoanut, this piece of black glass through which no light
can filter — cut
into checkers by rut
upon rut of unpreventable experience —
it is a manual for the peanut-tongued and the
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hairy-toed. Black
but beautiful, my back
is full of the history of power, Of power? What
is powerful and what is not? My soul shall never
be cut into
by a wooden spear.
And so on for about forty more lines, which develop and
elaborate the elephantine symbol, and then drop it, as it
were, in mid-career, with a quizzical trunk-flourish. As
Black Earth is admirably representative of its author's
thought and style, it may serve as the text for a few
inquiries.
Meditative self-confession is no novelty in English
poetry — we have countless examples in as many different
patterns. Hamlet's soliloquies, Gray's Elegy, Pope's Essay
on Man, Byron's Childe Harold, Whitman's Song of
Myself, many sonnets by Milton, Wordsworth, Keats and
other supreme sonneteers — these are but a few of the
numerous high precedents in English poetry for more or
less imaginative and more or less metrical meditation.
And one may not deny imaginative power to the mind
which can create and round out and energize so effectively
the grotesque image which appears when she holds up the
mirror to her soul. Neither may one refuse any poet the
right to attempt new metrical patterns; since only through
such attempts does any achievement become possible —
any enrichment of the English prosodic scheme.
So it remains to attempt to estimate the validity of
Miss Moore's processes and the degree of her achievement.
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A Symposium on Marianne Moore
Unquestionably there is a poet within the hard, deliber-
ately patterned crust of such soliloquies as Black Earth,
Those Various Seal-pels, Pedantic Literalist, Reinforce-
ments— almost any of these titles — though a poet too
sternly controlled by a stiffly geometrical intellectuality.
Miss Moore is in terror of her Pegasus; she knows of what
sentimental excesses that unruly steed is capable, and so
her ironic mind harnesses down his wings and her iron
hand holds a stiff rein. This mood yields prose oftener
than poetry, but it wrings out now and then the reluctant
beauty of a grotesque, or even, more rarely, such a lyric
as Talisman.
No amount of line-patterning can make anything but
statement and argument out of many of the entries in this
book — for example, Picking and Choosing, which begins:
Literature is a phase of life: if
one is afraid of it, the situation is irremediable; if
one approaches it familiarly,
what one says of it is worthless. Words are constructive
when they are true; the opaque illusion — the simulated flight
upward — accomplishes nothing. Why cloud the fact
that Shaw is self-conscious in the field of sentiment but is otherwise re-
warding? that James is all that has been
said of him but is not profound? It is not Hardy
the distinguished novelist and Hardy the poet, but one man
"interpreting life through the medium of the
emotions."
If the mood instinctively flouts the muse, what of the
method? If the mood may rarely yield more than the
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
hard reluctant beauty of a grotesque, is the method
inevitable and right, fitting words musically, magically to
the motive, as in all the masterpieces of the art? Well, let
me confess that I do not find the divine shapeliness and
sound-richness which Mr. Winters referred to in his
letter. What I do find in certain poems is a brilliant array
of subtly discordant harmonies not unlike those of certain
ultra-modern composers, set forth in stanza-forms purely
empirical even when emphasized by rhyme, forms which
impose themselves arbitrarily upon word-structure and
sentence-structure instead of accepting happily the
limitations of the art's materials, as all art must. When
Miss Moore uses the first syllable of accident as a whole
line to rhyme with tack, or the article a as a line to rhyme
with the end of Persia; when she ends a stanza in a split
infinitive, or in the middle of the swift word very — indeed,
anywhere in the middle of words or sentences, she is
forcing her pattern upon materials which naturally reject
it, she is giving a wry twist even though her aim is a
grotesque; and when her aim is more serious, such verbal
whimsicalities strike at once the intensely false note of
affectation. And as she takes her own way in these
details of style, so she gives little heed to the more general
laws of shapeliness; each poem begins as it ends and ends
as it begins — a coruscating succession of ideas, with little
curve of growth or climax.
What I do find throughout this book is wit — wit
fundamental and instinctive which expresses itself not
A Symposium on Marianne Moore
only in words, phrases, rhymes, rhythms, but in ideas,
emotions. The grim and haughty humor of this lady
strikes deep, so deep as to absorb her dreams and possess
her soul. She feels immense incongruities, and the
incongruity of her little ego among them moves her art
not to grandeur but to scorn. As a satirist she is at times
almost sublime — what contrary devil balks her even at
those moments, tempting her art to its most inscrutable
perversities ?
Youth is sometimes penetrating in self-diagnosis. I
am tempted to recall the first poem Miss Moore ever
published — That Harp You Play So Well, from the 1915
group in POETRY:
O David, if I had
Your power, I should be glad —
In harping, with the sling,
In patient reasoning!
Blake, Homer, Job, and you,
Have made old wine-skins new.
Your energies have wrought
Stout continents of thought.
But, David, if the heart
Be brass, what boots the art
Of exorcising wrong,
Of harping to a song?
The sceptre and the ring
And every royal thing
Will fail. Grief's lustiness
Must cure the harp's distress.
"If the heart be brass . . . every royal thing will fail."
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
It is not this reviewer who says that, or invokes for this
poet "grief's lustiness." May even grief soften a heart of
brass? And is a deep resistless humor like Miss Moore's
the most subtly corrosive destroyer of greatness?
H. M.
A MYSTIC WARRIOR
The Mystic Warrior > by James Oppenheim. A.A.Knopf.
We might count as art every cross-country flyer cutting
its shriek into a black sky or a blue sky; every sky-scraper
flinging windows, light, smoke into an incredulous sky;
every unimpeachable bath-room trinity; the giant torsos
of boilers and bellies of gas-tanks; the bird-like or
fish-like aeroplane; the architecture of the farm — silo,
granary and barn; or, for the matter of that, the fields of
grain themselves, the vain prodigal orchards. It is in
the air to do this. Out of such industrial shapes men are
making violent tragic-comic drama, ruled as in art by the
mathematics of the elements. So the analogy is close
and tempting, and we can point that way to America as
rich in self-expression. Or we may follow another trend
of fashion — an import out of French dadaism or a mood
synchronous with it — and abandon the word art altogether
as an obsolete and paupered notion. A composer of genius
was recently heard to bandy the idea of an anti-art
society, where he said, lightly but seriously, any artist of
consequence belonged. Ben Hecht in his first work of
size follows his apparently biographic hero to say it is not
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A Mystic Warrior
"art" he wants, "art is something he can spit out in
conversation." In a foreword to an exhibition of his
photographs Alfred Stieglitz formally junks the word
along with a number of abstractions. Yet it was a word
concrete enough to artists, not so long dead either —
Cezanne, Degas, Rodin, Whistler — to whom the living
still pay homage.
People may be wiped from the face of the earth, but art is.
And there are still those who echo this as a hard truth,
in whose eyes even the machine has been unable to break
the essential sequence of things. They have need of this
word to name the one human reality running so close to
all reality as to far outstrip that vanity, self-expression;
as to make shapes more intentional, more delicate, more
potent than any American industry has yet made. In
the pages of The Mystic Warrior, an analysis of himself,
James Oppenheim writes himself down as one of these.
His sense of the relentless absolutes of art, his denial of
himself as an absolute, instil this poem with a deep
candor, a kind of darkened tranquillity — virtues rare
enough today to mean in themselves distinction:
The artist, finally the artist?
America shuns him, cutting herself off from her own greatness:
But he comes nevertheless ... he is Walt riding on top a bus, and Poe
dreaming of stars in a cottage with his wife dying,
And Emerson, absent-minded, minded of the Oversoul, in Concord
woods,
And Hawthorne moody in sad Puritanism,
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
And Mark Twain smoking cigars in bed, sweating and groaning over
Huckleberry Finn,
And giant-like tearful Dreiser, and Sandburg sitting in a newspaper
office,
And Vachel Lindsay jazzing in Paradise (or is it Springfield, Illinois?)
And Masters among all souls in strange Spoon River.
So I speak for the artist . . .
But also I speak for the multitude like myself, with equal struggles and
the same yearnings,
The same sorrows, joys and lamenting,
But no gift: inarticulate, frustrated, America's victims.
There is the argument, in the unfolding of which per-
haps Oppenheim does not quite go the length of candor.
For his indecisions and his failures he can't resist blaming
America more than the mere fact that the inevitable
image, word, phrase come seldom to him. You enjoy the
drift of the book, but you have to ignore more than one
lapse of taste — that unerring instinct for the word and the
place. Perhaps too breathless an awe has sometimes
defeated him. There is a hint of this in the picture of a
meeting with "our most powerful novelist" — Theodore
Dreiser, one is led to suppose:
So we walk, we talk.
And here is the Hudson, the North River, with shouting gold of sunset
and smokes of the tugboats,
Shadows of cliffs, like the spacious threshold of a spiritual universe;
And I grow tense with the wonder of it and feel the artist's despair of
setting it down in words . . .
So I turn to him: "Just look," I say, "could you describe that?"
He speaks carelessly:
"Oh, yes — that or anything."
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A Mystic Warrior
Yet this reverence for great vision, great craft, has had
its reward, the reward of concentration — workmanship. If
this writer were a house-painter, you might not always
like the colors he mixed, but his surfaces, his finish would
be scrupulous. So The Mystic Warrior contains pictures,
— indelible pictures, snatches of rhythm, voices: pictures
of childhood in New York schools and brownstone houses;
pictures of a death and a funeral:
I am a tailor: I am cutting and sewing a pair of pants for my little
brother:
My little grandmother comes in, walks softly, inaudibly by me ....
She carefully pulls down the shades, making the room yellow . . .
I confront her: "Why do you pull down the shades, grandma?"
She says there is too much sunlight . . .
Then she looks at me, hesitates, takes me by the arm,
Whispers in my ears, "James, your father is dead."
I smell flowers — lilies, roses, violets — I shall never forget that smell . . .
I am taken down in the long parlor . . .
There are people there: uncles and aunts, grandpa, grandma . . .
There are camp-stools, and a black-cloth coffin smothered in flowers . . .
And now my infancy is ended . . .
For this is death; I have come face to face with my enemy, death . . .
Servant-girls soothed me, saying, "He is an angel now." . . .
Vivid portraits of people; pictures of offices, wharves,
homes; pictures of a Jewish bourgeoisie in New York,
redolent of the race, recalling the riches Rembrandt made
of the same theme in Amsterdam centuries ago; and the
breath of countless streets:
Old days on the West Side,
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
Old nights.
Summer nights when there was a faint Coney Island stir down electric-
lit Eighth Avenue . . .
A moth-stir, flame, shadow, Bagdad.
There is unction in The Mystic Warrior, but almost no
sham, no bunk. At its best the tenor of it is curiously
dark and steady — a suggestion of slow night rain, or a ship
at anchor in night waters. The poem succeeds in being a
distillation, in contrast to the brew made, it seems, after
the recipe: "To hell with work, novelty will provide the
kick." Oppenheim, you feel, has earned the right to say:
In the grey air we walk, in the glister of the dying year;
And my soul goes down to roots, and the roots, like a tree's, are deep in
the earth.
Acknowledging this, you are even willing to ignore the
abstract use of the word "soul." Dorothy Dudley
MRS. WYLIE'S POEMS
Nets to Catch the Wind, by Elinor Wylie. Harcourt,
Brace & Co.
A lyric voice slight, but clear and fine, may be heard in
this book, the voice of a free and lightly ranging spirit.
The sound of it is now gay, now grave, but always it holds
a little aloof — one detects that something "austere,
immaculate" for which the poet herself holds her Puritan
ancestry responsible. In a number of poems her mood is
thoughtfully admonitory, as The Eagle and the Mole,
Madman s Song, or Say Not of Beauty she is Good:
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Mrs. Wylies Poems
Oh, she is neither good nor bad,
But innocent and wild.
Enshrine her and she dies, who had
The hard heart of a child.
Again, it is meditative or descriptive, or, as in Valentine^
self-searching. But always the emotion is shy and deli-
cate, as of a cool small wild-flower growing, by some
whim of Nature, not in the woods, but in the protected
area .of a garden. The flower is very simple and of quiet
color, but it has an individual vitality nevertheless.
The Eagle and the Mote, urging toward the high or the
profound as against a safe "middle-of-the-road" policy, is
perhaps the most temptingly quotable poem in the book.
But as it has already gone the rounds, and as POETRY has
printed Velvet Shoes and certain others, we prefer to offer
The Prinkin1 Leddie as an example of pure and irresistible
gayety — a mood extremely rare in modern art:
"The Hielan' lassies are a' for spinnin'
The Lowlan' lassies for prinkin' and pinnin';
My daddie w'u'd chide me, an' so w'u'd my minnie
If I s'u'd bring hame sic a prinkin' leddie."
Now haud your tongue, ye haverin' coward,
For whilst I'm young, I'll go flounced an' flowered,
In lutestring striped like the strings o' a fiddle,
Wi' gowden girdles aboot my middle.
My silks are stiff wi' patterns o' siller,
I've an ermine hood like the hat o' a miller,
I've chains o' coral like rowan berries,
An' a cramoisie mantle that cam' frae Paris.
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
When the skies are low an' the earth is frozen,
Ye'll be gay an* gled for the leddie ye've chosen,
When ower the snow I go prinkin' and prancin'
In my wee red slippers were made for dancin'.
It's better a leddie like Solomon's lily
Than one that'll run like a Hielan' gillie
A-linkin' it ower the leas, my laddie,
In a raggedy kilt an' a belted plaidie!
An unusually interesting first book. H. M.
THOUGHTFUL MEASURES
Out of Mist, by Florence Kilpatrick Mixter. Boni &
Liveright.
Carefully studied, delicately wrought, are these poems —
this sequence of twenty-nine sonnets followed by as many
other poems. If they are in a sense too studied and de-
liberate, they yet express genuine emotion in grave and
thoughtful measures of modern straightness and sim-
plicity— there is no pretense in the feeling, and rarely a
trace of rhetoric or palaver in the style. The best of
them rise to a quiet beauty and distinction — Lullaby,
which was in POETRY last summer, is a fine lyric; and this
one, To a Young Girl, is almost as quotable, though the
word holocaust is a bit melodramatic:
I had forgotten there were hearts so young
As yours, tonight,
Whose voice, now echoing with songs unsung,
Fills me with strange delight.
I had forgotten there were eyes so swift
Of April mirth,
[222]
Thoughtful Measures
Flashing as though with some invisible gift
From Heaven to Earth.
I had forgotten there were lips that pray,
Like a gray-winged dove,
For one more hour of laughter and of play
Before the holocaust of love.
The sonnet sequence hints at the story of a youthful
love affair finished by autocratic death. We follow it a
little apart, watching "out of mist," through translucent
veils, an experience not unusual, not strongly individual-
ized, but for that very reason of wide appeal. Many a
first love-story appears here in thoughtful reminiscence,
its joy and sadness real, but softened by time and change.
In sonnet XXVII we have the climax of it:
In memory I sit beside your bed
And see again the smile that lit your face;
Nor do the slow forgetful years erase
A syllable of those last words we said.
For, through my tears, seeing your brightness fled
Because of them, I pled with Heaven for grace
To make you smile once more, while with quick pace
I heard night passing that would leave you dead.
Swiftly I took your hand and held it tight,
Then told in words that choked me ever after
Some foolish trifling thing. And though the light
That came with your brave laugh was gone thereafter,
Yet, as a rocket fills the quiet night
With falling stars, I hear again your laughter.
Cradle Song, Dressing Up, Elegy, and The Candle use
the familiar four-line measure to present emotions of
flower-like grace. PL M.
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
OUR CONTEMPORARIES
NEW INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINES
Three magazines which aim at international authority
and circulation send us their first numbers from Rome,
London and New York. All three appear in a luxury of
format and typography more easily attained abroad than
here; attainable here, indeed, only at a cost so high as
to be almost prohibitive. We have, first, The Broom,
described as "an international magazine of the arts
published by Americans in Italy" (at 18 Trinita dei
Monti), and edited by Harold A. Loeb and Alfred
Kreymborg, with Giuseppe Prezzolini as associate editor;
second, Fanfare, "a musical causerie issued on the first
and fifteenth of the month," edited by Leigh Henry and
published by Goodwin & Tabb, Ltd., at 34 Percy Street,
London; and, third, we have the resuscitated Little
Review, issued as a seven-dollar-a-year "quarterly of arts
and letters," in an initial autumn number, from 27 West
Eighth Street, New York, the "administration" consisting
of Margaret Anderson, "jh," Ezra Pound and Francis
Picabia.
In The Broom Alfred Kreymborg shows once more his
ability as an editor, but the new paper does not "start
something," nor arouse the excitement of anticipation, to
the degree that the first number of Others did in July, 1915.
There is much variety in the contents, which range from
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New International Magazines
a strictly correct sonnet by Walter de la Mare to phan-
tasmagoric designs in black and white and gray from
paintings in the most approved cubistic manner by
Albert Gleizes and Juan Gris.
We see many familiar names among the fifteen or so
literary contributors: Lew Sarett has a Maple-sugar Song
of the Chippewas; Amy Lowell offers a three-page chant
in praise of Lilacs —
Your great puffs of flowers
Are everywhere in this my New England.
Lola Ridge sings of Hospital Nights; Wallace Gould offers
a prose-poem narrative about Marnia. The only other
verse-entries are some Chinese poems of J. Wing, trans-
lated by E. Powys Mathers, and a twelve-line rhymed
poem, Lake, by Bayard Boyeson, which opens the number.
Other poets appear in prose: James Stephens with a
tragic Dublin story, Hunger, as ruthless and terrible in its
deliberate detail as the title implies; James Oppenheim
with a quite wonderful study of a sanely insane mind;
Haniel Long with a whimsical sketch. Conrad Aiken,
Louis Untermeyer and Emmy Sanders offer certain
critical inquiries concerning poets and their art, and the
invasion of Europe by America. In short, almost every-
one appears except the over-modest Mr. Kreymborg.
The magazine has a beautifully printed page about five
by seven inches, set sumptuously in hand-made large-
paper measuring nearly nine by thirteen.
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
Fanfare ', which is primarily musical, blows a gay trumpet
as it enters:
Fanfare — does not the word suggest something stirring, brilliant,
joyous, exciting — something which preludes adventure? . . . We are
the heralds of the new era, sounding the fanfare for its union with new
beauty. Such union calls for revelry; hence our Fanfare will be merry.
. . . We set forth boldly, our trumpets bright to reflect sunlight, our
Fanfare ringing truly alike for ritual, ceremony, battle, joust, forlorn
hope, festival, triumph or masquerade.
This paper, although a musical periodical, believes, like
POETRY, in a closer alliance of the arts. Its editor thinks
that musicians are too narrowly trained — therefore
Fanfare will deal with literature, drama, painting, sculpture, and theatre-
craft, as matters a knowledge of which forms a necessary complement to
musical culture.
So we have two or three clever drawings and a poem by
John Gould Fletcher among the musical entries within
the gaily decorative cover of Fanfare's first number.
The Little Review is larger than of yore — an hundred
and twelve pages measuring more than seven inches by
nine. It aims at the very latest thing, and achieves, as
its piece de resistance, a fifty-page poem by Jean Cocteau,
translated by Jean Hugo, The Cape of Good Hope. Having
read half of it, and being still in a state of innocence, I
commend the rest to those who can watch "the dangerous
hallucinations continue."
On the way to Cocteau, we have Ezra Pound on Bran-
cusi, illustrated; some Fumigations by Picabia, a phi-
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New International Magazines
losophy of Psycho-democracy set forth by Mina Loy,
poems in French by Paul Morand and in German by
Ivan Goll. Also there are some rather outspoken tales,
and Ezra Pound tells us all of our sins in a Historical
Survey.
