Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1914

by Unknown

II. TWENTY-FIVE BOOKS OF POETRY FOR A LARGER LIBRARY.

The List of ten books printed above and the following fifteen titles:—

* In Deep Places. By Amelia Josephine Burr. (Doran: $1.00 net.) Fine dramatic monologues and narrative poems, which represent a great advance over Miss Burr’s previous book. Jehane is a worthy sequel to The Haystack in the Floods by William Morris. Allah is With the Patient and other narrative poems are related in a blank verse of firm yet varied texture. Miss Burr’s dramatic imagination interprets Italy and England in human terms, and travel has afforded her lyric opportunities to which she has responded sensitively and well. With this volume Miss Burr has come to stay.

* The Little King. By Witter Bynner. (Kennerley: $.60 net.) A stark one-act play in verse of swift sure dramatic nerve about the little son of Marie Antoinette. With great economy of material and vivid historic imagination, Mr. Bynner has made The Little King human and poignant in his brief little tragedy.

* Earth Deities, and Other Rhythmic Masques. By Bliss Carman and Mary Perry King. (Kennerley: $1.50 net.) Four masques of earth with Mr. Carman’s old familiar lyric quality directed into fresh and living channels. Each of them would afford a rare delight to an audience, particularly if accompanied by the rhythmic dances which have been designed for them by Mary Perry King.

* Poetical Works. By Edward Dowden. In two volumes. (Dutton: $4.00 net.) A permanent and integral part of English literature. It is gratifying to find tardy justice done at last to the merits of the late Professor Dowden as a poet. Those who care for the work of Mr. Woodberry will find the same qualities in Dowden’s poetry, but in a larger and more authoritative voice. Moreover, he is one of the great nineteenth century sonneteers. His many hymns to intellectual beauty have not an undistinguished line in them, and as a lyric poet his singing quality is infectious. This is the first edition of his poems since 1876, and contains many which have never been collected before. The second volume is a pleasant translation of Goethe’s, The West Eastern Divan. It will not greatly interest admirers of Prof. Dowden’s work, and should be sold separately.

* Borderlands and Thoroughfares. By Wilfrid Wilson Gibson. (Macmillan: $1.25 net.) Mr. Gibson’s fourth volume in three years. Though not equal to his earlier books, it will well repay the lover of poetry. The first section, entitled Borderlands consists of three dramatic dialogues in free verse which aim with some success to be simple, sensuous, and passionate. Hoops is one of Mr. Gibson’s most satisfactory poems. The second section, entitled Thoroughfares comprises shorter poems, many of which are dramatic monologues, and of these Solway Ford and The Gorse represent Mr. Gibson’s best. As we have said elsewhere, Mr. Gibson’s art “satisfies our æsthetic emotions and fulfils our social needs.”

* Aroun’ the Boreens: A Little Book of Celtic Verse. By Agnes I. Hanrahan. (Badger: $1.00 net.) A slight volume of Irish songs equal to the very best by Eva Gore-Booth or Mrs. Hinkson, and tipped with a more delicate art. The volume should be on every shelf beside Moira O’Neill’s Songs of the Glens of Antrim.

* The Cry of Youth. By Harry Kemp. (Kennerley: $1.25 net.) Terse ringing ballads of modern life with much of Buchanan’s quality and keen technique. Despite the propagandist note, which is less insistent than in most poetry of a socialistic tendency, Mr. Kemp has succeeded with some quiet reserve in making the reader feel the pity of lonely outcast life, and in expressing his philosophy in genuine poetry. The sincerity of his work is unquestionable, and the volume merits a critical attention on its merits which we should be anxious to assist. The Cry of Youth is not written solely for an audience of poets and critics. It is genuine poetry of cruelly naked emotion borne unflinchingly.

* Songs of the Dead End. By Patrick MacGill. (Kennerley: $1.25 net.) Poetry of labor and poetry without a brief in about equal measure. Though the former is fine, Mr. MacGill’s best work is to be found in the latter. The poet has been a navvy, a miner, a switchman, a car-coupler, a tramp, and a plate-layer, and out of grinding poverty and toil his poetry has emerged. There is danger of a wrong emphasis on his social poetry. It is good, but not better than that of several others. The less premeditated lyrics will give the greatest pleasure to the reader, and to many of them one will turn again and again.

* Philip the King, and Other Poems. By John Masefield. (Macmillan: $1.25 net.) A one-act play in verse which is competent but would not be distinctive were it not for a superb ballad of the Armada, which challenges comparison with Drayton. Four other poems of strong beauty which redeem the rest of the volume, and make it necessary to poetry lovers. The notable war-poem entitled August, 1914, is included.

* The Wine-Press: A Tale of War. By Alfred Noyes. (Stokes: $.60 net.) A tale of the horror of war and its blind futility, whose scene is laid in the Balkans. It is told with all of Mr. Noyes’s art and its awful lesson should be particularly timely in the midst of the present struggle. The poem is a hymn to liberty passionately voiced, and brings death and suffering home in relentless poetry.

* Songs of Labor, and Other Poems. By Morris Rosenfeld. Translated from the Yiddish by Rose Pastor Stokes and Helena Frank. (Badger: $.75 net.) An excellent translation of the poems of an American Yiddish poet of poignant beauty, whose work has hitherto not been accessible to English readers except in an incomplete prose version. The present translation includes many poems now published for the first time, and is adorned with two remarkable illustrations in black and white which reveal new possibilities in line. A volume which deserves to go through many editions.

* Poems. By Clinton Scollard. (Houghton-Mifflin: $1.25 net.) A selection of Mr. Scollard’s best poems from his numerous volumes. It should serve to define his place in American poetry, which is beside Mr. Cawein. Delicate fancy and a love of nature which is not vague are united to an opulence of expression which has not always done Mr. Scollard service, but which in almost every poem in this volume results in giving the pleasure of fine poetic sensation to the discriminating reader.

Songs and Sonnets for England in War Time. (Lane: $.75 net.) A collection of the best poems by English poets inspired by the war, issued for the benefit of the Prince of Wales Fund. The total profits of the volume are turned over to this fund for relief work, and the purchaser will not only procure a volume whose significance will be more and more realised as time passes, but will be contributing in small measure to this charitable work.

* Challenge. By Louis Untermeyer. (Century Co.: $1.00 net) One of the most significant new volumes of the year. With much of Shelley’s social enthusiasm and a genuine inspiration, he sings the strength and weakness of our democracy with the eagerness of youth. This is a volume whose significance will grow as the years go by, and it should be associated with Mr. Oppenheim’s new volume on which comment will be found elsewhere. Although democracy is the substance of his song, yet the feeling for beauty’s essence which here finds lyrical expression is the most substantially satisfying quality of his work.