REVIEWS
The Lyric Year, Mr. Kennerley's new annual, contains among its hundred contributions nearly a score of live poems, among which a few excite the kind of keen emotion which only art of real distinction can arouse.
Among the live poems the present reviewer would count none of the prize-winners, not even Mr. Sterling's, the best of the three, whose rather stiff formalities in praise of Browning are, however, lit now and then by shining lines, as—
Drew as a bubble from old infamies.... The shy and many-colored soul of man.
The other two prize-poems must have been measured by some academic foot-rule dug up from the eighteenth century. Orrick Johns' Second Avenue is a Grays Elegy essay of prosy moralizing, without a finely poetic line in it, or any originality of meaning or cadence. And the second prize went to an ode still more hopelessly academic. Indeed, To a Thrush, by Thomas Augustine Daly, is one of the most stilted poems in the volume, a far-away echo of echoes, full of the approved "poetic" words—throstle, pregnant, vernal, cerulean, teen, chrysmal, even paraclete—and quite guiltless of inspiration.
But one need not linger with these. As we face the other way one poem outranks the rest and ennobles the book. This is The Renascence, said to be by Edna St. Vincent Millay, who, according to the editor, is only twenty years old. This poem is the daring flight of a wide-winged imagination, and the art of it, though not faultless, is strong enough to carry us through keen emotions of joy and agony to a climax of spiritual serenity. Though marred by the last twelve lines, which should be struck out for stating the thesis too explicitly, this poem arouses high hopes of its youthful author.
Among the other live poems—trees, saplings or flowers—are various species. Kisa-Gotami, by Arthur Davison Ficke, tells its familiar story of the Buddha in stately cadences which sustain the beauty of the tale. Jetsam, a "Titanic" elegy by Herman Montagu Donner, carries the dread and dangerous subject without violating its terrors and sanctities with false sentiment or light rhythm. Ridgeley Torrence's Ritual for a Funeral is less sure of its ground, sometimes escaping into vapors, but on the whole noble in feeling and flute-like in cadence. Mrs. Conkling's bird ode has now and then an airy delicacy, and Edith Wyatt's City Swallow gives the emotion of flight above the roofs and smoke of a modern town.
Of the shorter poems who could ignore Harry Kemp's noble lyric dialogue, I Sing the Battle; The Forgotten Soul by Margaret Widdemer, Selma, by Willard H. Wright; Comrades by Fannie Stearns Davis, or Nicholas Vachel Lindsay's tribute to O. Henry, a more vital elegy than Mr. Sterling's? These are all simple and sincere—straight modern talk which rises into song without the aid of worn-out phrases. Paternity, by William Rose Benét, To My Vagrant Love, by Elouise Briton, and Dedication, by Pauline Florence Brower, are delicate expressions of intimate emotion; and Martin, by Joyce Kilmer, touches with grace a lighter subject.
To have gathered such as these together is perhaps enough, but more may be reasonably demanded. As a whole the collection, like the prizes, is too academic; Georgian and Victorian standards are too much in evidence. The ambition of The Lyric Year is to be "an annual Salon of American poetry;" to this end poets and their publishers are invited to contribute gratis the best poems of the year, without hope of reward other than the three prizes. That so many responded to the call, freely submitting their works to anonymous judges, shows how eager is the hitherto unfriended American muse to seize any helping hand.
However, if this annual is to speak with any authority as a Salon, it should take a few lessons from art exhibitions. Mr. Earle's position as donor, editor and judge, is as if Mr. Carnegie should act as hanging committee at the Pittsburg show, and help select the prize-winners. And Messrs. Earle, Braithwaite and Wheeler, this year's jury of awards, are not, even though all have written verse, poets of recognized distinction in the sense that Messrs. Chase, Alexander, Hassam, Duveneck, and other jurymen in our various American Salons, are distinguished painters.
In these facts lie the present weaknesses of The Lyric Year. However, the remedy for them is easy and may be applied in future issues. Meantime the venture is to be welcomed; at last someone, somewhere, is trying to do something for the encouragement of the art in America. Poetry, which is embarked in the same adventure, rejoices in companionship.