It is said that Mr. Pound readopted The Little Review
because of its editor's brave fight against the suppression
of James Joyce's Ulysses. Well, it was a brave fight — any
fight against the censor's gag-laden fist takes bravery.
The trouble is, The Little Review never knows when to
stop. Just now it seems to be headed straight toward
Dada; but we could forgive even that if it would drop
Else von Freytag-Loringhoven on the way.
VARIOUS PRIZES
The Dial's first award of its annual prize of two thousand
dollars, for one of its contributors, was announced Decem-
ber first. It goes to Sherwood Anderson, of Chicago, the
distinguished author of a number of novels and short
stories, and of Mid-American Chants, poems in free verse,
of which a group first appeared in POETRY for September,
1917.
This is the most generous literary prize as yet awarded
in this country; an admirable example which should have
a train of followers. Although Mr. Anderson's contribu-
tions to The Dial have been in prose, his being a poet as
well gives POETRY the opportunity to congratulate him,
[227]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
and also the staff of the magazine which honors him.
The Poetry Society of America announces the award
of two prizes, each of five hundred dollars:
First, the prize offered for the best book of verse by
an American poet, published in the United States during
the year 1920, is divided equally between Heavens and
Earthy by Stephen Vincent Benet, and Smoke and Steel,
by Carl Sandburg. The judges were Richard Le Gal-
lienne, William Lyon Phelps and Harriet Monroe.
Second, the prize offered in the William Lindsey
Contest for poetic drama has been awarded to Harry
Lee for his four-act play, // Poverello. One hundred and
forty-five plays were submitted, and the judges were
Stuart Walker, George Arliss, George P. Baker, Jane
Dransfield and Jessie B. Rittenhouse.
The Friday Club of Chicago, at a recent meeting of its
board of directors, voted fifty dollars to POETRY as a
prize for a young poet for the current year.
This gift is acknowledged with special pleasure as it is
the first offer of the kind which POETRY has received
from any women's club, or indeed from any society. A
number of clubs, in Chicago and elsewhere, have given
annual prizes to painters, sculptors, and perhaps musi-
cians; we hope that the Friday Club's example will remind
them that prizes to poets, being excessively rare, should
have the preference from clubs largely devoted, as most
of them are, to the study of literature.
[228]
CORRESPONDENCE
A LETTER FROM PARIS
My Dear POETRY: Interest in American letters seems
to be increasing in France. As one evidence, note that
the program required for the English-teaching certificate
contains Frost's North of Boston. This is due to M. Charles
Cestre, the well-known professor of American literature at
the Sorbonne. I consider it a bold step to admit in
University studies a quite modern poet whose genius has
not yet been fully acknowledged by our critics.
French verse is still a matter of discussion. Yet Paul
Valery seems to attract partisans from sundry corners:
La lune mince verse une lueur sacree,
Toute une jupe d'un tissu d'argent leger
Sur les bases de marbre ou vient 1'ombre songer,
Que suit d'un char de perles une gaze nacr6e.
A scintillating symphony of vowels, and a modern render-
ing of an old romantic theme. Valery and a few other
poets have united to form a "New Pleiade." The original
French Pleiade, you remember, was formed at a moment
when the French language needed clarification and
enriching. What seems to be the aim of the actual
Pleiade ? The names of the members will speak for them-
selves: Countess Mathieu de Noailles, Pierre Camo,
Derennes, Gasquet, de Magallon, Mazade, Valery — all
artists of classical or semi-classical verse. It is a protest
against the extremist and cryptic schools of art. The
[229]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
Countess is a great favorite among women, tender youths,
priests (if I dare trust a friend's testimony), and bourgeois
readers in whose ears still lingers the flowing cadence of
our traditional verse. Camo writes finely-chiselled sonnets
and odes in which the modern notes blend exquisitely with
fading reminiscences. Gasquet was a fiery artist of the
South, whose experiments in polyphonic stanzas, together
with alexandrines, have just been cut short by death.
Our poetical tradition has definitely acquired a pliancy
which not even the attempts at classic tragedy of the
official Comedie Frangaise are able to endanger. Even
Max Jacob, the sweet child of humor, who keeps apart
from any coterie with his bons mots and new faith — even
Max Jacob writes exquisitely modulated alexandrines.
You see that our extremists, Dada excepted (but who
knows what they mean? — not even Ezra Pound), display
a certain coquetry towards our well ordered muse:
Le ciel a pour la mer des regards qui b6nissent,
Le soleil sur la mer est un bateau qui glisse,
Chaque lame a son or, chaque 6cume a sa nuit . . .
What do you think of this gold-and-black up-to-date
fabric?-
Every wave has its gold; every foam has its night.
More robust and more thoughtful has become the muse
of Vildrac, and of Remains. The Chants du Desesp'er'e, by
Charles Vildrac, ring with the sorrow of the poet's bruised
dreams. Vildrac bends over the corpse of his friend, a
[230]
A Letter from Paris
victim of the war; he turns his clear eyes on his suffering
fellow-men; he sees more ugliness than before.
Jules Romains (Le Voyage des Amants) seems to remain
more true to his former philosophy. A smiling fancy,
direct sensations of Paris and the world, with sometimes a
cosmic vista:
Les jours grandissent,
Chaque jour est un coup plus dur
Port6 plus profond dans la nuit;
Et la matiere des t6nebres
Tantot molle, tantot cassante,
Se pulverise ou s'aplatit.
The art of the New Pleiade and of the Unanimists
make this a great epoch for French poetry. Alas! that
it should not also be glorious for the French drama! But
here we have to deplore that our official theatres leave to
private and too little moneyed initiative the production
of new, vigorous and audacious plays. The Comedie
Frangaise practically gave nothing worth mentioning
apart from the classical repertoire. La Mort Enchaine'e,
by Maurice Magre, has won a prize of a few thousand
francs for the best new play, and it is grievously accurate
that this heavy and obscure mythological drama was
merely one of the passable novelties of the Comedie. As
for the Odeon, we feel sure that the new play by Paul Fort
is going to make up for the stuff that has been produced
there in the course of the few past months. But of course
we have our secondary stages: the Vieux Colombier,
the Theatre des Arts; and we have the Group of the Six.
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
I shall have occasion to write you about this young
group of Six Musicians, and about Jean Cocteau as a poet.
Let me say now that Les Maries de la Tour Eiffel, played
at the finest and most comfortable theatre in Paris, the
Champs Elysdes, before a smart audience and a good
number of buoyantly hostile traditionalists, has not
proved a failure. It is a farce mimed by dancers for
actors, while a phonograph explains, in the words of
Cocteau, the progress of the plot. A nervous cerebral
music, with here and there patches of sunlight, has been
composed by the Six. It is a healthy combination of
sound, color, and gesture; with no human voice, which
may be deplored, but at least with nothing of the thunder-
ing declamation of too many comedians. 'Jean Catel
NOTES
• Mr. Robert Frost has recently accepted an invitation from the
University of Michigan; and he is now an informal member of its
faculty, resident during the college year at Ann Arbor. His latest book
was Mountain Interval, published by Henry Holt & Co., in 1916.
Dr. William Carlos Williams, of Rutherford, N. J., will put out very
soon a new book of poems through the Four Seas Co., which has pre-
viously published Al ^ue Quiere and Kora in Hell. Dr. Williams and
Robert McAlmon are editors of Contact, a magazine of which four
numbers have appeared during the past year.
Miss Grace Fallow Norton, of New York, who is now sojourning in
France, is the author of The Sister of the Wind and other books of verse
(Hough ton Mifflin Co.).
1 Mr. Glenn Ward Dresbach, who has recently removed from New
Mexico to El Paso, Texas, is the author of several books of verse, the
latest being Morning, Noon and Night (Four Seas Co.). A new one,
In Colors of the West, will appear next spring.
[232]
Notes
Marjorie Meeker, who recently married Mr. Shirley Wing, lived
formerly in Columbus, O., but is now travelling abroad. She has not
yet published a volume.
The other poets in this number are recent accessions to POETRY'S list:
Helen Coale Crew (Mrs. Henry Crew), of Evanston, 111., has published
verse and prose in various magazines.
Miss Julia R. Reynolds is a young poet of Sumter, S. C.; Miss Ellen
Margaret Janson of Seattle, Wash.; and Miss Dorothy Keeley of
Chicago. Miss Esther Louise Ruble was brought up in Kansas, and
is now a student at the University of Chicago.
Mr. Ernest Walsh, who was in the aviation service during and after
the War and suffered a fall, is now in the Army Hospital at Camp
Kearny, Cal., where there is a group of young men who are much
interested in poetry.
BOOKS RECEIVED
ORIGINAL VERSE:
The Lifted Cup, by Jessie B. Rittenhouse. Houghton Mifflin Co.
The Fugitive, by Rabindranath Tagore. Macmillan Co.
Red Poppies in the Wheat, by John Richard Moreland. J. T. White & Co.
Free Forms, by Simon Felshin. Privately printed, Paris, France.
John Masterson, by Kenneth Campbell. Campbell Press, San Diego.
Collected Poems, by Edwin Arlington Robinson. Macmillan Co.
A Penny Whistle Together with The Babette Ballads, by Bert Leston
Taylor. Alfred A. Knopf.
Archways of Life, by Mercedes de Acosta. Moffat, Yard & Co.
Quiet Waters, by Blanche Shoemaker Wagstaff. Moffat, Yard & Co.
Shrines and Shadows, by John Rollin Stuart. Four Seas Co.
Nets to Catch the Wind, by Elinor Wylie. Harcourt, Brace & Co.
Cross-currents, by Margaret Widdemer. Harcourt, Brace & Co.
Saturday Market, by Charlotte Mew. Macmillan Co.
Varied Verse, by Carter S. Cole, M. D. Moffat, Yard & Co.
Chenar Leaves — Poems of Kashmir, by Mrs. Percy Brown. Longmans,
Green & Co.
The Pier-glass, by Robert Knopf. Alfred A. Knopf.
[233]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
On the Des Moines, by James Cloyd Bowman. Cornhill Co.
The Beggar s Vision, by Brookes More. Cornhill Co.
Pieces of Eight: A Sequence of Twenty-four War-sonnets, by John
Armstrong Chaloner. Privately printed, Roanoke Rapids, N. C.
Willow Pollen , by Jeannette Marks. Four Seas Co.
We, the Musk Chasers, by Loureine Aber. Ralph Fletcher Seymour.
England in the Eighteenth Century, by O. F. Christie. Basil Blackwell.
Melodies and Mountaineers, by Isabella McLennan McMeekin. Strat-
ford Co.
The Return and Other Poems, by Margaret L. Woods. John Lane Co.
The Open Sea, by Edgar Lee Masters. Macmillan Co.
Reynard the Fox, or The Ghost Heath Run, by John Masefield. Illustrated
by G. D. Armour and Carton Moorepark. Macmillan Co.
Bethlehem, by Elizabeth Sewell Hill. Methodist Book Concern, Cin-
cinnati.
Dreams Out of Darkness, by Jean Starr Untermeyer. B. W. Huebsch.
Children of God and Winged Things, by Anne Moore. Four Seas Co.
Early and Late, by Katharine Warren. Duffield & Co.
PLAYS:
Four Plays for Dancers, by W. B. Yeats. Macmillan Co.
The Tragedy of Nan, by John Masefield. Macmillan Co.
Oliver Cromwell, by John Drinkwater. Houghton Mifflin Co.
One Act Plays, by Alice Brown. Macmillan Co.
Uriel Acosta — A Play, and A Fourth Group of Verse, by Charles Reznikoff.
Privately printed, New York.
ANTHOLOGIES AND TRANSLATIONS:
Songs of the Cowboys, ed. by N. Howard Thorp. Houghton Mifflin Co.
Oxford Poetry, 1921, edited by Alan Porter, Richard Hughes and Robert
Graves. Basil Blackwell, Oxford, England.
Widsith; Beowulf; Finnsburgh; Waldere; Deor: translated by Charles
Scott Moncrieff; introd. by Viscount Northcliffe. E. P. Button & Co.
Selected Poems and Ballads of Paul Fort, translated from the French by
John Strong Newberry. Duffield & Co.
PROSE:
Louise Imogen Guiney, by Alice Brown. Macmillan Co.
The Literature of Ecstasy, by Albert Mordell. Boni & Liveright.
[234]
Mr. Ford Madox Ilueffer, the distinguished English poet, novelist and critic, wrote
us last July:
If American periodical literature has today a little peak, a little group of
journals, raising it to the level of the best of European cosmopolitanism, or at any
rate in that direction, it is because you and your small paper showed how, editor-
ially and economically, it could be done.
Vol. XIX No. V
POETRY for FEBRUARY, 1922
Poems by Wang Wei PAGE
. Translated by Witter Bynner and Kiang Kang-hu 235
Answering Vice-prefect Chang — A Message to P'ai Ti —
On the Way to the Temple — Mount Chung-nan — A View
of the Han River — In My Lodge at Wang-Ch'uan — My
Retreat at Chung-nan — Among Bamboos — Lines — A Parting
— A Song at Wei-ch'eng — The Beautiful Hsi-shih — Young
Girls from Lo-yang — Harmonizing a Poem — A Green Stream
In Praise of Abrigada Leonora Speyer 242
An Old Woman — I Complain in Passing . . . Harlow Clarke 247
Winter Dawn Constance Lindsay Skinner 248
From a Chicago "L" Sarah-Margaret Brown 251
Fate I-II Harold Monro 252
Hillside Poems F. R. McCreary 255
Winter Rain — A Naked Maple — Noontime — Judges — Alone
on the Hill
Incidentals Hi Simons 258
Dust in the Road — Taps — The Star — Portrait of an Old Roue
Takfor Sidst Babette Deutsch 259
In the Office Gwendolen Haste 260
The Guardians — Aileen
Motherhood Medora C. Addison 261
The Lover Paul Tanaquil 261
Fire Eunice Tietjens 262
The Utterance of Poetry H. M. 266
Translating Wang Wei Witter Bynner 272
Reviews:
A Cool Master Yvor Winters 278
Mr. Yeats' Plays Cloyd Head 288
Notes and Books Received 292-293
Manuscripts must be accompanied by a stamped and self-addressed envelope.
Inclusive yearly subscription rates. In the United States, Mexico, Cuba and
American possessions, $3.00 net; in Canada, $3.15 net; in all other countries in the
Postal Union, $3.25 net. Entered as second-class matter Nov. 15, 1912, at the
post-office, at Chicago, 111., uuder Act of March 3, 1879.
Published monthly at 543 Cass St., Chicago, 111.
Copyright 1922, by Harriet Monroe. All rights reserved.
POETRY asks its friends to become
Supporting Subscribers by paying
ten dollars a year to its Fund. The
art of poetry requires, if it is to
advance, not only special sympathy
from a discriminating public, but
also endowment similar to that
readily granted to the other arts.
All who believe in the general pur-
pose and policy of this magazine,
and recognize the need and value
of such an organ of the art, are in-
vited to assist thus in maintaining
it
VOL. XIX
No. V
A Magazine of \ferse
FEBRUARY 1922
POEMS BY WANG WEI
ANSWERING VICE-PREFECT CHANG
AS the years go by, give me but peace,
Freedom from ten thousand matters.
I ask myself and always answer,
What can be better than coming home?
A wind from the pine-trees blows my sash,
And my lute is bright with the mountain-moon.
You ask me about good and evil ? . . .
Hark, on the lake there's a fisherman singing!
BOUND HOME TO MOUNT SUNG
The limpid river, past its bushes
Flowing slowly as my chariot,
[235]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
Seems a fellow-voyager
Returning with the evening-birds.
A ruined city-wall overtops an old ferry,
Autumn sunset floods the peaks. . . .
Far away, beside Mount Sung,
I shall rest and close my door.
A MESSAGE TO P*AI TI
Cold and blue now are the mountains
From autumn-rain that beat all day.
By my thatch-door, leaning on my staff,
I listen to cicadas in the evening wind.
Sunset lingers at the ferry,
Cooking-smoke floats up from the houses. . . .
Oh, when shall I pledge Chieh-yu again,
And sing a wild poem at Five Willows!
ON THE WAY TO THE TEMPLE
Not knowing the way to the Temple of Heaped Fragrance,
I have roamed, under miles of mountain-cloud,
Old woods without a human track.
But far on the height I hear a bell,
A rillet sings over winding rocks,
The sun is tempered by green pines. . . r
At twilight, close to an emptying pool,
I lie and master the Passion-dragon.
[236]
Witter Eynner and Kiang Kang-hu
MOUNT CHUNG-NAN
The Great One's height near the City of Heaven
Joins a thousand mountains to the corner of the sea.
Clouds, when I look back, close behind me;
Mists, when I enter them, are gone.
A central peak divides the wilds
And weather into many valleys. . . .
Needing a place to spend the night,
I call to a wood-cutter over the river.
A VIEW OF THE HAN RIVER
With its three Hsiang branches it reaches Ch'u border
And with nine streams touches the gateway of Ching:
This river runs beyond heaven and earth,
Where the color of mountains both is and is not.
The dwellings of men seem floating along
On ripples of the distant sky. . . .
O Hsiang-yang, how your beautiful days
Make drunken my old mountain-heart!
IN MY LODGE AT WANG-CH*UAN
AFTER A LONG RAIN
The woods have stored the rain, and slow comes the smoke
As rice is cooked on faggots and carried to the fields;
Over the quiet marshland flies a white egret,
And mango-birds are singing in the full summer trees.
[237]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
1 have learned to watch in peace the mountain morning-
glories,
To eat split dewy sunflower-seeds under a bough of pine,
To yield the place of honor to any boor at all. . . .
Why should I frighten sea-gulls even with a thought ?
MY RETREAT AT CHUNG-NAN
My heart in middle age found the Way,
And I came to dwell at the foot of this mountain.
When the spirit moves, I wander alone
Where beauty is known only to me.
I will walk till the water checks my path,
Then sit and watch the rising clouds,
And some day meet an old woodcutter,
And talk and laugh and never return.
IN A RETREAT AMONG BAMBOOS
Alone I am sitting under close bamboos,
Playing on my lute, singing without words.
Who can hear me in this thicket? . . .
Bright and friendly comes the moon.
LINES
You who arrive from my old country,
Tell me what has happened there!
Did you see, when you passed my silken window,
The first cold blossom of the plum ?
[238]
Witter Bynner and Kiang Kang-hu
A PARTING
Friend, I have watched you down the mountain
Till now in the dark I close my thatch-door. . .
Grasses return again green in the spring,
But, O Wang Sun, will you return?
The morning rain settled the dust in Wei-ch'eng;
In the yard of the tavern green willows revive. .
Oh, wait to empty one more cup !
West of Yang Gate — no old friends!
THE BEAUTIFUL HSI-SHIH
Since beauty is honored all over the empire,
How could Hsi-shih remain humbly at home?
At dawn washing clothes by a lake in Yueh;
At dusk in the Palace of Wu, a great lady!
Poor, no rarer than the others —
Exalted, everyone praising her rareness.
But above all honors, the honor was hers
Of blinding with passion an emperor's reason.
Girls who had once washed silk beside her
Now were ordered away from her carriage. . . .
Ask them, in her neighbors' houses,
If by wrinkling their brows they can copy her beauty.
[239]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
A SONG OF YOUNG GIRLS FROM LO-YANG
There are girls from Lo-yang in that door across the street,
Some of them fifteen and some a little older.
While their master rides a rapid horse with jade bit and
bridle,
Their handmaid brings them codfish on a golden plate.
On the painted pavilions, facing their red towers,
Cornices are pink and green with peach-bloom and with
willow;
Canopies of silk awn their seven-scented chairs;
Rare fans shade them home, to their nine-flowered cur-
tains.
