A notable feature of the poetry year is the Kennerley edition of Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass.” The works of Whitman have been transferred from publisher to publisher so often, that there has been little opportunity for their circulation among the people for whom he wrote. This edition contains the text and arrangement preferred by the poet himself, and is the only perfect and complete issue, comprising one hundred and six additional poems not included in any other edition. There are suitable editions to meet the demand of all classes of Whitman enthusiasts and students: an India paper edition bound in leather, a library edition bound in cloth, and two issues of a Popular edition, bound in cloth and in paper respectively. To these are added the “Complete Prose” in a Library and Popular edition in cloth. None of the leading American poets of the past generation have been so unfortunate in publication; and many who believe Whitman to be America’s greatest poet will be glad to know, that now, by the authorization of his executors, all his works are gathered in uniform editions under one imprint.
Other important new editions of poetry are the cheap reissue by the Oxford University Press of John Sampson’s final and authoritative text of William Blake’s complete poems, and the new reprint in Bohn’s Popular Library issued by The Macmillan Company of Henry Vaughan’s Complete Poems.
As in former years in my annual summary in the Boston Transcript, I have examined the contents of the leading American magazines. To the seven magazines which I examined last year,—namely, Harper’s, Scribner’s, The Century, The Forum, Lippincott’s, The Smart Set, and The Bellman,—I have added this year three monthlies, The Trend, The International, and The Masses; and one quarterly, The Yale Review. The Bellman still maintains its high poetic distinction, by virtue of which it prints more good poetry than any other American weekly, and most American monthlies. As last year, I have winnowed from other magazines distinctive poems for classification and notice:—one each from The Metropolitan, The Craftsman, The Poetry Journal, the Southern Woman’s Magazine, Puck, and The Infantry Journal; and two each from Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, The Nation, The Atlantic Monthly, and the Outlook; while from three newspapers I have selected fourteen poems:—eleven from the Boston Evening Transcript, two from the Boston News Bureau, and one from the New York Evening Sun. In quoting from the Boston Transcript, I wish to testify to the ready recognition and encouragement this daily paper has offered to poets and poetry. It is one of the paper’s finest traditions.
The poems published during the year in the eleven representative magazines I have submitted to an impartial critical test, choosing from the total number what I consider the “distinctive” poems of the year. From the distinctive pieces are selected fifty-two poems, to which are added thirty from other magazines and from newspapers not represented in the list of eleven, making a total of eighty-two, which are intended to represent what I call an “Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1914.”
Quoting from what I have written in previous years, to emphasize the methods which guided my selections, the reader will see how impartial are the tests by which the distinctive and best poems are chosen: “I have not allowed any special sympathy with the subject to influence my choice. I have taken the poet’s point of view, and accepted his value of the theme he dealt with. The question was: How vital and compelling did he make it? The first test was the sense of pleasure the poem communicated; then to discover the secret or the meaning of the pleasure felt; and in doing so to realize how much richer one became in a knowledge of the purpose of life by reason of the poem’s message.”
In one hundred and forty-seven numbers of these eleven magazines I find there were published during 1914 a total of 647 poems, of which 157 were poems of distinction. The total number of poems printed in each magazine, and the number of the distinctive poems are: Century, total 71, 19 of distinction; Harper’s, total 39, 10 of distinction; Scribner’s, total 49, 18 of distinction; Forum, total 33, 13 of distinction; Lippincott’s, total 56, 8 of distinction; The Smart Set (excluding November and December), total 148, 18 of distinction; The Bellman (until November 7th), total 42, 23 of distinction; The Yale Review, total 19, 10 of distinction; The Trend (April, and June to November), total 51, 16 of distinction; The Masses (excluding December), total 53, 13 of distinction; The International (excluding November and December), total 86, 9 of distinction.
Following the text of the poems making the anthology in this volume, I have given the titles and authors of all the poems classified as distinctive, published in the magazines of the year; in addition I give a list of all the poems and their authors in the one hundred and forty-seven numbers of the magazines examined, as a record which readers and students of poetry will find useful.
I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness and thanks to the editors of Scribner’s Magazine, Harper’s Magazine, The Forum, The Century Magazine, The Outlook, Lippincott’s Magazine, The Bellman, The Smart Set, The Yale Review, Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, The Poetry Journal, The International, The Masses, The Metropolitan, Harper’s Weekly, The Craftsman, The Nation, The Southern Woman’s Magazine, Puck, The Infantry Journal, The Boston News Bureau, The New York Evening Sun, and the Boston Evening Transcript, and to the publishers of these magazines and newspapers, for kind permission to reprint in this volume the poems making up the “Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1914.” To the authors of these poems I am equally indebted and grateful for their willingness to have me reprint their work in this form. Since their appearance in the magazines and before the close of the year when the contents of this volume was made up, twenty-eight poems herein included have appeared in volumes of original poetry by their authors. For the use of “Yankee Doodle” and “The Firemen’s Ball” by Vachel Lindsay, included in his volume “The Congo, and Other Poems”; of “Fight,” “France,” and “Six Sonnets (August, 1914)” by Percy MacKaye, included in his volume “The Present Hour”; and for “Romance” by Conrad Aiken, included in his volume “Earth Triumphant,” I have also to thank The Macmillan Company, under whose imprint these volumes appear. Similar acknowledgment is due to the George H. Doran Company for permission to reprint “The Twelve-Forty-Five” by Joyce Kilmer, included in his volume, “Trees and Other Poems”; and to print “In the Roman Forum” and “A Lynmouth Widow” by Amelia Josephine Burr, included in her volume “In Deep Places.” I am grateful to Charles Scribner’s Sons for two poems by Olive Tilford Dargan, “Old Fairingdown” and “Path Flower,” included in her volume “Path Flower”; and for two poems by Corinne Roosevelt Robinson, “From a Motor in May,” and “If You Should Cease to Love Me,” included in her volume “One Woman to Another.” I am indebted to Mr. Mitchell Kennerley for kind permission to reprint Sonnets XXIX, XXX, and XXXVII from “Sonnets of a Portrait-Painter”; and to Mr. A. M. Robertson for two poems by George Sterling, “Ballad of Two Seas” and “The Hunting of Dian,” included in his volume “Beyond the Breakers, and Other Poems.” Finally, The Century Company have been kind enough to permit me to republish “Landscapes” and “Summons” by Louis Untermeyer, from his volume entitled “Challenge”; and “Patterns,” “A Handful of Dust,” and “We Dead” by James Oppenheim, from his volume entitled “Songs for a New Age.” If I have omitted any acknowledgments, it is quite unintentional, and I trust that any such omission will be regarded leniently. I wish it to be understood that the privilege extended to me so courteously, by the authors, magazine editors and publishers, and book publishers, to print the poems in this volume, does not in any sense restrict the authors in their rights to print the poems in volumes of their own or in any other place. I wish to thank the Boston Transcript for the privilege of reprinting material in this book which originally appeared in the columns of that paper.
A new feature this year is the series of critical summaries of new volumes of verse, which are significant, and which have been appraised in accordance with the same principles as the poems in the “Anthology of Magazine Verse.” It is believed that by adding this feature, the book will more nearly approximate to being an actual Year-Book of American Poetry, and it is in this belief that a subtitle has been added to this volume. I believe that not only libraries, but private individuals will welcome the selected lists of the best volumes for library purchase, graded according to the requirements of a large or a small purse. A list is also subjoined of the best books about poetry, and if there seems to be a demand for this innovation, it is planned next year to include in the book critical summaries of these volumes, as well as of the volumes of original verse.