H. M.
Already many books of verses come to us, of which a few are poetry. Sometimes the poetry is an aspiration rather than an achievement; but in spite of crude materials and imperfect artistry one may feel the beat of wings and hear the song. Again one searches in vain for the magic touch, even though the author has interesting things to say in creditable and more or less persuasive rhymed eloquence.
Of recent arrivals Mr. John Hall Wheelock has the most searching vision and appealing voice. In The Human Fantasy (Sherman, French & Co.) his subject is New York, typified in the pathetic little love-affair of two young starvelings, which takes its course through a stirring, exacting milieu to a renunciation that leaves the essential sanctities intact. The poet looks through the slang and shoddy of the lovers, and the dust and glare of the city, to the divine power of passion in both. In The Beloved Adventure the emotion is less poignant; or, rather, the poet has included many indifferent pieces which obscure the quality of finer lyrics. More rigorous technique and resolute use of the waste-basket would make more apparent the fact that we have here a true poet, one with a singing voice, and a heart deeply moved by essential spiritual beauty in the common manifestations of human character. At his best he writes with immense concentration and unflagging vigor; and his hearty young appetite for life in all its manifestations helps him to transmute the repellant discords of the modern town into harmony. The fantasy of Love in a City is a "true thing" and a vital.
Mr. Hermann Hagedorn is also a true poet, capable of lyric rapture, but sometimes, when he seems least aware, his muse escapes him. The Infidel, the initial poem of his Poems and Ballads (Houghton Mifflin Co.), recalls his Woman of Corinth, and others in this book remind one of this and of his Harvard class poem, The Troop of the Guard, in that the words do not, like colored sands, dance inevitably into the absolute shape determined by the wizardry of sound. He is still somewhat hampered by the New England manner, a trend toward an external formalism not dependent on interior necessity. This influence makes for academic and lifeless work, and it must be deeply rooted since it casts its chill also over the Boston school of painters.
But now and then Mr. Hagedorn frees himself; perhaps in the end he may escape altogether. In such poems as Song, Doors, Broadway, Discovery, The Wood-Gatherer, The Crier in the Night and A Chant on the Terrible Highway, we feel that he begins to speak for himself, to sing with his own voice. Such poems are a challenging note that should arrest the attention of all seekers after sincere poetic expression.
Mr. Percy MacKaye, in Uriel and Other Poems (Houghton Mifflin Co.), shows also the Boston influence, but perhaps it is difficult to escape the academic note in such poems for occasions as these. With fluent eloquence and a ready command of verse forms he celebrates dead poets, addresses noted living persons, and contributes to a number of ceremonial observances. The poems in which he is most freely lyric are perhaps In the Bohemian Redwoods and To the Fire-Bringer, the shorter of his elegies in honor of Moody, his friend.
In two dramatic poems, The Tragedy of Etarre, by Rhys Carpenter (Sturgis & Walton Co.), and Gabriel, a Pageant of Vigil, by Mrs. Isabelle Howe Fiske (Mosher), the academic note is confidently insisted on. The former shows the more promise of ultimate freedom. It is an Arthurian venture of which the prologue is the strongest part. In firm-knit iambics Mr. Carpenter strikes out many effective lines and telling situations. Indeed, they almost prompt the profane suggestion that, simplified and compressed, they might yield a psychological libretto for some "advanced" composer.
Mrs. Fiske's venture is toward heaven itself; but her numerous archangels are of the earth earthy.
In The Unconquered Air and Other Poems (Houghton Mifflin Co.), Mrs. Florence Earle Coates shows not inspiration but wide and humane sympathies. Her verse is typical of much which has enough popular appeal and educative value to be printed extensively in the magazines; verse in which subjects of modern interest and human sentiment are expressed in the kind of rhymed eloquence which passes for poetry with the great majority.
These poets may claim the justification of illustrious precedent. The typical poem of this class in America, the most famous verse rhapsody which stops short of lyric rapture, is Lowell's Commemoration Ode.