Their lord, with rank and wealth and in the green of life,
Exceeds, for magnificence, even Chi-lun;
He favors girls of lowly birth and teaches them to dance,
And he gives away his coral-trees to almost anyone.
The wind of dawn just stirs when his nine soft lights go out,
Those nine soft lights like petals in a flying chain of
flowers.
From play to play they have barely time for singing over
the songs;
No sooner are they dressed again than incense burns before
them.
Those they know in town are only the rich and the lavish,
And day and night they're visiting the homes of Chao and
Li. ...
Who cares about a girl from Yueh, face jade-white,
Humble, poor, alone, by the river, washing silk !
[240]
Witter Bynner and Kiang Kang-hu
HARMONIZING A POEM BY PALACE-ATTENDANT KUO
High beyond the thick wall a tower shines with sunset,
Where peach and plum are blooming and willow-cotton
flies.
You have heard it in your office, the court-bell of twilight:
Birds discover perches, officials head for home.
Your morning-jade will tinkle as you thread the golden
palace,
You will bring the word of heaven from the closing gates
at night.
And I should serve there with you; but, being full of years,
I have put aside official robes and am resting from my ills.
A GREEN STREAM
I have come on the River of Yellow Flowers,
Borne by the current of a green stream
Rounding ten thousand turns through the mountains
To journey less than a hundred li.
Rapids hum on scattered stones,
Light is dim in the close pines,
The surface of an inlet sways with nut-horns,
Weeds are lush along the banks.
Down in my heart I have always been clear
As this clarity of waters.
Oh, to remain on a broad flat rock
And cast my fishing-line forever!
Translated from the Chinese
by Witter Bynner and Kiang Kang-hu
[241]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
IN PRAISE OF ABRIGADA
I had been told
A foolish tale —
Of stone — dank — cold :
But you,
Held to wide winter storm,
To clutch of blackening frost and ocean gale,
Are warm!
I thought that stone was silent too,
Unmoved by beauty,
Unaware of season or of mirth:
But I hear laughter, singing, as I lay
My face against your gray;
Surely I hear the ritual of far waves
And scent their winging spray,
Mixed with wild-rose and honeysuckle,
Budding sassafras,
And the cool breath of pungent, leafy bay.
I knew that walls were sheltering
And strong;
But you have sheltered love so long
That love is part
Of your high towering,
Lifting you higher still,
As heart lifts heart. . . .
[242]
Leonora Speyer
Hush!
How the whip-poor-will
Wails from his bush:
The thrush
Grows garrulous with delight !
There is a rapture in that liquid monotone,
"Bob White! Bob-/P£i/<?/"
Dear living stone!
In the great room below,
Where arches hold the listening spaces,
Flames crackle, leap and gleam
In the deep fire-places;
Memories dream . . .
Of other memories, perhaps,
Of gentle lives,
Of births, and of those other births that men call death,
Of voices, foot-steps tapping the stone floor,
And faces . . . faces . . .
Beyond, the open door,
The meadows drowsy with the moon,
The faint outline of dune,
The lake, the silver magic in the trees:
Walls, you are one with these!
High on the loggia-roof,
Under the stars as pale as they,
[243]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
Two silent ones have crept away,
Seeking the deeper silence lovers know:
Into the radiant shadows of the night,
Into the aching beauty of the night,
They dare to go !
The moon
Is a vast cocoon,
Spinning her wild, white thread
Across the sky.
A thousand crickets croon
Their sharp-edged lullaby.
I hear a murmuring of lips on lips:
"All that I am, beloved!
Aii!"-
Lovers' eternal cry!
Lift them still higher, wall!
You stand serene:
The great winds linger, lean
Upon your breast;
The mist
Lifts up a gray face to be kissed;
The east and west
Hang you with banners,
Flaunt their bold victories of dusk and dawn;
Seasons salute you as they pass,
Call to you and are gone.
[244]
Leonora Speyer
Amid your meadow-grass
Lush, green,
You stand serene.
Houses, like hearts, are living, loving,
Joyful or woeful,
Forget or are forgot;
Houses, like tired hearts,
Sicken at last, and die,
Crumble and rot:
But they who know you, Abrigada,
They — and I —
Forget you not!
Nor they who stand on Abrigada's roof,
Glowing, aloof!
Come with me now,
.Climb with me, stand, look down
In new content of mood,
Withdrawn from clasp of crowd
And tangle of the town !
Climb swifter still —
From safe companionship of cloud
The deeper to look down!
Not back!
Forget the thirst, the sordid cup,
[245]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
The plethora, the piteous lack;
Forget the trafficking in tears,
The arrogance of scars.
Look up ...
To dream undaunted dreams aloud,
And stumble toward the stars!
This be in praise
Of Abrigada;
In all the ways
That come to me
Through the wise, wistful summer days.
In speech, in rhyme and rhythm of word —
Call it a poem, maybe!
In song — tuck the brown shining wood
Under my chin!
Call it my bird,
My heart,
My violin!
In prayer . . .
In dream . . .
In silence, best of all,
Leaning on the beloved dew-drenched wall.
Leaning and lifting . . .
High . . .
With Abrigada s gesture toward the sky.
Leonora Speyer
[246]
AN OLD WOMAN
Something within her makes her live so long —
It pays no heed that all her friends are dead.
Her age is moving as a simple song,
Wailing that happy days long since are dead.
Something forgets that all her teeth have dropt,
That eyes no longer serve to see her ways.
Time seems not weary of this weed uncropt,
And draws her on into these newer days.
She does not know at night if she will rise
And wake again to live another day.
Eternity of age now makes her wise —
A thing on point of passing, hear her say:
"The moon outlasts my days; the sleepless hounds
Bark ever in the night — strange haunting sounds."
I COMPLAIN IN PASSING
I am weary of green in the grass,
Of green in the trees;
Of blue in the sky, of white on the clouds,
And things like these.
I pray for one boon down the long white day —
That I may cease;
For mountain and meadow and grove and sky
Leave me no peace.
Harlow Clarke
[247]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
WINTER DAWN
The dark rolls back.
Like dropped stars,
The willows shine on the sides of the water-courses:
Their ice-blades clash,
Making a slow thin music.
So wakes he, Tem-Sotetc-Kwi;
So comes he slowly — like a slow thin music.
Ah — ah — hi-i, brothers ! Lovers of trails and sea-paths !
It is the time of sorrow and the time of shutting-in:
For he has come again — Tem-Sotetc-Kwi —
With heavy winds,
Like frozen ropes of cedar, hoary,
Uncoiling from his thighs
To bind the world.
I have seen his white moccasins upon the mountain:
His steps have hushed the waters
Of the great and little falls;
The rushing rivers are stopped.
He has fed the lake's watery breast to the White Bear
That follows him.
The canoes of the Coast-dwellers are hung under the roofs
Like empty cradles:
We can no longer rock on the wings of the great Blue
Heron !
The great Blue Heron has hidden herself
[248]
Constance Lindsay Skinner
Under the thatch of her nest,
Because of his pale gray foxes, with white ears —
His hungry foxes,
Huddled about the brink of her nest.
He has taken away the brown fields,
Where our bare feet danced with Autumn
At the feast of berries and maize —
The bare brown fields that were glad
When we drummed with our brown bare feet,
Singing, "Hoy-mah-ah! hoy a-mah!"
Ai-hi! The mats his witch- woman weaves for him are
thick and cold:
We have put beaver-fur about our feet,
And made us long, long flat shoes to bear us up.
(This is our magic, wise men's magic,
To save us from the White Bear's maw!)
His great snowy owls fill all our cedars.
Aii-hi ! The red breasts of woodpeckers
No longer flicker in our forests.
His witch-woman is plucking the wings of the sky,
The air is stuffed with white feathers:
We no longer may speak with the sun — ai-i!
Gravely, with bowed hearts, we greet you,
O Tem-Sotetc-Kwi, Snow-chief, Ice-hunter,
Priest of the Long White Moons !
Slowly, slowly, like thin music,
Murmur the sorrow-chant,
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Coast-dwellers, my brothers:
For Tem-Sotetc-Kwi has carved the death totem
Over Swiya's house-door —
Hgulx — se — wag — ila — making pure !
Our mother Swiya, Swiya our mother is dead.
Sorrow, sorrow, my tribe, for Swiya!
Much joy had Swiya, our mother, who loved three lovers!
As a maid, boldly she went forth
And met Spring among the willows;
He pierced her with hope.
Singing she entered the green doors of Summer;
Singing she came out, girdled with fragrance.
She took the yellow harvest-moon in her hands,
And waited in the maize-fields behind our village.
Autumn clasped her there in the fields; he crowned her
with maize,
He filled her pouch with berries, he gave her much deer's
meat.
Autumn, Feast-maker! Dearest was he among her three
lovers —
He was the strong one: he gave the most food; he was the
last.
Ai! great joy had Swiya, our mother, who loved three
lovers,
And took their gifts.
All their gifts were ours: Swiya, our mother, kept nothing
back.
[250]
Constance Lindsay Skinner
Now she lies bare, her hands are empty, her face is cold;
Her eyelids are shut, for her eyes are in the Place of Death,
Under white eyelids ! Qulx — se-wag-ila!
Tem-Sotetc-Kwi has carved the death-totem over Swiya's
door.
Slowly, softly, like thin music, murmur the sorrow-chant
For Swiya, our mother. Swiya, our mother, is dead.
^ulx — se — Qulx-se-wag-ila wa!
Gravely, with bowed hearts, we greet you,
O Tem-Sotetc-Kwi, Snow-chief, Ice-hunter,
Priest of the Long White Moons!
Constance Lindsay Skinner
FROM A CHICAGO "L"
The great gray houses walk along
Sombrely and slow,
Weary in the dusk,
In a dragging row.
They are very tired,
Heart-broken and old;
They seem to shudder as they pass,
The winter wind is cold.
Sarah-Margaret Brown
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
FATE
i
I have so often
Examined all this well-known room
That I inhabit.
There is the open window;
There the locked door, the door I cannot open,
The only doorway.
When at the keyhole often, often
I bend and listen, I can always hear
A muffled conversation.
An argument:
An angry endless argument of people
Who live behind;
Now loudly talking,
Now dimly to their separate conflict moving
Behind the door.
There they seem prisoned,
As I, in this lone room that I inhabit:
My life; my body.
You, of the previous being,
You who once made me and who now discuss me,
Tell me your verdict, and I will obey it!
You, long ago,
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Harold Monro
With doubting hands and eager trembling fingers,
Prepared my room.
Before I came,
Each gave his token for remembrance, brought it,
And then retired behind the bolted door.
There is the pot of honey
One left, and there the jar of vinegar
On the same table.
Who poured that water
Shining beside the flask of yellow wine?
Who sighed so softly?
Who brought that living flower to the room ?
Who groaned, that I can ever hear the echo ?
You do not answer.
Meanwhile from out the window
Sounds penetrate of building other houses:
Men building houses.
And so it may be
Some day I'll find some doorway in the wall —
What shall I take them?
What shall I take them
Beyond those doorways, in the other rooms?
What shall I bring them,
That they may love me?
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Fatal question!
For all the jangling voices rise together;
I seem to hear:
"What shall he take them?" . . .
Beyond their closed door there's no final answer.
They are debating.
ii
O Fate! Have you no other gift
Than voices in a muffled room?
Why do you live behind your door,
And hide yourself in angry gloom?
And why, again, should you not have
One purpose only, one sole word,
Ringing forever round my heart,
Plainly delivered, plainly heard?
Your conversation fills my brain
And tortures all my life, and yet
Gives no result. I often think
You've grown so old that you forget;
And having learnt man's fatal trick
Of talking, talking, talking still,
You're tired of definite design,
And laugh at having lost your will.
Harold Monro
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HILLSIDE POEMS
WINTER RAIN
It is sad, this rain
Drip-dripping in the night
Monotonously
Into the snow;
Dripping from the corners of the house
And the ends of black twigs
All night long without change.
Rain, rain soft-fingered,
Lifting up the white snow,
Uncovering the clay beneath;
Rain, soft,
Almost unwilling —
The fingers of an old woman
Who cannot resist
Slipping downstairs in the night
To the front room,
And lifting the sheet for a last look
At what it conceals.
A NAKED MAPLE
You have put off your leaves.
You are like a runner who stands naked at the mark,
Calm and certain of victory.
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You are glorious in your ease,
Waiting for the first silver whistle of the snow;
And in your sureness
That the yellow medal of a May moon will be pinned to
your breast,
Clothed again and triumphant.
NOONTIME
Noontime and locusts,
Locusts goading the heat
Quivering over the hay-fields;
Yet the men arise from half-eaten dinners
And hood canvas over the stacks —
The full tawny breasts of the hayfields —
For the first dark finger of lust
Is pointing over a steeple
Far in the distance.
JUDGES
Between her two brothers,
Who argue of nations and laws
With a neighbor,
She stands, big with a child,
Watching the sunshine;
Waiting the end of their talk,
Saying nothing.
[256]
Frederick R. McCreary
ALONE ON THE HILL
Alone on the hill
In the warm October noon,
With the woods below
And beyond their brilliance the sea:
The moment has come,
The rapt still instant of being,
When water and wood are gone.
There is nothing now
But the on-running fluid of hours
Gleaming with blue, yellow, crimson.
Now quick! Let me run on sharp stones,
Let me strangle in surf choked with the bitter salt-water!
Let me feel pain, feel torture,
And the acid hunger of loneliness !
Give me self, self —
Before I am lost
In this madness of space eternal,
This horror of dream triumphant.
Frederick R. McCreary
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INCIDENTALS
DUST IN THE ROAD
The dust
Is a yellow-grey veil
Over the limbs of the wind.
And the little breeze dons it,
That her fleet litheness,
And the whirling torsions of her sprite's form,
May be apparent
As she gaily runs down the road
To greet us.
TAPS
Out of the night,
Up from the serene valley of the Missouri,.
Over the free forested Kansas hills
Come notes of a bugle —
Mincing, silver-slippered steps of music.
THE STAR
When the "screws" had made their last round
And the lights in the cells were out,
I arose and peered out the window.
And just over the edge of the prison-wall
I saw a tiny, twinkling, yellow star
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Hi Simons
Furtively winking at me,
Like the eye of the Infinite;
Mischievously happy
Because it had slipped me a bit of joy
Over the wall, from "the outside."
PORTRAIT OF AN OLD
The seeds of his sin
Thrust tiny red roots
Among the cell-crevices of his face.
Now their minute purple tendrils
Trace, on his cheeks and nose,
Vine-patterns as intricately beautiful
As his fastidious iniquities.
Hi Simons
TAK FOR SIDST
To C. S.
"Good-bye," you said, and your voice was an echo, a
promise.
You turned to go, a grey iron ghost.
The night took you.
Insubstantial as air, stronger than iron,
You were here and had gone.
Your voice was an omen, an echo.
Eabette Deutsch
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IN THE OFFICE
THE GUARDIANS
Old men nodding over great books,
Always writing with gold pens,
Every morning
Adding figures,
Turning pages;
Every morning
A little grayer,
A little mustier,
A little older.
Old men! — do you keep Age
Hidden between your desks?
Will she catch me
If I come down to ask you
For the October statement?
AILEEN
She goes through the order of the day
Like a nun.
The rattle of her typewriter
Is the rustle of a rosary;
And she speaks in the telephone
With the retreated delicacy
Of one who murmurs before an altar.
Gwendolen Haste
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MOTHERHOOD
Playing alone by the ocean's edge,
Eager and unafraid,
You are the child I used to be,
Playing the games I played.
Now I have only a coward's heart,
Finding you all too dear,
Learning at last that love shall teach
The fearless how to fear.
You are so little against the sky,
Laughing and undismayed —
Oh, little son by the ocean's edge,
I am afraid, afraid!
Medora C. Addis on
THE LOVER
You do not know the wonder I will pour on your name —
It will burst like thunder with all heaven for a frame!
I will raise it as a flame that the wind blows under,
I will cast myself asunder — to my shame, to my blame!
I will make a fame, a wonder of your name.
Paul Tanaquil
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FIRE
Love, let us light
A fire tonight,
A wood fire on the hearth.
With torn and living tongues the flames leap.
Hungrily
They catch and lift, to beat their sudden wings
Toward freedom and the sky.
The hot wood sings
And crackles in a pungent ecstasy
That seems half pain of death, and half a vast
Triumphant exultation of release
That its slow life-time of lethargic peace
Should come to this wild rapture at the last.
We watch it idly, and our casual speech
Drops slowly into silence.
Something stirs and struggles in me,
Something out of reach
Of surface thoughts, a slow and formless thing —
Not I, but a dim memory
Born of the dead behind me. In my blood
The blind race turns, groping and faltering.
Desires
Only half glimpsed, not understood,
Stir me and shake me. Fires
[262]
Eunice Tietjens
Answer the fire, and vague shapes pass
Like shapes of wind across the grass.
The red flames catch and lift,
Roaring and sucking in a furious blaze;
And a strange, swift
Hunger for violence is in me. My blood pounds
With a dark memory of age-old days,
And mad red nights I never knew,
When the dead in me lived, and horrid sounds
Broke from their furry throats.
In drunken rounds,
Blood-crazed, they danced before the leaping flames.
While something twisted in the fire. . . .
Now as the flames mount higher
Strange pictures pass. I cannot see them quite
And yet I feel them.
I am in a dread
Dark temple, and I beat my head
In maddened rite,
Before the red-hot belly of a god
Who eats his worshippers. . . .
This is a funeral pyre
And one lies dead
Who was my life. The fat smoke curls and eddies,
Beckoning suttee. . . .
But the moment slips
To Bacchanalian revels — quick hot lips
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And leaping limbs, lit by the glare
Of human torches. . . .
A sudden spark
Goes crackling upward, followed by a shower;
And I am in the hills, cool hills and dark,
Primeval as the fire. The beacon flare
Leaps in a roaring tower,
Spattering in sparks among the stars
Tales of wild wars.
And on a distant crest
Its mate makes answer. . . .
But the embers gleam
Like molten metal steaming at a forge,
Where with rough jest
Great lusty fellows
Ply the roaring bellows,
And clang the song of labor — and the dream
Man builds in metal. . . .
Now the red flame steadies.
Softly and quietly it burns,
Purring, and its embers wear
A friendly and domestic air.
This is the hearth-fire — home and peace at last.
Comfort and safety are attendant here.
The primal fear
Is shut away, to whistle in the blast
[264]
Eunice Tietjens
Beyond the doorway where the shadows twine.
The fire is safety, and the fire is home,
Light, warmth and food. Here careless children come
Filling the place with laughter;
And after
Men make good council-talk, and old men spin,
With that great quiet of the wise,
Tales of dead beauty, and of dying eyes.
The fire is drooping now. A log falls in
Softly upon itself, like one grown tired
With ecstasy. The lithe tongues sink
In ash and ember:
And something I remember
From ages gone — and yet I cannot think —
Some secret of the end,
Of earth grown old, and death turned friend,
And man who passes
Like flame, like light, like wind across the grasses.
Ah, what was that ? A sudden terror sped
Behind me in the shadows. I am cold;
And I should like your hand to hold
Now that the fire is dead.
Love, light the lamp, and come away to bed.
Fire is a strange thing, burning in your head.
Eunice Tietjens
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COMMENT
THE UTTERANCE OF POETRY
IN the Literary Review of a recent New York Evening
Post Lawrence Mason tells whimsically of the tortures
he has endured in hearing poetry read aloud. Listing
"several different methods," he says:
Some chant or intone it in a dulcet sing-song that woos reluctant
slumber from her lair. Some attack it with athletic vigor, and pride
themselves upon the sheer speed of their delivery. Others find the
summum bonum in emphasizing the beat with the deadly regularity of
a metronome. Still others coldly isolate and anatomize each line till
there is no more savor in it than in a dried prune. Others, again, so
boggle and halt and garble and apologize and re-read that the hearer
is driven to madness, despair, or violent revolt.
And he refers to a cousin "whose method is none of
these — his sole and sufficient guiding principle is to con-
ceal from his unfortunate hearers every evidence of
versification."
Mr. Mason's suffering reminds me of my own experience
with a certain "eminent dramatic revelator" (so adver-
tised) who for two seasons has given expensive recitals
in Chicago under the alleged patronage of women of
social prominence, of whom some, as I definitely ascer-
tained, had never consented to the use of their names,
and others had consented in a mistaken impulse of
kindliness while in blessed ignorance of the man and
his "art." The revelator, whose programs ranged from
Othello to Deburau, followed -the method of Mr. Mason's
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The Utterance of Poetry
cousin, but enriched it with a kind of vocal gymnastics
inherited from the elocutionary school of the eighteen-
seventies. While the three-dollar-a-head audience sat
in silence under the infliction, I amused myself, during
the half-hour or so that a heroic sense of duty held me
there, in certain speculations about the simple, but much
abused art of reading poetry aloud.
It would seem to be a rare gift — the beautiful reading
of poetry. Even the poets themselves are often dis-
appointing, though there is usually a degree of beauty
and illumination to be gained from a poet's reading of his
own verse. The poet instinctively emphasizes rhythm,
sometimes even to the point of intoning or chanting it;
indeed, he rarely carries this too far. But not all poets
have good voices, an accent neither too local nor too
studiedly correct, and a simple effective delivery.
Certain poets, of course, it is a privilege to hear — their
reading is as much a work of art as the poem, and the
two fit together in indissoluble unity. I used to feel this
of Lindsay, whose first reading of The Congo at POETRY'S
first banquet — in March, 1914 — was a triumph in the
double art. But of late Lindsay has acquired bad habits
—his reading has become too loud and melodramatic.
John Masefield's very simple reading of his poems is
beautiful beyond words, because of that marvellous bass
voice of his, rich with all the sorrows of the world. Carl
Sandburg also has a deep-toned organ in his throat which
he uses with subtle simplicity in the proof of his delicate
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rhythms. The fine voice of William Butler Yeats is
of higher pitch than these; his quiet intoning of poetry
nobly illustrates its beauty. Lew Sarett's presentation
of his Indian poems is their perfect and almost necessary
completion. Robert Frost's personality and voice also
fulfil and emphasize the quality of his poems. Witter
Bynner has a rich voice and graceful delivery, but an
over-precise utterance mars the effect of his reading
for me. Alfred Kreymborg, Carlos Williams, Maxwell
Bodenheim — each of these complements his very per-
sonal rhythm in the utterance of his poems. And Padraic
Colum brings to us the authentic Celtic tune — he is
even more of an Irishman than Mr. Yeats.
I wish I could say as much for the women. Amy
Lowell, Eunice Tietjens, Lola Ridge, Helen Hoyt, Mar-
jorie Seiffert, Florence Frank, Jean Untermeyer — all these
read well, some of them brilliantly; all simply, and in
rhythmic fulfilment of their poems. But none of them
with quite the artistic beauty which some of the men have
attained.
On the stage one rarely hears beautiful utterance of
poetry. In all .my unusual experience of theatricalized
Shakespeare, which, beginning with Edwin Booth in
my sixth year, includes almost every distinguished
interpreter since his time, I have heard only one whose
reading of the lines — no, not reading, not anything re-
membered and recited — whose spontaneous utterance of
the lines — seems to me of such perfection, such strange
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The Utterance of Poetry
and consummate beauty, as to be forever memorable
and — alas — incomparable. This was Ada Rehan: to
hear her as Viola or Rosalind was to be moved by a voice,
deep and rich like falling waters, which turned English
words into speech-music of transcendent quality, music
that moved one like Kubelik's violin or Isadora Duncan's
dancing.
Among women, Ellen Terry was perhaps Miss Rehan's
closest rival; but her voice was not quite so bitter-sweet,
and there was a slight jerkiness in her delivery which
gave it vitality and picturesqueness but detracted from
absolute music. Mary Anderson had a voice like a cello,
of extraordinary richness and range, and a fine sense of
poetic cadence; but her delivery, though beautiful, to be
remembered always with joy, was more deliberate and
studied, leaning more to the old rhetorical school.
Booth was wonderful, of course — my youth shone with
the romantic glamour of him. But it must be admitted
that Booth mouthed his lines by overstressing his con-
sonants, and that his delivery was not the spontaneous
utterance of perfect art but the brilliant recital of speeches
learned. He was a great artist of his Victorian time and
his somewhat rhetorical school; but he was not an orig-
inator, not one of the genius-illumined who strike out
new times, new methods.
Henry Irving had a more far-seeing mind, but his gift
was for the spectacular. His speech was gusty and
storm-ridden, his cadences churned and broken like a bold
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skiff outriding a gale. It was an adventure to listen to
the lines of his Shylock — the poetry was so often in danger
and so unexpectedly triumphant. He ranted early and
often, but his ranting was always in the picture, always
in the service of a deliberate conventionalization, a
planned and achieved pattern. The modern poetic drama
has scrapped his particular convention; but we may still
envy him his skill, for we cannot yet claim to have estab-
lished our own convention.
If Booth and Irving ranted sometimes, Lawrence
Barrett ranted always; and John McCullough was seldom
above the temptation, although his robust blank verse
had always a certain beauty of cadence. Richard
Mansfield came in a time of more simple Thespian
manners, but he broke up the lines, he had no sense of
rhythm; whether in Henry Fifth or Beau Brummel, he
spoke always prose. Of all the male actors I have heard,
Forbes-Robertson is the most assured master of poetic
cadence; but his reading of Shakespeare, though beautiful,
is sophisticated and deliberate — it lacks the spontaneity,
and also the variety, which made Ada Rehan's, and even
Ellen Terry's, a continual flaring of new fires.
The Irish Players are rhythmically endowed beyond any
other company of my remembrance; which is not strange,
since Irish speech is musical with poetic cadence, and
these players were trained by Synge and Yeats and Lady
Gregory, the three poets who have used it to the highest
poetic purpose. This beautiful rhythmic speech has been
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The Utterance of Poetry
the secret of their charm, the one most potent reason for
the effect of artistic unity and beauty in their rendition of
the great plays of the Celtic renaissance.
The subject has led me to reminiscence when inquiry
was intended — we have lingered with the masters instead
of seeking examples in common life. If few actors read
poetry with due regard for the rhythm, still fewer public
readers have any conception of the primary principles of
the art they profess, even when they have freed themselves
of the hideous old elocutionary tradition which deliber-
ately destroyed poetic cadence, broke up the lines, and
turned poetry into agonizing prose.
This tradition is chiefly to blame for banishing from
modern life an art which should be at least as common and
friendly a pleasure and solace as music. A good voice, a
sense of rhythm, simple unexaggerated utterance, all
showing respect for the line and revealing the larger
cadences which overlie the basic pattern — such a combina-
tion may make the reading-aloud of poetry, in any house-
hold or group of friends, a joy as fine as the excellent
playing of a musical instrument.
More encouragement of this art might reveal and
develop exceptional talent in persons scarcely aware of
it. I remember an exquisite out-door presentation of
Ernest Dowson's Pierrot of the Minute by two young
sisters who had never realized their rare gift for the most
delicate musical subtleties of poetic dialogue. And in the
history department of the University of Chicago hides a
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certain modest professor whose reading of the Ode to a
Nightingale gives his friends an experience as magnificent
as Muratore ever offered with his proudest solo, or
Paderewski in his palmiest days.
The reading of poetry should be an easily accessible
delight instead of the bore which it usually is. The defect
chiefly to be avoided is a certain high-sounding rotundity
which most people assume like a toga when they start to
read poetry aloud. Most voices need training, to be sure,
to develop the latent beauty in them; every school should
teach the proper use of this delicate musical instrument
within us. Given* a good voice properly controlled, an
ear for poetic rhythm, and the simplest possible observance
of the pitches and tones of poetically enhanced speech,
and you have the beginning of good reading of poetry — a
beginning which practice, and the stimulus of emotional
and imaginative intensity, may develop into high artistic
beauty. //. M.
TRANSLATING WANG WEI
Just as Tu Fu and Li Po are often spoken of in conjunc-
tion by the Chinese, so are two other great poets of the
T'ang Dynasty, Meng Hao-jan and Wang Wei. The
latter, who lived 699-759 A. D., is distinguished among the
poets of China by a deep and beautiful optimism. The
melancholy that wounded Tu Fu and Meng Hao-jan
seems not to have touched Wang Wei beneath the surface.
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Translating Wang Wei
And, whereas Li Po sought in wine solace from the ills and
sorrows of life, Wang Wei found an abiding content in the
"green and healing hills" and in the highly humbled
and attuned mysticism of Lao-tzu's teaching.
As a young man, Wang Wei became Assistant Secretary
of State; but at the age of thirty-one, when his wife died,
he left his post and retired to live near Mount Chung-nan.
Two of his poems about Mount Chung-nan are published
in this number, both breathing the sober sweetness and
simplicity of his retired life. One of them begins with the
line, "My heart in middle age found the Way"; the
Chinese word for the Way being Tao, the first character
of the title of Lao-tzu's book, Tao-Te-Ching, which may
be translated in whole as The Way and the Exemplification.
Taoism appears, then, to have been the consolation of
Wang Wei, although Professor Herbert M. Giles, in his
volume Chinese Literature, declares it to have been
Buddhism. We realize, not only from the direct statement
in this one poem, but from the spirit of all his poems, that
he had serenely accepted the Way, the natural way of the
universe.
There was for a while a strong division between the
followers of Lao-tzu and the followers of Confucius. Po
Chu-yi ridiculed Taoist doctrines in the following four
lines, crisply translated by Professor Giles:
" Who know speak not, who speak know naught, "
Are words from Lao-tzu's lore.
What then becomes of Lao-tzu's own
Five thousand words or more?
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The answer is that Lao-tzu's words, fused now with both
Buddhism and Confucianism, have become an integral
part of the religion of China. Here are two characteristic
quotations from his gospel:
Follow diligently the Way in your own heart, but make no display
of it to the world.
Do nothing, and all things will be done.
Among the selections printed in this issue, note the last
two lines of the poem, Answering Vice-Prefect Chang: a
question asked in terms of complicated morality and
answered in terms of simple happiness:
You ask me about good and evil?
Hark, on the lake there's a fisherman singing.
This does not mean that the ideal Taoist literally "did
nothing.'* As a matter of fact Wang Wei was a physician,
a high government official, a great poet, and also one of
China's most illustrious painters. (A scroll attributed to
him is on view at the Metropolitan Museum in New
York.) His activities, however, were all in flow with
universal forces: they sang like the fisherman — there was
no fret, no jealousy, no self-exaltation, no irritated
struggle; only harmony, humility, exalted identity with
nature — a true and wide knowledge of values, making
him a master of words, a master of the brush, and a
master of life. Yes, there was a sure gaiety in Wang Wei,
instanced in his Message to P'ai TV, the fellow-poet with
whom he longed to drink again and to "sing a wild
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Translating Wang Wei
poem"; or in the verses already mentioned, My Retreat at
Chung-nan, in which he happily anticipated the day
when he should "meet an old wood-cutter, and talk and
laugh and never return."
In the last two lines of the poem to P'ai Ti, he addressed
his friend, according to a too frequent Chinese manner, by
the name of Chieh-yu, who was a recluse of the Ch'u
kingdom, famous somewhat for drinking, but more for
stopping Confucius' chariot and warning him against
politics with the song:
O phoenix, O phoenix,
Virtue is corrupted!
What is past is past all counsel,
What is future may be moulded. . . .
Come away! Come away!
Politics are dangerous!
And Wang Wei's reference in the final line of this same
poem is to the place where he will be drinking with his
friend; yet Five Willows is the place named, where long
ago T'ao Ch'ien had lived, another famous recluse who
was both a great writer and a great drinker.
The last two lines of the poem In my Lodge at Wang-
Ch'uan after a Long Rain, clear and significant as they are
in themselves, yet contain, for the Chinese reader, enrich-
ing allusion and connotation. There was once a scholar,
Yang-tzu, who, before he became a student of Lao-tzu,
was highly respected and honored by his fellow-men.
Later, through the many years of his discipleship, he lost
his prestige, and even a boor would take precedence over
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him; but he was glad because he had formerly been
proud and pretentious. The last line refers to a hermit
who was fond of sea-gulls; they followed him wherever he
went. His father asked why they were not afraid and
bade the son bring him some; but next day, when the
hermit went out intending to take them to his father,
they all flew away.
The poem in the group most in need of explanation,
because of its allusion to historic events and personages,
is The Beautiful Hsi-shih; and the last two lines of
A Song of Young Girls from Lo-Yang also require the
following summary:
During the Chou Dynasty, when the Yueh kingdom
was conquered by the Wu kingdom, the Yueh king still
held his throne and plotted to throw off the tributary
yoke. Aided by his able minister, Fan Li, he planned to
distract the king of Wu with women. Fan Li searched
through the Yueh kingdom for girls to beguile him and
came upon Hsi-shih washing clothes by a lake. Conquer-
ing his own love for her, he fiercely persuaded her to his
scheme. She remained at court for some time; and the
Wu king, in his infatuation, forgot affairs of state.
Weakened by this means, the Wu kingdom was overcome
by the Yueh kingdom; and Fan Li eventually accepted
Hsi-shih as his reward. The whimsical phrasing of the
line "If by wrinkling their brows they can copy her
beauty" alludes to the fact that she had heart trouble,
and it was said that her drawn brows, her look of gentle-
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Translating Wang Wei
ness in suffering, which the girls of her time tried unsuc-
cessfully to imitate, made her more beautiful.
One might enlarge upon references in others of the
poems. For instance, the quatrain called Lines contains
the phrase "my silken window." This is not a decorative
adjective. It merely means that, before the use of paper
or glass, windows in China were of silk. The last line of
the same poem is made lovelier by knowledge that the
met, or plum blossom, is in China the earliest flower of
spring. It is interesting to know that A Song at Wei-
Cheng, which was written for music, is still popular
through China as a song of farewell, and that to this day
"since we picked willow-branches at Wei-Cheng" means
"since we parted." The beauty of the four lines called
A Parting^ with its simple, profound expression of the
abiding presence of friendly nature and the transient
presence of friendly man, is heightened by the reader's
response to the grace of the name Wang Sun, which from
a dim and ancient origin still means in China a noble-
hearted young scholar, or sometimes lover. But on the
whole, these T'ang poems are so valid and universal in
uttering beauty that they may vitally enter the poetic
consciousness of a westerner still ignorant of the various
allusions.
Translating the work of Wang Wei and others in the
Three Hundred Poems of the T'ang Dynasty, Dr. Kiang and
1 have tried constantly to transfer the Chinese idiom into
an equivalent idiom in English, rather than to stress the
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local novelty and pungency of Chinese phrasing. It
would be as erroneous to overemphasize the component
radicals of a Chinese character as to overemphasize the
component meanings of such words in English as day-
break, breakfast, nightfall or landscape. The delicate
importance of the translator's office lies in bringing from
one language to another the rounded and proportioned
effect of a whole poem. And we, conscientiously, have
tried to make felt, in our translations, the high honesty
and wise humanness of poets who have in many ways, and
in one Wei especially, lived closer to the heart of life than
importunate passion brings the poets of the West.
Witter Eynner
Note by the Editor: Mr. Bynner's preference for the line of four feet
and for the four-line or eight-line poem is his tribute to the close prosodic
structure of Chinese poetry. In the translator's opinion the form he
has chosen is the closest approach to the original which is possible in
English.
REVIEWS
A COOL MASTER
Collected Poems of Edwin Arlington Robinson (with por-
trait frontispiece). Macmillan Co.
Near the middle of the last century, Ralph Waldo
Emerson, a sentimental philosopher with a genius for
a sudden twisted hardness of words, wrote lines like:
Daughters of Time, the hypocritic days,
Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes,
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A Cool Master
And marching single in an endless file,
Bring diadems and fagots in their hands.
And it was with Emerson that American poetry may be
said to have begun. He was slight enough, but at his
best a master, and above all a master of sound. And he
began a tradition that still exists.
He was followed shortly by Emily Dickinson, a master
of a certain dowdy but undeniably effective mannerism,
a spinster who may have written her poems to keep time
with her broom. A terrible woman, who annihilated God
as if He were her neighbor, and her neighbor as if he were
God — all with a leaf or a sunbeam that chanced to fall
within her sight as she looked out the window or the door
during a pause in her sweeping:
And we, we placed the hair,
And drew the head erect;
And then an awful leisure was,
Our faith to regulate.
The woman at her most terrible had the majesty of an
erect corpse, a prophet of unspeakable doom; and she
spoke through sealed lips. She was greater than Emerson,
was one of the greatest poets of our language, but was
more or less in the tradition that Emerson began. She
and Emerson were probably the only poets of any per-
manently great importance who occurred in this country
during their period.
The tradition of ' New England hardness has been
carried on by Mr. Robinson, in many ways may be said
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to have reached its pinnacle in Mr. Robinson. This poet,
with a wider culture than his predecessors, has linked a
suavity of manner to an even greater desperation than
that of Dickinson's The Last Night — his hardness has
become a polished stoniness of vision, of mind.
This man has the culture to know that to those to
whom philosophy is comprehensible it is not a matter of
the first importance; and he knows that these people are
not greatly impressed by a ballyhoo statement of the
principles of social or spiritual salvation. A few times he
has given his opinion, but quietly and intelligently, and
has then passed on to other things. A man's philosophical
belief or attitude is certain to be an important part of his
milieu, and as a part of his milieu may give rise to percep-
tions, images. His philosophy becomes a part of his life
as does the country in which he was born, and will tinge
his vision of the country in which he was born as that
country may affect his philosophy. So long as he gives
us his own perceptions as they arise in this milieu, he re-
mains an artist. When he becomes more interested in
the possible effects of his beliefs upon others, and expounds
or persuades, he begins to deal with generalities, concepts
(see Croce), and becomes a philosopher, or more than
likely a preacher, a mere peddler. This was the fallacy of
Whitman and many of the English Victorians, and this
is what invalidates nearly all of Whitman's work. Such
men forget that it is only the particular, the perception,
that is perpetually startling. The generality, or concept,
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A Cool Master
can be pigeon-holed, absorbed, and forgotten. And a
ballyhoo statement of a concept is seldom a concise one —
it is neither fish nor flesh. That is why Whitman is
doomed to an eventual dull vacuum that the intricately
delicate mind of Plato will never know.
Much praise has fallen to Mr. Robinson because he
deals with people, "humanity"; and this is a fallacy of
inaccurate brains. Humanity is simply Mr. Robinson's
physical milieu; the thing, the compound of the things, he
sees. It is not the material that makes a poem great, but
the perception and organization of that material. A
pigeon's wing may make as great an image as a man's
tragedy, and in the poetry of Mr. Wallace Stevens has
done so. Mr. Robinson's greatness lies not in the people
of whom he has written, but in the perfect balance, the
infallible precision, with which he has stated their cases.
Mr. Robinson's work may be classified roughly in two
groups — his blank verse, and his more closely rhymed
poems, including the sonnets. Of his blank verse, the
Octaves in The Children of the Night fall curiously into a
group by themselves, and will be considered elsewhere in
this review. The other poems in blank verse may be
called sketches — some of people the poet may have known,
some of historical figures, some of legendary — and they
have all the evanescence, brittleness, of sketches. How-
ever, there are passages in many of these poems that an-
ticipate Robert Frost, who in at least one poem, An Old
Mans Winter Night, has used this method with greater
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effect than its innovator, and has created a great poem.
Mr. Frost, of course, leaves more of the bark on his
rhythms, achieves a sort of implied colloquialism which
has already been too much discussed. But with Frost in
mind, consider this passage from Isaac and Archibald:
A journey that I made one afternoon
With Isaac to find out what Archibald
Was doing with his oats. It was high time
Those oats were cut, said Isaac; and he feared
That Archibald — well, he could never feel
Quite sure of Archibald. Accordingly
The good old man invited me — that is,
Permitted me — to go along with him;
And I, with a small boy's adhesiveness
To competent old age, got up and went.
The similarity to Frost is marked, as is also the pleasing
but not profound quality of the verse. It has a distinc-
tion, however, that many contemporaries — French as well
as English and American — could acquire to good advan-
tage.
Ben Jonson Entertains a Man from Stratford, a much
praised poem, seems largely garrulous, occasionally
brilliant, and always brittle; and one can go on making
very similar comments on the other poems in this form,
until one comes to those alternately praised and lamented
poems, Merlin and Lancelot. Remembering Tennyson,
one's first inclination is to name these poems great, and
certainly they are not inconsiderable. But there are
long passages of purely literary frittering, and passages
that, while they may possess a certain clean distinction of
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A Cool Master
manner, are dry and unremunerative enough. But there
are passages in these poems which are finer than any other
blank verse Mr. Robinson has written — dark, massive
lines that rise out of the poem and leave one bitter and
empty:
On Dagonet the silent hand of Merlin
Weighed now as living iron that held him down
With a primeval power. Doubt, wonderment,
Impatience, and a self-accusing sorrow
Born of an ancient love, possessed and held him
Until his love was more than he could name,
And he was Merlin's fool, not Arthur's now:
"Say what you will, I say that I'm the fool
Of Merlin, King of Nowhere; which is Here.
With you for king and me for court, what else
Have we to sigh for but a place to sleep?"
But passing on from this less important side of Mr.
Robinson's work to his rhymed poems, one finds at least
a large number of perfectly executed poems of a sensitive
and feline approach. What effect rhyme, or the intention
of rhyme, has upon an artist's product, is a difficult thing
to estimate. The question verges almost upon the
metaphysical. The artist, creating, lives at a point of
intensity, and whether the material is consciously digested
before that point is reached, and is simply organized and
set down at the time of creation; or whether the point of
intensity is first reached and the material then drawn out
of the subconscious, doubtless depends a good deal on the
individual poet, perhaps on the individual poem. The
latter method presupposes a great deal of previous
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absorption of sense impressions, and is probably the more
valid, or at least the more generally effective, method.
For the rhythm and the "matter," as they come into
being simultaneously and interdependent, will be perfectly
fused and without loose ends. The man who comes to a
form with a definitely outlined matter, will, more than
likely, have to cram or fill before he has finished, and the
result is broken. The second method does not, of course,
presuppose rhyme, but it seems that rhyme, as an obstacle,
will force the issue.
The best of Mr. Robinson's poems appear to have
come into being very much in this second fashion. He
has spun his images out of a world of sense and thought
that have been a part of him so long that he seems to
have forgot their beginning — has spun these images out
as the movement of his lines, the recurrence of his rhymes,
have demanded them. A basic philosophy and emotional
viewpoint have provided the necessary unity.
This method inevitably focuses the artist's mind upon
the object of the instant, makes it one with that object,
and eliminates practically all individual "personality" or
self-consciousness. The so-called personal touch is reduced
to a minimum of technical habit that is bound to accrue in
time to any poet who studies his medium with an eye to
his individual needs. The man of some intelligence who
cannot, or can seldom, achieve this condition of fusion
with his object, is driven back to his ingenuity; and this
man, if he have sufficient intelligence or ingenuity,
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A Cool Master
becomes one of the "vigorous personalities" of poetry;
and he misses poetry exactly in so far as his personality is
vigorous. Browning, on two or three occasions one of
the greatest of all poets, is, for the most part, simply the
greatest of ingenious versifiers. He was so curious of the
quirks with which he could approach an object, that he
forgot the object in admiring, and expecting admiration
for, himself. And it is for this reason that Mr. Robinson,
working in more or less the same field as Browning, is the
superior of Browning at almost every turn.
And it is for this reason also that Mr. Robinson's Ben
Jonson is a failure. For the poet, while in no wise con-
cerned with his own personality, is so intent upon the
personality of Jonson, his speaker, that, for the sake of
Jonson's vigor, he becomes talkative and eager of identify-
ing mannerism; and the result is, that Shakespeare, about
whom the poem is written, comes to the surface only here
and there, and any actual image almost never.
The following stanza is an example of Mr. Robinson's
work at its best:
And like a giant harp that hums
On always, and is always blending
The coming of what never comes
With what has past and had an ending,
The City trembles, throbs, and pounds
Outside, and through a thousand sounds
The small intolerable drums
Of Time are like slow drops descending.
And there is the compact, intensely contemplated state-
ment of Eros Turannos, a poem that is, in forty-eight
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lines, as complete as a Lawrence novel. And the nimble
trickery of Miniver Cheevey, as finished a piece of bur-
lesque as one can find in English. A few of us have
feared, in the last few years, that Mr. Robinson was
deteriorating; but going through this book one is reas-
sured. If there is nothing in The Three Taverns to equal
Eros Turannos, there are at least two or three poems as
great as any save that one Mr. Robinson has written; and
there is nothing in these last poems to preclude the
possibility of another Eros Turannos.
Mr. Robinson, as probably the highest point in his
tradition, has been followed by Frost, a more specialized,
and generally softer artist. And there is Gould, who, if
he belongs to the tradition at all, is a mere breaking-up of
the tradition, a fusion with Whitman. But in considering
the work of a man of so varied a genius as Mr. Robinson,
it is interesting, if not over-important, to observe the
modes of expression that he has anticipated if not actually
influenced; even where he has not chosen, or has not been
able to develop, these modes.
The resemblance in matter and manner, save for Mr.
Robinson's greater suavity, of certain poems, especially
the sonnets, in The Children of the Night, to the epitaphs in
The Spoon River Anthology, has been noted by other
writers; and I believe it has been said that Mr. Masters
was ignorant of the existence of these poems until after
the Anthology was written. There is little to be said about
such a poem as Mr. Robinson's Luke Havergal:
A Cool Master
No, there is not a dawn in eastern skies
To rift the fiery night that's in your eyes;
But there, where western glooms are gathering,
The dark will end the dark, if anything:
God slays Himself with every leaf that flies,
And hell is more than half of paradise.
No, there is not a dawn in eastern skies —
In eastern skies.
Out of a grave I come to tell you this,
Out of a grave I come to quench the kiss
That flames upon your forehead with a glow
That blinds you to the way that you must go.
And Mr. Masters' satire has been forestalled and outdone
in these early sonnets.
But a more curious and interesting resemblance to a
later poet is found in the Octaves in the same volume:
To me the groaning of world-worshippers
Rings like a lonely music played in hell
By one with art enough to cleave the walls
Of heaven with his cadence, but without
The wisdom or the will to comprehend
The strangeness of his own perversity,
And all without the courage to deny
The profit and the pride of his defeat.
If the actual thought of this passage is not that of Wallace
Stevens, nevertheless the quality of the thought, the
manner of thinking, as well as the style, quite definitely is.
To what extent Mr. Robinson may have influenced this
greatest of living and of American poets, one cannot say,
but in at least three of the Octaves, one phase of Mr.
Stevens' later work — that of Le Monocle de Mon Oncle
and other recent and shorter poems — is certainly fore-
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shadowed. Mr. Robinson's sound is inevitably the less
rich, the less masterly.
In another of the Octaves there are a few lines that
suggest the earlier poems of Mr. T. S. Eliot, but the resem-
blance is fleeting and apparently accidental.
If the tradition of New England seems to be reaching
an end in the work of Mr. Frost, Mr. Robinson has at
least helped greatly in the founding of a tradition of
culture and clean workmanship that such poets as Messrs.
Stevens, Eliot, and Pound, as H. D. and Marianne
Moore, are carrying on. Mr. Robinson was, when he
began, as much a pioneer as Mr. Pound or Mr. Yeats,
and he has certainly achieved as great poetry. While the
tradition begun, more or less, by Whitman, has deterio-
rated, in the later work of Mr. Carl Sandburg, into a sort
of plasmodial delirium; and while the school of mellifluous
and almost ominous stage-trappings, as exemplified by
Poe, has melted into a sort of post-Celtic twilight, and
has nearly vanished in the work of Mr. Aiken; the work
of these writers and a few others stands out clear and hard
in the half-light of our culture. I cannot forget that they
exist, even in the face of the desert. Yvor Winters
MR. YEATS* PLAYS
Four Plays for Dancers, by William Butler Yeats. Mac-
millan Co.
Mr. Yeats is one of the few poets writing poetic plays
who are also, in exact meaning, men of the theatre. Just
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Mr. Yeats' Plays
as he is probably the foremost poet of his generation, so
he shares with Gordon Craig and one or two others the
distinction of having seen furthest into the theatre as it
may become. That youth which in the Irish temperament
is so old as to be imperishable has retained for him his
leadership in the poetic drama and in the exploration of
new forms. Four Plays for Dancers, as in its own time
The Land of Heart's Desire (written "without adequate
knowledge of the stage"!), is the work of a pioneer bring-
ing a form to its perfection with no apparent interval of
apprenticeship.
"My blunder has been," he writes, "that I did not
discover in my youth that my theatre must be the ancient
theatre that can be made by unrolling a carpet, or marking
out a place with a stick, or setting a screen against a
wall." When he was last in America he told us of such a
theatre, so intimate that its few properties could be
carried by the players in a taxicab and set in a drawing-
room, and of how he had found a first model in the Noh
stage of aristocratic Japan. Shortly afterward The Only
Jealousy of Emer was published in POETRY; and now,
with three other plays similar in construction, it appears
in book form. There are also masks and costume plates
by Edmond Dulac for At the Hawk's Well, produced as
early as 1916 in England, music for the dances and songs
by W. M. Rummel, and suggestive notes on the plays and
their production.
Unhesitatingly one may call this book the most signifi-
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
cant contribution to the art-theatre that has been written
in a long while. True, it is the art-theatre in its most
aristocratic phase; but the best in this art, as in another,
must sometimes, in relation to audiences, be aristocratic.
What gives' to these plays their significance, apart from
the almost ineffable beauty with which at least two of
them are written, is that he has found a way by which the
color, the enchantment, the distance and subtlety of
legendary drama may be projected intimately and by a
medium of amazing simplicity. In doing this, granting
that one's insight into the effect of the plays in production
is accurate, he has conquered difficulties which would
seem insurmountable.
He has secured the illusion of distance, not in despite
of, but through^ the intimacy of a small audience in contact
with the players. Never before in the western theatre,
and jn no other western art except perhaps that of the
story-teller setting his tale directly in the imagination, has
such an effect been possible. It is the quality of his tech-
nique, the unerring sense of the theatre, which seems to
make this an authentic form both in these individual
plays and as existing apart from them. Beside it the arti-
ficial intimacy effected by Max Reinhardt becomes clap-
trap. Restricting himself to the simplest means, he has
chosen them with the instinct of a poet, with that same
instinct which made such lines as these of the Musician:
I call to the eye of the mind
A well long choked up and dry,
And boughs long stripped by the wind.
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Mr. Yeats' Plays
And I call to the mind's eye
Pallor of an ivory face,
Its lofty dissolute air,
A man climbing up to a place
The salt sea wind has swept bare.
"In literature if we would not be parvenus we must have
a model;" and as his theatre has been modified until it
has become independent of the Noh, so a new poetic
drama may be liberated by his inspiration.
As for the plays in relation to each other, we have
learned long since to expect in the work of Mr. Yeats
the clarity and beauty of poetic content and expression
that one finds in these plays. We expect it; and it seldom
fails the anticipation. If The Dreaming of the Bones and
Calvary do not seem quite to reach the height of the
two others, that is not to deny that they are rich in con-
tent also. But there is a beauty lacking in them, purity
of inspiration replaced by what is not far from propa-
ganda in the one and from an over-subtle interpretation
in the other. The mood has flagged somewhat, after the
splendor of utterance in At the Hawk's Well and The
Only 'Jealousy of Emer. These are incomparable.
Postcript — to "Little Theatres": These plays, when
you read them, may not appear difficult to present, what
with the elaborate stage directions and the photographs.
But I fear that you would find them impossible, lacking
a Yeats, a Dulac, and a Michio Itow, who are indispen-
sable. And it would be a mistake to confuse this theatre
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in any way with the theatre of Jacques Copeau, which is
also admirable. Mr. Yeats has not abandoned the mise
en scene — he has intensified it. And, incidentally, he has
given us, when we are ready for it, one kind of synthetic
theatre, including even the management of light.
Cloyd Head
NOTES
Wang Wei, the famous poet-painter who lived in China thirteen
centuries ago, interests Mr. Bynner more than any other Chinese poet,
and is sufficiently introduced by his editorial. For nearly three years
the two translators have been studying Chinese poetry of the great
age for the benefit of readers of English, and their book of translations,
The Jade Mountain, is to be published next autumn by Alfred A. Knopf.
Kiang Kang-hu, who is a scholar in both languages, made the literal
English versions which Mr. Bynner, after close consultation over mean-
ings and rhythms, has shaped into English poems.
Eunice Tietjens (Mrs. Cloyd Head) of Chicago, who is a member of
POETRY'S advisory committee, is the author of two books of verse —
Profiles from China and Body and Raiment (Alfred A. Knopf).
Leonora Speyer (Mrs. Edgar S.), of New York, is the author of A
Canopic Jar (E. P. Button & Co.). Abrigada is not a castle in Spain,
but an old house in Long Island where the Speyers lived last summer.
Miss Constance Lindsay Skinner, of New York, received, in 1915,
one of POETRY'S prizes for her group of Indian poems, Songs of the
Coast-dwellers. She has not yet printed a volume of her Indian inter-
pretations, but many of them may be found in George W. Cronyn's
anthology, The Path on the Rainbow (Boni & Liveright).
Mr. Harold Monro, of London, author of three or four books of verse
and editor of The Chap Book, will publish this spring, through the Poetry
Book Shop, of which he is chief, a new book of poems, Real Property.
Babette Deutsch (Mrs. A. Yarmolinsky), of New York, is the author
of Banners (George H. Doran Co.). Mr. and Mrs. Yarmolinsky together
translated from the Russian The Twelve, by the late Alexander Blok>
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Notes
which was published in 1920 by B. W. Huebsch, with an introduction
by the translators; and they have just issued, through Harcourt, Brace
& Co., Modern Russian Poetry: An Anthology.
"Paul Tanaquil" is a cosmopolite resident of Coronado, Cal.
The other poets in this number are new to our readers:
Medora C. Addison (Mrs. Charles Read Nutter), of Concord, Mass.,
will soon publish, through the Yale Univ. Press, her first book of verse,
Dreams and a Sword.
Mr. F. R. McCreary is a young poet of Cambridge, Mass. Miss
Gwendolen Haste, a native of Illinois, is now in business in New York.
Miss Sarah-Margaret Brown is a student at Northwestern University,
Evanston, 111.
Mr. H. Austin Simons, or "Hi Simons," as he prefers to be called,
was imprisoned for eighteen months as a conscientious objector at Fort
Leavenworth, and since his release has been doing newspaper work
in Chicago.
All trace of Mr. Harlow Clarke, except his poems, has disappeared
from this office — we shall be grateful for a word from him.
BOOKS RECEIVED
ORIGINAL VERSE:
Dreams Out of Darkness, by Jean Starr Untermeyer. B. W. Huebsch.
Explorations, by Robert McAlmon. Egoist Press, London.
Hymen, by H. D. Henry Holt & Co.
Cobblestones, by David Sentner. Alfred A. Knopf.
Poems: Second Series, by J. C. Squire. George H. Doran Co.
The Secret Way, by Zona Gale. Macmillan Co.
A Web of Thoughts, by Marjorie Anderson. Four Seas Co.
With Star and Grass, by Anna Spencer Twitchell. Cornhill Co.
Mystic Songs of Fire and Flame, by K. Arthur-Behenna. Cornhill Co.
Tree-top Mornings, by Ethelwyn Wetherald. Cornhill Co.
Mid Light and Shade, by John Langdon Jones. Duffield & Co.
Anita and Other Poems, by Evarts Scudder. Basil Blackwell, Oxford.
Eternal Helen, by F. Pearce Sturm. Basil Blackwell.
The Traveller s Tale, by Clifford Bax. Basil Blackwell.
Through a Glass, by Fanny DeGroot Hastings. Priv. ptd., New York.
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Shadings, by Bessie Glen Buchanan. Privately printed.
The Birth of the Poinsettia, by Francis A. W. Kendall. Priv. ptd.
Irish and Canadian Poems, by Michael A. Hargadon. Modern Printing
Co., Montreal.
Pjesme, by Vladislav S. Pavic. Stamparija J. A. Omero Press, N. Y.
Igdrasil, by Royall Snow. Four Seas Co.
The Playground of the Gods and Other Poems, by Elizabeth Huntingdon.
Four Seas Co.
Missouri and Other Verse, by Nathaniel M. Baskett, M. D. Privately
printed, Canton, Mo.
Legends of Life and Other Poems, by Bertha Oppenheim. Stratford Co.
Mavericks, by William A. Brewer, Jr. Priv. ptd., Berkeley, Cal.
PLAYS:
Plays of Edmond Rostand. Translated by Henderson Daingerfield
Norman; illustrated by Ivan Glidden. (2 Vols.) Macmillan Co.
Aria Da Capo, by Edna St. Vincent Millay. Mitchell Kennerley.
ANTHOLOGIES AND TRANSLATIONS:
Modern Russian Poetry, chosen and translated by Babette Deutsch and
Avrahm Yarmolinsky. Harcourt, Brace & Co.
Die neue Welt, eine Anthologie juengster Amerikanischer Lyric, heraus-
gegeben von Claire Goll. S. Fischer, Berlin.
Fir-flower Tablets. Translated from the Chinese by Florence Ayscough;
English versions by Amy Lowell. Houghton Mifflin Co.
Some Contemporary Poets — fQ2O, by Harold Monro. Leonard Parsons,
London.
PROSE:
The Golden Fleece and the Heroes Who Lived Before Achilles, by Padraic
Colum. Illustrations by Willy Pogany. Macmillan Co.
A Hasty Bunch, by Robert McAlmon. Priv. ptd., Dijon, France.
A Mother's First Prayer, by Kathryn Wire Hammond. Abingdon Press,
New York.
The Poetic Procession, by J. F. Roxburgh. Basil Blackwell, Oxford.
The Beginning of Wisdom, by Stephen Vincent Benet. Henry Holt & Co.
Gray Wolf Stories — Indian Mystery Tales of Coyotes, Animals and Men,
by Bernard Sexton. Illus. by Gwenyth Waugh. Macmillan Co.
Browningiana in Baylor University, compiled by Aurelia E. Brooks.
Baylor University Press, Waco, Texas.
[294]
How I wish that some English paper had anything like the authentic vitality of
POETRY! Louis Golding
Vol. XIX No. VI
POETRY for MARCH, 1922
PAGE
Medley of Poems Carl Sandburg 295
Moon-riders I-III — Feather Lights — The Naked Stranger —
Medley — Gypsy Mother
Song Sketches Marion Strobel 303
We Have a Day — Spring Morning — Tonight — The Silence
Stirs Again — The Night — I Would Pretend — Admonition —
Frightened Face — Daily Prayer — L'Envoi
Working-hour Songs Ruth Harwood 310
The Shoe Factory — Making Little Clothes — Always and
Always
The Unloved Alison Buchanan 313
Ecclesiastes — A New Hampshire Boy . . . Morris Bishop 314
Roads . Sarah Unna 316
Holiday Crowd — Winged Victory ..... Hortense Flexner 317
Monologue from a Mattress Louis Untermeyer 318
Newspaper Verse H. M. 324
Reviews:
Miss Lowell's Legends Dorothy Dudley 330
Spear-shaft and Cyclamen-flower .... W. Bryher 333
"A Distinguished Young Man " Yvor Winters 337
A Prize-winner Pearl Andelson 340
A Lute of One String • H. M. 344
A Poet in Embryo . . . . . H. M . 345
Rhetoric Unashamed H. M. 346
Correspondence:
The Code of Minority Baker Browne/I 347
A New Poetry Society F. P. 351
Notes and Books Received . . 351, 352
Manuscripts must be accompanied by a stamped and self -addressed envelope.
Inclusive yearly subscription rates. In the United States, Mexico, Cuba and
American possessions, $3.00 net; in Canada, $3.15 net; in all other countries in the
Postal Union, $3.25 net. Entered as second-class matter Nov. 15, 1912, at the
post-office, at Chicago, 111., under Act of March 3, 1879.
Published monthly at 543 Cass St., Chicago, 111.
Copyright 1922, by Harriet Monroe. All rights reserved.
POETRY asks its friends to become
Supporting Subscribers by paying
ten dollars a year to its Fund. The
art of poetry requires, if it is to
advance, not only special sympathy
from a discriminating public, but
also endowment similar to that
readily granted to the other arts.
All who believe in the general pur-
pose and policy of this magazine,
and recognize the need and value
of such an organ of the art, are in-
vited to assist thus in maintaining
it.
VOL. XIX
No. VI
A Magazine of \ferse
MARCH 1922
MEDLEY OF POEMS
MOON-RIDERS
WHAT have I saved out of a morning?
The earliest of the morning came with moon-mist
And the travel of a moon-spilt purple :
Bars, horse-shoes, Texas long-horns,
Linked in night silver,
Linked under leaves in moonlit silver,
Linked in rags and patches
Out of the ice-houses of the morning moon.
Yes, this was the earliest —
Before the cowpunchers on the eastern rims
Began riding into the sun,
Riding the roan mustangs of morning,
[295]
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Roping the mavericks after the latest stars.
What have I saved out of a morning?
Was there a child face I saw once
Smiling up a stairway of the morning moon?
ii
"It is time for work," said a man in the morning.
He opened the faces of the clocks, saw their works,
Saw the wheels oiled and fitted, running smooth.
"It is time to begin a day's work," he said again,
Watching a bullfinch hop on the rain-worn boards
Of a beaten fence counting its bitter winters.
The clinging feet of the bullfinch and the flash
Of its flying feathers as it flipped away
Took his eyes away from the clocks — his flying eyes.
He walked over, stood in front of the clocks again,
And said, "I'm sorry; I apologize forty ways."
in
The morning paper lay bundled,
Like a spear in a museum,
Across the broken sleeping-room
Of a moon-sheet spider.
The spinning work of the morning spider's feet
Left off where the morning paper's pages lay
In the shine of the web in the summer-dew grass.
The man opened the morning paper: saw the first page,
[296]
Carl Sandburg
The back page, the inside pages, the editorials;
Saw the world go by, eating, stealing, fighting;
Saw the headlines, date-lines, funnies, ads,
The marching movies of the workmen going to work, the
workmen striking,
The workmen asking jobs — five million pairs of eyes look
for a boss and say, "Take me";
People eating with too much to eat, people eating with
nothing in sight to eat tomorrow, eating as though
eating belongs where people belong.
"Hustle, you hustlers, while the hustling's good,"
Said the man, turning the morning paper's pages,
Turning among headlines, date-lines, funnies, ads.
"Hustlers carrying the banner," said the man,
Dropping the paper and beginning to hunt the city;
Hunting the alleys, boulevards, back-door by-ways;
Hunting till he found a blind horse dying alone,
Telling the horse, "Two legs or four legs — it's all the same
with a work plug."
A hayfield mist of evening saw him
Watching the moon-riders lose the moon
For new shooting-stars. He asked,
"Christ, what have I saved out of a morning?"
He called up a stairway of the morning moon
And he remembered a child face smiling up that same
stairway.
[297]
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FEATHER LIGHTS
Macabre and golden the moon opened a slant of light.
A triangle for an oriole to stand and sing, "Take me
home."
A layer of thin white gold feathers for a child queen of
gypsies.
So the moon opened a slant of light and let it go.
So the lonesome dogs, the fog moon, the pearl mist, came
back.
THE NAKED STRANGER
It is five months off.
Knit, stitch, and hemstitch:
Sheets, bags, towels, these are the offerings.
When he is older, or she is a big girl,
There may be flowers or ribbons or money
For birthday offerings. Now, however,
We must remember it is a naked stranger
Coming to us; and the sheath of the arrival
Is so soft we must be ready, and soft too.
Knit, stitch, hemstitch, it is only five months.
It would be easy to pick a lucky star for this baby
If a choice of two stars lay before our eyes —
[298]
Carl Sandburg
One a pearl-gold star and one pearl-silver —
And the offer of a chance to pick a lucky star.
When the high hour comes
Let there be a light flurry of snow,
A little zigzag of white spots
Against the gray roofs.
The snow-born all understand this as a luck-wish.
MEDLEY
Ignorance came in stones of gold;
The ignorant slept while the hangmen
Hanged the keepers of the lights
Of sweet stars : such were the apothegms,
Offhand offerings of mule-drivers
Eating sandwiches of rye bread,
Salami and onions.
''Too Many Books," we always called him;
A landscape of masterpieces and old favorites
Fished with their titles for his eyes
In the upstairs and downstairs rooms
Of his house. Whenever he passed
The old-time bar-room where Pete Morehouse
Shot the chief of police, where
The sponge squads shot two bootleggers,
[299]
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He always remembered the verse story,
The Face on the Ear-room Floor —
The tramp on a winter night,
Saddened and warmed with whiskey,
Telling of a woman he wanted
And a woman who wanted him,
How whiskey wrecked it all;
Taking a piece of chalk,
Picturing her face on the bar-room floor,
Fixing the lines of her face
While he told the story,
Then gasping and falling with finished heartbeats,
Dead.
And whenever he passed over the bridge at night
And took the look up the river to smaller bridges,
Barge lights, and looming shores,
He always thought of Edgar Allan Poe,
With a load of hootch in him,
Going to a party of respectable people
Who called for a speech,
Who listened to Poe recite the Lord's Prayer,
Correctly, word for word, yet with lush, unmistakable
Intonations, so haunting the dinner-party people
All excused themselves to each other.
Whenever Too Many Books
Passed over the town bridge in the gloaming,
Carl Sandburg
He thought of Poe breaking up that party
Of respectable people. Such was Too Many Books —
We called him that.
GYPSY MOTHER
In a hole-in-a-wall on Halsted Street sits a gypsy woman,
In a garish, gas-lit rendezvous, in a humpback higgling
hole-in-a-wall.
The left hand is a tattler; stars and oaths and alphabets
Commit themselves and tell happenings gone, happenings
to come, pathways of honest people, hypocrites.
"Long pointed fingers mean imagination; a star on the
third finger says a black shadow walks near."
Cross the gypsy's hand with fifty cents, and she takes your
left hand and reads how you shall be happy in love,
or not, and whether you die rich, or not.
Signs outside the hole-in-a-wall say so, misspell the
promises, scrawl the superior gypsy mysteries.
A red shawl on her shoulders falls with a fringe hem to a
green skirt.
Chains of yellow beads sweep from her neck to her tawny
hands.
Fifty springtimes must have kissed her mouth holding a
calabash pipe.
[301]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
She pulls slow contemplative puffs of smoke. She is a
shape for ghosts of contemplation to sit around and
ask why something cheap as happiness is here; and
more besides than plain happiness, chapped lips,
rough eyes, red shawl, gypsy perfection of offhand
insolence.
She is thinking about somebody and something — the same
as Whistler's mother sat and thought about some-
body and something.
In a hole-in-a-wall on Halsted Street are stars, oaths,
alphabets.
Carl Sandburg
[302]
SONG SKETCHES
WE HAVE A DAY
We have a day, we have a night
Which have been made for our delight!
Shall we run, and run, and run
Up the path of the rising sun ?
Shall we roll down every hill,
Or lie still
Listening while the whispering leaves
Promise what no one believes ?
(The hours poise, breathless for flight, and bright.)
Only a night, only a day —
We must not let them get away:
Don a foolish cap and bell,
For all is well and all is well !
Dance through woods a purple-blue!
Dance into
Lanes that are a hidden stem
Beneath the beauty over them.
(The hours lift their shadow-form, are warm.)
[303]
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Why do you still stand mute and white ?
The day is past, but there is night.
Turn your head, give me your lips —
The darkness slips! The darkness slips.
We could make it hushed and still.
If you will
We could hear, close to the ground
1 Life — the one authentic sound.
(The hours, as a startled faun, are gone.)
SPRING MORNING
O day — if I could cup my hands and drink of you,
And make this shining wonder be
A part of me !
Oday! Oday!
You lift and sway your colors on the sky
Till I am crushed with beauty. Why is there
More of reeling sunlit air
Than I can breathe? Why is there sound
In silence? Why is a singing wound
About each hour?
And perfume when there is no flower?
O day! O day! How may I press
Nearer to loveliness?
[304]
Marion Strobel
TONIGHT
A flame
Leaps high
In a wind:
I am the same.
I go
My head
High. I flame
Red— blue. Oh,
Tonight
The sky
Will be a
Cry of light —
Fire!
Come swift
As wind — come,
Lift me higher!
THE SILENCE STIRS AGAIN
The silence that has lain so long between us
Stirs again: .
The rushes bend in shining pathways
To the shining end;
The air is burdened with the rose that is not there —
Always the rose.
[305]
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I have no laughter now, no tears —
Only the silence grows big with years,
Only the silence has a touch
That hurts overmuch.
The rushes bend
In shining pathways to the shining end;
Bend, and close.
THE NIGHT
The night binds darkness round my eyes
And makes me wise.
The quiet hours beguile —
Like maidens chaste in single file,
Like maidens who have said,
"Be comforted."
The truth of day falls far away
And far away „ . .
And all the little gaieties
Are dressed in colors as I please;
And sadness has a gentle hand
I understand.
The night bound darkness round my eyes-
I was made wise.
[306]
Marion Strobel
I WOULD PRETEND
Now that between us there is nothing more
To say, I would have loud and foolish speech
With you, I would pretend I still adore
Your voice: "Come, beautiful, draw near and teach
The way my hands should go in a caress —
Should fingers trail as pink feet of a crane
That skim the water? — or should fingers press
Their weight heavily?'* Draw near me again —
What does it matter if the words you say
Are lies, if they be sweet to listen to?
Your lips are quite as cruel, quite as gay
As ever; and your eyes are honest blue. . . .
Oh, be sublimely false (who are not true) —
And I'll pretend I love you . . . as I do!
ADMONITION
Come quietly, without a word —
I am so tired of the things I've heard.
I am so tired of words that tear
At beauty till the branch is bare:
Of words that will not let beauty be
A sweet-clustered mystery.
As a Canterbury bell
Purse your lips, but do not tell.
[307]
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FRIGHTENED FACE
Child of the frightened face,
Trying to understand
The little bit of love
Under your hand,
Holding the little love
Under fingers that crush
That which is soft as the
Throat of a thrush,
Holding your hand upon
The wonder of the thing,
Crushing out the song that
Wanted to sing:
Child of the frightened face,
Why do your fingers try
To kill the little love?
Soon it would die.
DAILY PRAYER
And at last when I go
Will it be so?
Shall I find you behind
The rude platitude of death?
[308]
Marion Strobel
I kneel within the certainty
That you are near to me:
Each day I pray
That I may follow through
To you.
Each day I pray.
The moments reach and touch the hours gently.
Each is kind,
Each is soothing as the tips
Of fingers held to lips.
The moments reach and touch the hours: flowers
Will bloom again,
And I shall pick fresh jonquils for the room;
And I shall pick fresh jonquils in the usual way
Every day.
The moments reach and touch the hours:
Time has no beginning, and no end,
Dear friend.
Marlon Strobel
[309]
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WORKING-HOUR SONGS
THE SHOE FACTORY
, Song of the knot-tyer
They told me
When I came
That this would be drudgery,
Always the same
Thing over and over
Day after day —
The same swift movement
In the same small way.
Pick up,
Place,
Push,
And it's tied.
Take off,
Cut,
And put
It aside.
Over and over
In rhythmical beat —
Some say it is drudgery
But to me it is sweet.
[310]
Ruth Harwood
Pick up,
Place,
Push,
And it's tied.
Out-doors
The sky
Is so blue
And so wide!
It's a joyous song
Going steadily on,
Marching in measures
Till the day is gone.
Pick up,
Place,
Push,
And it's tied.
Soon end
Of day
Will bring him
To my side.
Oh, I love the measures
Singing so fast,
Speeding happy hours
Till he comes at last!
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
MAKING LITTLE CLOTHES
Grey rain on the window-pane,
And in my heart grey rain —
And the ceaseless whir of machines
Pounding my weary brain.
He had such a little share of life,
And now he's gone.
And all my heart went with him.
Yet I go numbly on,
Making little clothes
Just the size of him,
Little clothes for others
But nevermore for him.
Grey rain on the window-pane,
And in my heart grey rain —
And the endless grind of machines
Beating a dull refrain.
ALWAYS AND ALWAYS
Always and always
I go out from myself
In the silver morning,
Out to greet some new friend,
With my arms laden with friendship gifts
And a hundred little songs of gladness on my lips.
Ruth Harwood
Always and always
I return to myself
In the purple twilight —
Back to the comforting sureness of myself,
To fill my empty arms again with gifts,
To ease the little hurt my heart has brought.
Ruth Harwood
THE UNLOVED
Stephen, son of me,
You will never be born, my dear.
Light of day you will never see,
And the earth-sounds never hear.
But after I have died,
When I come to the courts of the sun —
Though husband-love I have never had,
And lovers never a one —
You will stand with a ripple of joy
On the lips that have never smiled,
And I shall clasp my son at last —
My child, my child !
Alison Buchanan
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
ECCLESIASTES
In the smoke-blue cabaret
She sang some comic thing:
I heeded not at all
Till "Sing! "she cried, "Sing !"
So I sang in tune with her
The only song I know:
"The doors shall be shut in the streets,
And the daughters of music brought low.
Her eyes and working lips
Gleamed through the cruddled air —
I tried to sing with her
Her song of devil-may-care.
But in the shouted chorus
My lips would not be stilled:
"The rivers run into the sea,
Yet the sea is not filled."
Then one came to my table
Who said, with a laughing glance,
"If that is the way you sing,
Why don't you learn to dance?"
But I said: "With this one song
My heart and lips are cumbered —
'The crooked cannot be made straight,
Nor that which is wanting, numbered.'
[314]
Morris Bishop
"This song must I sing,
Whatever else I covet —
Hear the end of my song,
Hear the beginning of it:
'More bitter than death the woman
(Beside me still she stands)
Whose heart is snares and nets,
And whose hands are bands.'"
A NEW HAMPSHIRE BOY
Under Monadnock,
Fold on fold,
The world's fat kingdoms
Lie unrolled.
Far in the blue south
City-smoke, swirled,
Marks the dwellings
Of the kings of the world.
Old kings and broken,
Soon to die,
Once you had little,
As little as I.
Smoke of the city,
Blow in my eyes —
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Blind me a little,
Make me wise.
Dust of the city,
Blow and gust —
Make me, like all men,
Color of dust.
I stand on Monadnock,
And seem to see
Brown and purple kingdoms
Offered to me.
Morris Bishop
ROADS
You who have made the ancient road of turf,
That my feet might pass over it
Into the level evening —
Make now the ancient road of tears
That my song may pass over it;
Make the ancient road of song
That my ghost may pass over it,
Coming with the new earth.
Sarah Unna
HOLIDAY CROWD
They do not know they wear their wounds so plain,
These covered bodies swathed in cloth and fur.
They do not dream they hold their naked pain
Before this show of life — the checkered stir
Here in the wintry sunlight on the street.
And yet, like martyrs on an old church wall,
They point their wounds — their bleeding hands and feet,
The aching scars, and lips that drank the gall.
For life has hurt them, though they will not cry
"Enough"; shaped flesh to hunger quick or dead,
Withered them, harried, twisted bones awry,
And bleached them white beneath their flying red.
Strange skeletons in merry dominoes,
They do not dream how plain the outline shows.
WINGED VICTORY
Your flimsy dress,
Out of a bargain basement,
Reacts to the wind
As the living draperies
Of the Victory of Samothrace.
Your body also is proudly revealed,
Cleaving the air as hers.
And, verily, you would do as well
Without a head.
[317]
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MONOLOGUE FROM A MATTRESS
Heinrich Heine , aetatfd, loquitur:
Can that be you, La Mouche? Wait till I lift
This palsied eyelid and make sure. . . . Ah, true.
Come in, dear fly, and pardon my delay
In thus existing; I can promise you
Next time you come you'll find no dying poet !
Without sufficient spleen to see me through,
The joke becomes too tedious a jest.
I am afraid my mind is dull today;
I have that — something — heavier on my chest,
And then, you see, I've been exchanging thoughts
With Doctor Franz. He talked of Kant and Hegel
As though he'd nursed them both through whooping-cough ;
And, as he left, he let his finger shake
Too playfully, as though to say, "Now off
With that long face — you've years and years to live."
I think he thinks so. But, for Heaven's sake,
Don't credit it — and never tell Mathilde.
Poor dear, she has enough to bear already . . .
This was a month! During my lonely weeks
One person actually climbed the stairs
To seek a cripple. It was Berlioz —
But Berlioz always was original.
Come here, my lotus-flower. It is best
I drop the mask today; the half-cracked shield
[318]
Louis Untermeyer
Of mockery calls for younger hands to wield.
Laugh — or I'll hug it closer to my breast!
So ... I can be as mawkish as I choose
And give my thoughts an airing, let them loose
For one last rambling stroll before — Now look!
Why tears? — you never heard me say "the end".
Before . . . before I clap them in a book
And so get rid of them once and for all.
This is their holiday — we'll let them run —
Some have escaped already. There goes one . .
What, I have often mused, did Goethe mean?
So many years ago, at Weimar, Goethe said,
"Heine has all the poet's gifts but love."
Good God! — but that is all I ever had.
More than enough ! — so much of love to give
That no one gave me any in return.
And so I flashed and snapped in my own fires
Until I stood, with nothing left to burn,
A twisted trunk, in chilly isolation.
Ein Fichtenbaum steht einsam — you recall ?
I was that northern tree and, in the South,
Amalia. ... So I turned to scornful cries,
Hot iron songs to save the rest of me:
Plunging the brand in my own misery,
Crouching behind my pointed wall of words —
Ramparts I built of moons and loreleys,
Enchanted roses, sphinxes, love-sick birds,
Giants, dead lads who left their graves to dance,
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Fairies and phoenixes and friendly gods
A curious frieze, half renaissance, half Greek,
Behind which, in revulsion from romance,
I lay and laughed — and wept — till I was weak.
Words were my shelter, words my one escape,
Words were my weapons against everything.
Was I not once the son of Revolution? —
Give me the lyre, I said, and let me sing
My song of battle: words like flaming stars
Shot down with power to burn the palaces;
Words like bright javelins to fly with fierce
Hate of the oily philistines, and glide
Through all the seven heavens till they pierce
The pious hypocrites who dare to creep
Into the Holy Places. "Then," I cried,
"I am a fire to rend and roar and leap;
I am all joy and song, all sword and flame!"
H'm — you observe me passionate. I aim
To curb these wild emotions lest they soar
Or drive against my will. (So I have said
These many years — and still they are not tame.)
Scraps of a song keep rumbling in my head . . .
Listen — you never heard me sing before.
When a false world betrays your trust
And stamps upon your fire ,
When what seemed blood is only rust,
Take up the lyre!
[320]
Louis Untermeyer
How quickly the heroic mood
Responds to its own ringing;
The scornful hearty the angry blood
Leap upward, singing!
Ah, that was how it used to be. But now,
Du sch°ner Todesengel, it is odd
How more than calm I am. Franz said he knew
It was religion, and it is, perhaps;
Religion — or morphine — or poultices — God knows,
I sometimes have a sentimental lapse
And long for saviors and a physical God.
When health is all used up, when money goes,
When courage cracks and leaves a shattered will,
Christianity begins. For a sick Jew
It is a very good religion. . . . Still
I fear that I shall die as I have lived,
A long-nosed heathen playing with his scars;
A pagan killed by Weltschmerz. ... I remember,
Once when I stood with Hegel at a window,
I, being full of bubbling youth and coffee,
Spoke in symbolic tropes about the stars.
Something I said about "those high
Abodes of the blest'* provoked his temper.
"Abodes? the stars?" — he froze me with a sneer;
"A light eruption on the firmament."
"But," cried romantic I, "is there no sphere
Where virtue is rewarded when we die?"
POETRY: -A Magazine of Verse
And Hegel mocked: "A very pleasant whim —
So you demand a bonus since you spent
One lifetime and refrained from poisoning
Your testy grandmother!" . . . How much of him
Remains in me — even when I am caught
In dreams of death and immortality!
To be eternal — what a brilliant thought!
It must have been conceived and coddled first
By some old shopkeeper in Nuremberg,
His slippers warm, his children amply nursed,
Who, with his lighted meerschaum in his hand,
His nightcap on his head, one summer night
Sat drowsing at his door; and mused: "How grand
If all of this could last beyond a doubt —
This placid moon, this plump gemiithlichkeit;
Pipe, breath and summer never going out —
To vegetate through all eternity. . . . "
But no such everlastingness for me! —
God, if he can, keep me from such a blight.
Death, it is but the long cool nighty
And life's a sad and sultry day.
It darkens; I grow sleepy;
1 am weary of the light.
Over my bed a strange tree gleams ,
And there a nightingale is loud
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Louis Untermeyer
She sings of love, love only
I hear it, even in dreams.
My Mouche, the other day as I lay here,
Slightly propped up upon this mattress-grave
In which I've been interred these few eight years,
I saw a dog, a little pampered slave,
Running about and barking. I would have given
Heaven could I have been that dog; to thrive
Like him, so senseless — and so much alive!
And once I called myself a blithe Hellene,
Who am too much in love with life to live.
The shrug is pure Hebraic ... for what I've been,
A lenient Lord will tax me — and forgive.
Dieu me pardonnera — c 'est son metier.
But this is jesting. There are other scandals
You haven't heard. . . . Can it be dusk so soon? —
Or is this deeper darkness . . . ? Is that you,
Mother? — how did you come? And are those candles
There on that tree whose golden arms are filled? —
Or are they birds whose white notes glimmer through
The seven branches now that all is stilled?
What — Friday night again and all my songs
Forgotten? Wait . . . I still can sing —
Sh'ma Yisroel Adonai Elohenu,
Adonai Echod . . .
Mouche — Mathilde . . .
Louis Untermeyer
[323]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
COMMENT
NEWSPAPER VERSE
A RECENT editorial in the Washington Herald
begins with the following paragraph:
Literary editors of newspapers know that some of the best verse
brought out in America first sees the light of day in the columns of the
press. Morocco binding and hand-drawn initials don't insure ex-
cellence, nor have the higher-class magazines any monopoly on truly
good poetry.
And corroborative evidence is offered from the Atlanta
Constitution , which says:
Some of the best poetry written in this country today appears first
in the columns of the daily or weekly press. The literary magazines
have never had a monopoly of it — and they never will.
• In discussing newspaper verse it is hardly fair to
include the "weekly press"; for our only purely literary
reviews, or reviews largely devoted to current literature —
such papers as The Literary Review of the New York
Evening Post, The Nation, The New Republic, The Freeman,
the New York Times Magazine — are weeklies, and as a
rule they are much more progressively edited, so far as
modern poetry is concerned, than most of the monthlies.
Reedy* s Mirror, for example, under the editorship of a
remarkable man, was a much more "literary magazine"
in its day than The Century, Harper's, Scribner's, or any
other alleged "higher-class magazine"; and it had
more "discoveries" to its credit, in both verse and prose,
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Newspaper Verse
than all these New York respectables combined. In fact,
the weeklies have been more hospitable to modern poets,
to "the new movement," than any of the monthlies
except The Dial, The Masses with its successor The
Liberator, and the magazines which, like POETRY, are the
special organs of the art.
Therefore we shall confine our part of the present
discussion to newspaper verse, to those "colyumists" and
other poets — and poetasters — who have got their start,
and won their fame, through broad-cast publication in
the daily papers. On this basis let us inquire whether
"some of the best verse" is thus introduced.
The best light verse — yes, unquestionably. The wit-
tily rhyming commentator on life and letters, appearing
from day to day in Sharps and Flats, A Line o Type or
Two, The Conning Tower, The Periscope, and other
columns less familiar to this editor, has added to our
literature masterpieces in this kind. Eugene Field
began it with poems like The Bibliomaniac's Prayer and
The Truth about Horace, each of which started a fashion.
Bert Leston Taylor continued it with such incisive
satires as In the Gallery and The Kaiser's Farewell to
Prince Henry. And more recent Chicago philosophers
are living up to the tradition. Who could show a nimbler
wit or a keener critical insight than Keith Preston in
many poems now reprinted from The Periscope in his
new book, Splinters? — for example, this one, entitled
Effervescence and Evanescence:
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
We've found this Scott Fitzgerald chap
A chipper, charming child;
He's taught us how the flappers flap,
And why the whipper-snappers snap,
What makes the women wild.
But now he should make haste to trap
The ducats in his dipper —
The birds that put him on the map
Will shortly all begin to rap
And flop to something flipper.
And if Mr. Preston wields a rapier, listen to the blows
of Guy Lee's bludgeon — in honor of that noble animal,
the frog, who has to keep his mouth shut in order to
breathe. We quote from a Chicago Tribune of recent
date:
When I hear the politician spouting hot air by the ton,
When I note the silly twaddle of the genus Native Son,
When I'm sentenced to a banquet where a war of words ensues,
When a socialist gets near me and begins to shout his views,
When a bore essays a story that has neither point nor end,
When a highbrow author's ego by his voice starts to extend,
When a woman with a grievance (or without one) launches out
On a marathon of language o'er the conversation route,
I ponder on this habit of mankind to squeak and squawk
In a never-ending serial of talk and talk and talk;
And I figger, as we flounder in the vocalistic bog,
It's a pity human beings are not fashioned like the frog!
Such humor as these things from our newspaper poets
is straight American stuff, expressive of our kind of smiling
common-sense, our special good-natured chuckle, over the
piffle and burble, the mawkishness and pretense which
encumber our every-day life. Such wit from the colyum-
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Newspaper Verse
ists is a shaft of sunlight on the breakfast-table — it clears
the air and gleams on the sharpened edge of the mind.
But what about the more serious verse of the newspaper
poets? To be sure, Eugene Field's finest poems — such as
Little Boy Blue and Wynken^ Blynken and Nod — first saw
the light in his Sharps and Flats; Frank Stanton achieved
one now and then in Atlanta; and a few slyly delicate
poems by Bert Taylor adorned the Line. But the
successors of these men have been less inclined to favor
the unsmiling muse, or she to favor them; and the song-
sters they admit to their columns are usually about as
adventurously lyric as a chirping sparrow. If "some of
the best verse first sees the light of day" in these columns
of cheer, the present writer has missed it. Yet here may
be found, as a rule, the best of the newspaper verse — at
least these column sparrows are honest, and their saltily
humorous environment keeps them from rot and reek.
But what shall be said of certain other kinds of seriously
intended newspaper verse — of the placid rhyming
journalese of Walt Mason or the syndicated moralizings
of Edgar Guest? The former may be harmless; his end-
less reeling of facile observations has sometimes a faint
trace of savor — the tireless crank is turned by a mild old
busybody at least humanely observant. But the stickily
sugary Mr. Guest is not only a blight but a menace.
His molasses factory proves profitable in more ways than
one; so, like other wide-awake business-men, he spreads
its products over the land. Syndicated in hundreds of
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
newspapers, crowded with platform engagements, this
favorite of fortune, journeying to Denver, is met at the
station by the whole Colorado legislature, adjourned in
his honor and celebrating his greatness with a brass band.
And the school-children of many cities are stimulated by
his example toward the high rewards, financial and glory-
coronal, of poesy.
Let us examine Mr. Guest's style — here is a recent
and typical example, entitled For the New Year:
This I would like to be — braver and bolder,
Just a bit wiser because I am older,
Just a bit kinder to those I may meet,
Just a bit manlier taking defeat.
This for the New Year my wish and my plea:
Lord, make a regular man out of me.
This I would like to be — just a bit finer,
More of a smiler and less of a whiner;
Just a bit quicker to stretch out my hand
Helping another who's struggling to stand.
This is my prayer for the New Year to be:
Lord, make a regular man out of me.
This I would like to be — just a bit fairer,
Just a bit better and just a bit squarer,
Not quite so ready to censure and blame,
Quicker to help every man in the game.
Not quite so eager men's failings to see —
Lord, make a regular man out of me.
This I would like to be — just a bit truer,
Less of the wisher and more of the doer;
Broader and bigger, more willing to give,
Living and helping my neighbor to live.
This for the New Year my prayer and my plea:
Lord, make a regular man out of me.
[328]
Newspaper Verse
What do those Colorado legislators think they find in
such sermonizing twaddle as this? Poetry? — if such a
fond allusion is possible, how do they define poetry? In
what department of their minds do they receive its proud
appeal? Wisdom? — if they are honoring a sage, what
high truth is he telling them? To what clear heights is he
leading their souls? Do they discover beauty in this
cheap rattle of foot-rule rhymes, emotion in this sickish
slobber of easy virtue? Is it this rhymester or them-
selves they are stultifying when they offer him public
homage, and thereby inform the rising generation that he
is their ideal of a great man of letters?
Mr. Guest is not the only one of his kind — alas! — but
he is conspicuous and typical. These syndicated rhymers,
like the movie-producers, are learning that "it pays to
be good," that one "gets by by giving the people the
emotions of virtue, simplicity and goodness, with this
program paying at the box-office." And it pays very well.
B. L. T. hit off the situation a decade or more ago,
saying:
Lives of poets oft remind us
Not to wait too long for time,
But, departing, leave behind us
Obvious facts embalmed in rhyme.
Poems that we have to ponder
Turn us prematurely gray;
We are infinitely fonder
Of the simple heartfelt lay.
Whitman's Leaves of Grass is odious,
Browning's Ring and Book a bore.
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
Bleat, ye bards, in lines melodious,
Bleat that two and two is four!
Today he might have added:
Bleat, ye bards, of home and mother,
Pray to be a regular man.
Treacle mixed with tears is golden —
Pile the shekels while you can.
Let the newspaper poets be true to the muse of laughter.
We need their salt in our daily food, lest the maudlin
adulterations of pseudo-literary profiteers poison our
in'ards! H. M.
REVIEWS
MISS LOWELL'S LEGENDS
Legends, by Amy Lowell. Houghton Mifflin Co.
Too many legends are getting lost and forgotten. To
tell any of them over again and save them from the dust
and ashes of the dead is a good thing; but even better to
tell them so people will listen. To most of Miss Amy
Lowell's Legends it is not easy to listen intently — they
are too crowded with adjectives, with ornament, with
imagery; they are obese with adornment. So they do not
cut into you the way even the bare outline of a story may
do in some textbook of mythology, or the way voices of a
legendary day sometimes still reach you through old men
and old women bridging two epochs.
[330]
Miss Lowell's Legends
In Legends Miss Lowell has sought alliance with Aztec,
Cantonese, Indian, and English; but has not, it seems,
become one with any of them. Their grief is not her
grief, their passion not her passion. At their feasts and
funerals she revels more like a tourist in the surprises of
intricate ancient rites. She lays no claim, it is true, to
accuracy; she has "changed, added, subtracted, jumbled
several stories together," she says, "at will to suit her
particular vision." But she has not made them over with
a vision acute enough to equal the origin of primitive lore.
She has not made them with an economy of means that
comes of violence.
As a vendor of foreign goods she resorts to selling-talk,
with sometimes the taint of a conflicting code of morals
or manners upon it. So in the Aztec story of a fox
assaulting the moon, the print of a fox's paws on the disc
of the moon is labeled as "obscene." She labels these
characters, the fox and the moon, instead of making them
sheerly exist.
It is a pity, the way this book has of calling things by
so many names that they cease to be named at all. One
is aware of passing by almost with indifference succinct,
polished song and picture which in more spare surround-
ings might make an instant appeal, a quick thrust. This
passage for one:
A stream flowed in a sunwise turn across the prairie, and the name of
the stream was Burnt Water, because it tasted dark like smoke.
The prairie ran out tongues of raw colors — blue of camass, red of
geranium, yellow of parsley — at the young green grass. The prairie
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
flung up its larks on a string of sunshine, it lay like a catching-sheet
beneath the black breasts balancing down on a wind, calling, "See
it! See it!" in little round voices.
If you consider each legend in the book as a unit of art,
it is easy to remember only the two last poems — Before
the Storm and Four Sides to a House. One of these is New
England legend; the other, not labeled, seems as real and
as native to Miss Lowell. The ghosts of a man and child
driving a high yellow chaise and a white horse before
wind and rain, unwind, as the wheels whirl, a keen
impetuous movie of New England. Four Sides to a House
is a beautiful ballad — the crying of an old man, murdered,
buried in a well. Words, rhymes, stanzas fall into place;
the sound is true; the design complete and haunting.
Here is one bead of the ballad string quoted for the
pleasure of quoting:
Around the house, and around the house,
With a wind that is North, and a wind that is South,
Peter, Peter.
Mud and ooze and a dead man's wrist
Wrenching the shutters apart, like mist
The mud and the ooze and the dead man twist.
They are praying, Peter.
This is a poem with intangible quality. Many of the
others disobey the laws of measure and contrast, which are
bound up with mysteries, and which rule that shadows
will be sure to count against a blaze of light or a blaze of
incident, that brilliants come to life across a dark sky,
that a dance is figured also by its pauses, and objects by
the space they keep around them. Dorothy Dudley
[332]
Spear-shaft and Cyclamen-flower
SPEAR-SHAFT AND CYCLAMEN-FLOWER
Hymen, by H. D. Henry Holt & Co.
It is difficult to write an appreciation or criticism
of modern literature because words have altered slowly
during the past century and have lost their rightful
meaning. Beauty, wisdom, life — these terms have come
to represent an indefinite standard of pedantry or the
washed-out sentiment of some school -room text. Civiliza-
tion has rendered the states that these words should
express almost impossible of achievement. So there is
discontent, a brooding rebellion — no new forceful words
and the old ones blurred until the same sentence may
evoke for different people entirely separate worlds.
Thus it has been said of H. D.'s earlier poetry that it
was perfectly wrought but cold and passionless, and that
it was concerned rather with the loveliness of a perished
age than with the modern world or everyday emotions.
But is it not simply the association of Greek with scholas-
ticism, in the minds of these critics, that has led them
astray in their consideration of the poet's work?
Perfectly wrought the poems are: the rhythms swoop
in and out of the head as birds perch and flutter in and
out of apple-branches. Lines haunt the ears as the
sound of rain in the South. The use of some simple
but unexpected syllable brings all the fragrance into a
mood that the Ionian roses suddenly awaken, after some
swift storm. But they are not cold, they are not passion-
less; and apart from the color of some Attic names how
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
are these songs anything but the expression of the emo-
tions and desires of an extremely present age?
To people born in England H. D.'s work is peculiarly
American — American with a southern flavor and a sin-
gularly native strength. Call Simaetha any American
name and nothing is lost but the impersonality of the
far-off, silver-grey Greek syllables. Circe is any woman
of intellect who, with the very sincerity of her vision,
turns lesser minds "each to his own self." The children
in Hymen are strange in their beauty only because the
restrictions of school have not seized them too early
nor crushed them into patterns.
It is true that H. D. is concerned with life, which
changes little from epoch to epoch, rather than with
the exterior impressions of telephones or steel rails. She
is very sensitive to the visible world, but it is not particu-
larly Greek; her country is any stretch of sea-coast in
Europe or America where there are sand and low pools
and surge of heavy rocks. Compare the Phaedra and
the Hippolytus series, which were actually written in
Greece, with Cuckoo Song, Thetis, or Evadne. Apart from
an added intensity of color — the "lizard-blue" water,
the "red sands" of Crete — they are as independent as
the poems written further north of any definite landscape.
Could anything be more modern of mood than these
£ew lines from At Eaia?
I should have thought
In a dream you would have brought
[334]
Spear-shaft and Cyclamen-flower
Some lovely, perilous thing —
Orchids piled in a great sheath,
As who would say (in a dream),
I send you this
Who left the blue veins
Of your throat unkissed.
The song is too long to quote in full, but it expresses per-
haps more perfectly than any other recent poem, the dis-
appointment and yet the sympathy which come when
some personality one has admired fails to fulfil both its
promise and its task.
It is not easy to be true to any faith in a war-torn
world. Perhaps the most difficult test of all is to keep
faith in beauty. But there is no sentiment or weakness
in the lines which follow — they are stark as a war-chant
or as waves against a prow:
But beauty is set apart;
Beauty is cast by the sea,
A barren rock;
Beauty is set about
With wrecks of ships
Upon our coasts; death keeps
The shallows — death waits
Clutching toward us
From the deeps.
Beauty is set apart;
The winds that slash its beach
Swirl the coarse sand
Upward toward the rocks.
Beauty is set apart
From the islands
And from Greece.
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
Life is a fact to the poet, not a dream. But she has
a trick of hiding a difficult thought under a beautiful
phrase until the eyes read the song carelessly, and only
with the ripening of personal experience is the truth
uncovered behind the vivid words. A psychological
state that a scientist might take a volume to describe
is crystallized into a couple of pages. And she can turn
and write songs such as the one which follows, simple
as any Elizabethan lyric and without the sixteenth-
century mannerisms.
From citron-bower be her bed,
Cut from branch of tree a flower
Fashioned for her maidenhead.
From Lydian apples, "sweet of husk,
Cut the width of board and lathe.
Carve the feet from myrtle-wood.
Let the palings of her bed
Be quince and box-wood overlaid
With the scented bark of yew.
That all the wood in blossoming,
May calm her heart and cool her blood
For losing of her maidenhood.
Her psychology is never once at fault. Thetis, proud,
beautiful and alone; Simaetha, wrecked by war; Phaedra,
smashed by alien forces — it is only their names (perhaps
their personal beauty) that differentiate them from the
individuals who struggle and suffer in this present world.
They are not easily found, but personality is rare in an
age of standardized opinions and patented emotions.
[336]
Spear-shaft and Cyclamen-flower
And perhaps the essential characteristic of these poems
is their originality — they are cyclamen flowers caught
on the spear-point of an analytical intellect.
Not cold, not passionless, but with emotion and thought
perfectly balanced, Hymen can make even the "dis-
enchanted days" of which the poet writes, bright with
beauty. W. Bryher
"A DISTINGUISHED YOUNG MAN"
The Living Frieze, by Mark Turbyfill. Monroe Wheeler,
Evanston, 111.
Mark Turbyfill is a young man, but has already been
spoken of in print and out, and it is a pleasure to con-
sider his poems as a whole in Mr. Wheeler's excellently
made book. One has already heard so much unfortunate
talk of Mr. Turbyfill's estheticism, that one is lucky
to have a slight acquaintance with his work as it has
appeared in the magazines before approaching this book
by way of the reviewers. When a reviewer in our gen-
eration speaks of a poet as an "esthete" he is generally
being sentimental about that poet's sentimentality; and
this is a lamentable condition for a good word to reach.
As for reviewers, they are largely static.
For Mr. Turbyfill can indeed be sentimental, and
that a good part of the time, his sentimentality being
greatly patterned after the writings of that other esthete
of late consideration, Richard Aldington. But it is not
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
for this reason that he is one of the dozen or so living
Americans who have done anything worth remembering.
At his best, Mr. Turbyfill is the master of a certain
fleeting precision that, like the finest of needles, strikes
deep into one's being and is gone before it can be observed.
I am the surprised young man, light walker on night lawns,
he writes; and in a recognition and fuller exploitation of
this fact will lie his greatness if he ever achieves it. This
one sentence, unfortunately, is embedded in a long dis-
cussion of a love-affair which has few merits; and very
often Mr. Turbyfill spoils an excellent passage by not
knowing where to cut. Had this passage stood alone,
it had been one of his finest poems.
Perhaps his weakness is a conscience which drives
him to do complete justice to his friends, loves and admi-
rations, wherever they have acted as the original impetus
of a poem. He forgets that a poem is a state of perfec-
tion at which a poet arrives by whatever means; and that
the poem has no responsibility of any sort to ladies or
lambrequins. It is a thing that begins somewhere and
ends in itself.
In such poems as Shapes and Fertile Gesture Mr.
Turbyfill has remembered, or not needed to remember,
this fundamental truth. I quote Shapes intact, as an
example of the poet at his finest:
Let us deliberately sit into design
With th:se elephant ears
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"A Distinguished Young Man1'
Stretched from the pot
Into green wax consciousness.
Let us exert
Our unused selves
Into other static
Sharpnesses.
In what fleet gestures
Have you found eternity?
His amber-painted torso
A Persian dancer
Has conceived into a leaf-line,
The head inclined.
Other poems that one remembers are She Walks to
Pisa, Fragment of Vision, Carved Mood, Burden of Blue
and Gold, The Moments Halt a Little While before the
Day, and End of Summer. There are lines and passages
scattered through other poems, the finest of these being
the sentence already quoted, and the third stanza of
The Intangible Symphony.
To estimate the magnitude of such a poet as Mr.
Turbyfill is a difficult if not impossible task. This despite
the fact that at least one word of magnitude has been
spoken of him in this review. But one can accurately
say that his five or six finest poems are perfectly executed,
and entirely achieve that which they apparently set out
to achieve. And perhaps this is the fullest praise that
one can give to any poet. Yvor Winters
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A PRIZE-WINNER
Heavens and Earth, by Stephen Vincent Benet. Henry
Holt & Co.
(This book shared with Carl Sandburg's Smoke and
Steel the Poetry Society's recent award of five hundred
dollars to the best American verse published in 1920.)
Not long ago I heard Robert Frost remark laughingly
before an audience that one could practically place a
poet as major or minor according to the number of times
he used the word beauty. By that gauge Heavens and
Earth is indeed a large order.
The first section of the book is called Two Visions of
Helen; it begins:
Slowly blanch-handed Dawn, eyes half awake,
Upraised magnificent the silver urn.
The word morning appears in italics in the margin to
print on the mind a clear and single image. One need
not demand of Stephen Benet that he be either Carl
Sandburg or J. V. A. Weaver — many of the younger
poets are turning away with tired eyes from the verities
of modern life. But Victoria is dead — that, at least,'
has been definitely settled; it is too late to contest it
and futile to look back.
The poet continues :
Beautiful monstrous dreams they seemed as they ran,
Trees come alive at the nod of a god grown mute!
Their eyes looked up to the sun like a valiant man;
Their bows clashed shrill on the loins and limbs of the brute!
[340]
A Prize-winner
The second line is quite plainly inserted to meet the
exigencies of rhyme; the rest plainly a compromise with
rhyme. An ultimate word exists that will do duty for
both sense and sound. Is not art the pursuit of that
word?
Laughing, rejoicing, white as a naked birch,
Slim as a spear in a torrent of moving towers,
Itys, the prince, ran gay in the storm of their search
Silverly shod on feet that outstripped the Hours!
Heavens and Earth so aptly illustrates the vices of its
school that the expos6 may as well be thorough now it
is begun. Was the towers line added only to rhyme with
Hours, since white as a naked birch conveys not only
color but form ? For me slim as a spear is, besides being
poor economy, confusing; it leaves me with the blurred
image of one who has stared for a long time at the same
spot. Nature is admittedly prolix; it is left for that royal
combination of gift and reason which determine the poet
to model and trim beyond the possibility of confusion.
Let the artist's scope be the universe, but let the artist
hold the rein. It is admonitory to speculate on what
the masters must have held in reserve in prunings alone, for
they were all great economists. And who does not know
that one thought leads to another?
Stephen Benet has imagination; otherwise — one fails
to detect behind his art that significant struggle for the
final syllable, the final image. Rather a quick acceptance
of what the tempter, tradition, whispers into the ear.
We go on with The First Vision of Helen and meet with
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an interesting line. He dreamed as a dog dreams^ uneasily;
and another, And how she smoothed her hair back with one
hand, the universal gesture of woman. But The Visions
of Helen are not successful. What is the reason, if any,
for the long symphonic arrangement? One has a right
to expect that the form a poet uses justify itself. Many
of Mr. Benet's changes of movement differ only in length
of line; otherwise, the same overwrought design, the same
lameness. Although both the Helen stories have a
reasonable amount of inherent interest, one is left with
the feeling that they might have been done carefully,
in a page apiece, with more point.
Two at the Crossroads dallies with the delicious idea
of the meeting of one Palomides and a stranger; Palo-
mides riding furiously, his brain a black pin-wheel. He
answers the stranger's inquiry after the sea-road with a
maudlin account of his love for Iseult, and rides madly on.
Then, the amusing denouement:
Palomides was far.
And, settling well his harp upon his back,
With something of amusement in his mouth,
Tristram rode southward to the Breton ships.
But Mr. Benet is still without identity. In this in-
stance it is a slightly chastened Tennyson. Many
moderns write for the eye alone. H. D., William Carlos
Williams, subordinate the oral to the visual, making
a form akin in impression to the mural or bas-relief.
The concern of the present poet is to grind out grand-
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A Prize-winner
iloquent Victorian harmonies. Fortunately it has been
proved, by Carl Sandburg among others, that one may
write primarily for the ear and still retain the identity
both of the individual and of the age.
Take Three Days' Ride, the old theme of elopement and
tragic outcome, a story which depends for very existence
upon the unique style of the artist and its relevancy to
period and locality. Certainly no man who takes pride
in his modernity would have begun thus:
We had fled full fast from her father's keep,
And the time had come that we must sleep.
For the rest, it is to be remembered that, as we live in
the age of the superlative, hyperbole no longer has force
behind it. To exaggerate in the hope of heightening
the effect of drama is to frustrate oneself in advance.
Simple statement of fact is more impressive.
The Kingdom of the Mad, the last section, a series of
sonnets in a less serious humor, is more felicitous. The
poet seems not quite so young and chaotic. He detaches
himself and begins to speak in order with urbanity.
"Books should be tried by a judge and a jury as though
they were crimes, and counsel should be heard on both
sides," says Samuel Butler in his Note Books. On my
side, I am left with the unsatisfactory sense that Stephen
Benet's verses are melodramatic accidents of rhythm
and rhyme. I look in vain for volition, for image and
thought too sacred to have been lightly changed.
Pear! Andehon
[343]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
A LUTE OF ONE STRING
The Lifted Cup, by Jessie B. Rittenhouse. Hough ton
Mifflin Co.
This small book of forty or more very brief poems is a
soft-voiced little lute of one string. So restricted a lyric
range seems scarcely possible from a woman who has
traveled about this varied world; and the emotional ex-
perience it records is too narrow to be easily accepted as
the whole truth. It is rather an unconscious yielding to
a convention — the presentation of a wistful and sensitive
feminine type as men and women of richer experience
expect to find it. We have it caught to perfection in a
number of these poems, for example The Door:
There was a door stood long ajar
That one had left for me,
While I went trying other doors
To which I had no key.
And when at last I turned to seek
The refuge and the light,
A gust of wind had shut the door
And left me in the night.
Perhaps the following poem comes nearer escaping the
convention than any other in this book — has a brighter
bloom. Its first line is its title:
We who give our hearts in spring,
Putting all the old life by,
We shall start with everything
Keen and glad beneath the sky.
We shall know the urge of grass
Parting each detaining clod,
[344]
A Lute of One String
Know the one sweet day they pass —
Flowers, the spirit of the sod.
We are caught into the flame
Where the golden fire runs —
All its ardor is the same,
In the flesh and in the suns.
H. M.
A POET IN EMBRYO
Archways of Life, by Mercedes de Acosta. Moffat, Yard
& Co.
This book shows a distinct advance over Moods in
poetic technique, although most of the poems still leave
much to be desired. The author has certain gifts of the
poet — quick feeling, a degree of imaginative insight, and
eagerness to pour out her soul, to express the beauty
and strangeness of life, to give herself away. She says
what she has to say with a forthright simplicity and di-
rectness; and in such poems as Platitudes and Your Face
she says a fine thing, with refreshment in it.
But she is just beginning to learn her trade. She
shows a promising capacity to learn it in three or four
poems — Unreality , Poor Fools, To Vouletti — in which
there is a suggestion of poetic rhythm. Sometimes she
uses rhyme — usually the irregular, half-veiled rhymes now
so much in vogue; but not yet with quite the air of an
adept. Occasionally she should give another thought to
such details as grammar: one can stand will for shall — all
of us do that — but not "the maddest of we three."
[345]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
However, one may forgive much to a book which re-
veals a fresh and ardent personality. And one may hope
that after a few more experimental sheaves the art will
respond to the impulse. H. M.
RHETORIC UNASHAMED
Ireland Unfreed: Poems 0/1921, by Sir William Watson.
John Lane Co.
Rhetoric here marches unashamed across the cluttered
stage of the world's affairs — rhetoric, flaunting exaggerated
gestures under its shabby outworn toga, stubbing the
toe of its stiff buskin against
rapine masked as order, his vast maw
With Vengeance still uncloyed.
Is it possible that this kind of thing is still masking as
poetry? — here begins a sonnet To the Prime Minister yet
again:
Like your renown-clad namesake, who did slay,
Far across Time and its vast charnels drear,
If only with a legendary spear,
A fabled dragon, you in your midday
Did unto ravening things give battle, and they
Felt your light lance through all their scales!
Now, so we are informed, that spear is "pointed at the
captive maiden's breast" — and so on to the end, reading
a bit out-of-date today. May the kind fates deliver
Ireland from her friends! H. M.
[346]
CORRESPONDENCE
THE CODE OF MINORITY
Everybody is sentimental, even Mr. Yvor Winters.
Emily Dickinson, he says, is dowdy; Emerson, senti-
mental; Whitman, an eventual dull vacuum; Sandburg,
plasmodial delirium. I am not used to defending old
gods, or new ones; but I can show, I think, that these
adjectives indicate a sentimentalism that is not only Mr.
Winters' but the characteristic of the larger group of
modern noticeable poets. It is not expansive Germanic
sentimentality, to be sure; it is protective sentimentality,
hard and slender. But it is no less sentimental, for it is
based on a conceit, on a vain study of approach and
manner. Its mode is not determined by content.
Whether New England hardness, which Mr. Winters
reviews in A Cool Master in the February POETRY, is
really the hardness that Mr. Winters is thinking about is
doubtful. Whatever its hardness, the New England
idea is primarily earnest — earnest frankly in the content
of poetry — as Mr. Winters, to judge from his adjectives,
can never be. When he can say cleverly, "This man has
the culture to know that, to those to whom philosophy is
comprehensible, it is not a matter of first importance;
and he knows that these people are not greatly impressed
by a ballyhoo statement of the principles of social and
spiritual salvation," it is clear that he is not expounding
New England hardness, nor anything like it, but the
[347]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
assumed hardness of sophisticated Gallic reaction.
Poets — Emerson, Whitman, Sandburg — in whom the
idea-content has a burning importance, may well seem
to him blathering or sentimental, or beside the poetic
point. In them the serious idea is not only an intel-
lectual factor but a definitely esthetic component of
the poem. Nor does Mr. Winters, in the face of the
overwhelming human response to ideas, give any good
reason why it should not be. Ideas have beauty.
Whence this solemn authority that the poet may tell
only what he sees, not what he thinks? It comes from
a protective, contractile impulse. Fear of the world
beyond the near perceptions, or failure to appreciate,
is its basis. It is "safety first" in poetry. Blunder and
bathos threaten the poet who risks being bigger than
his sensations, and these too often do overwhelm him;
but the naive exposure that he makes in extending him-
self beyond protective certainties is necessary. He is
"sentimental" perhaps, a "preacher," a "philosopher,"
a "peddler," because he cannot always fuse his own
being with that of his subject matter. He opens himself,
as Emerson, Whitman and Sandburg unquestionably
do, to the sarcasm of the tight, cool, hard poets who take
no risks, but he also escapes their inevitable minority.
As a productive unit, as an initiative, the poet will never
be thus pigeonholed. All that is humane and interesting
is poetic. All material waits only the poet with capacity
and power to use it.
[348]
The Code of Minority
"A pigeon's wing may make as great an image as a
man's tragedy," says Mr. Winters. But the profound
truth of the sentence is not the theme that Mr. Winters
is defending in it. Emerson and Whitman, or for that
matter the Vedas, reiterate this truth. It is the most
beautiful of man's comprehensions; and, as the identity
of all things, is the very being of art and life. But Mr.
Winters means nothing of this sort by his pronouncement.
That would be to "sentimentalize," to preach, and to
enter untastefully into the idea-content of poetry. Mr.
Winters means by his sentence that greatness lies not in
those things of which the poet has written, "but in the
perfect balance, the infallible precision, with which he has
stated their cases."
I use Mr. Winters for illustration because he reveals,
rather more articulately than is usually considered good
taste in his group, the ideational background of probably
the larger number of modern poets. Theirs is an un-
generous principle from which there can be no great
progress. It is an assumption for the protection of
minority. And because these presumed limitations are
emotionalized somewhat, I am justified, I think, in calling
the hard, cool minorists — the modern French, our Ameri-
can expatriates in England, Mr. Winters, even Wallace
Stevens — protectively sentimental. It is the cult of the
craft, not of great art.
Let me suggest the code. First: Say little, but say it
beautifully. Second: Be delicate; nicety is first. Third:
[349]
POETRY: A Magazine 'of Verse
Be fragmentary; it indicates detachment; a frail wisp of
fact, a plaintive, inarticulate thread of feeling is enough.
Fourth: Be cool; sympathies are vulgar. Fifth: Be
careful; the limitations of the poetic milieu are fixed.
This is the minor code or something like it, the world
over. It is not classical, for its restraint has neither
the amplitude nor the objectivity of the greater classic
school. It is an introspective restraint, the last reserve
of a decayed and romantic egoism. It is a hang-over,
I think, from ante-bellum France. The indifferentism
assumed by these poets is neither spiritual nor spacious;
it is the cold chrysalis of individualism from which the
butterfly has flown.
Devotion, not detachment, is the foundation of art,
and devotion these modern minors have not. They have
ignored the artistic value of ideas. They have tatted
gracefully in silk, but they have hammered no rhythms in
steel. Ideas— even moral ideas, and character, though
abused and betrayed in much Victorian poetry, remain
primary components of great work. They will remain
so, despite Mr. Winters and his perceptualists, simply
for the reason that their Platonic as well as their human
beauty persists.
At least two major poets are writing today. They
are Sandburg and Tagore. Different as they are, every
poem of theirs, in its fusion of great and earnest content
with personal form, denies Mr. Winters' thesis.
Baker Browne//
[350]
A New Poetry Society
A NEW POETRY SOCIETY
It would be difficult to enumerate the various evidences
of increasing public interest in poetry, of at least a desire
to give the art closer attention and better appreciation
than it has had hitherto. The Poetry Lovers of America,
a society inaugurated last year in Chicago, is one such
evidence. Under the presidency of Mrs. D. Harry
Hammer, it has had an auspicious and interesting first
season, with five or six meetings at which modern poetry
was read, and discussed from various points of view, the
history, traditions and technique of the art being con-
sidered as well as its modern influences and aims. The
club's correspondence indicates wide interest in the
subject, and other groups, through the Middle West
especially, show a desire to be affiliated with it. The
membership, of two hundred or more men and women,
includes both professionals and amateurs. F. P.
NOTES
The April number of POETRY will be a Southern Number, the con-
tributors representing the south-eastern section of the country, whose
activities in poetry have been encouraged and stimulated during the
past year by the Poetry Society of South Carolina, centering in Charles-
ton. In addition to the poems, an editorial by Messrs. Du Bose
Heyward and Hervey Allen will present the artistic point of view of the
new-old South. These two poets will contribute a group of Carolina
Chansons — ballads from the romantic history of the region; Miss
Beatrice Ravenel, also of Charleston, will be represented, Mrs. Craig
Barrow of Savannah, Mr. Marx G. Sabel and Mrs. Frances D. Pinder
of Jacksonville, and others.
[351]
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
Mr. Carl Sandburg, of Chicago, will publish his fourth book of poems
in May, through Harcourt, Brace & Co.
Mr. Louis Untermeyer, of New York, also needs no introduction. His
new book of poems, to be called probably Roast Leviathan, will be pub-
lished in the late spring or autumn.
Hor tense Flexner (Mrs. Wyncie King) has recently removed from
Louisville to Philadelphia, her husband having accepted a job as
cartoonist for the Public Ledger.
Mr. Morris Bishop, who is now living in Ithaca, N. Y., has appeared
in POETRY before. Also Miss Sarah Unna, now resident in New York,
who was a member of Mr. Bynner's poetry class at the University of
California three years ago.
Miss Marion Strobel, of Chicago, has been for two years associate
editor of POETRY.
Miss Ruth Harwood, a native of Salt Lake City and now resident in
Oakland, California, appears for the first time in POETRY. Miss Har-
wood took a poetry prize at the University of Utah in 1920, and the
Emily Cook poetry prize at the University of California in 1921.
Alison Buchanan is a pseudonym.
BOOKS RECEIVED
ORIGINAL VERSE:
Sour Grapes, by William Carlos Williams. Four Seas Co.
Verses, by Eulalie Andreas. Privately printed, New York.
The Quiet Courage and Other Songs of the Unafraid, by Everard Jack
Appleton. Stewart Kidd Co., Cincinnati.
New Altars, by Ethel Talbot Scheffauer. Wm. Kupe, Berlin, Germany.
Depths and Shallows, by Sally Bruce Kinsolving. Norman Remington
Co., Baltimore.
Shafts of Song, by James Latimer McLane, Jr. Norman Remington Co.
Songs from the Lyric Road, by Ruth Harwood. Privately printed.
The World-hoax and The Disillusioned Genius, by C. A. Paul Dachsel.
Privately printed, Portland, Ore.
Poems, by Eunice Browning. Privately printed, Sacramento, Cal.
Later Poems, by Bliss Carman. McClelland & Stewart, Toronto.
Poems: New and Old, by Henry Newbolt. E. P. Button & Co.
[352]
NOV 101955
PS Poetry
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v. 18-19
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