I. TEN BOOKS OF POETRY FOR A SMALL LIBRARY.
* Certain volumes of new poetry and collected editions are drawn to the individual reader’s notice by an asterisk employed to indicate special poetic distinction.
* The East I Know. By Paul Claudel. Translated from the French by Teresa Frances and William Rose Benét. (Yale University Press: $1.25 net.) A volume of prose poems by one of the greatest poets living in the world to-day. Although Paul Claudel is unknown to English readers, his influence is the strongest shaping force there is on the young poetry of most European countries. This volume is as much of a literary event as the publication of John Synge’s first volume in this country. I know of no living writer of whom we may more confidently predict immortality for his work. The present volume reveals the soul of China in wonderful strophes, and though perhaps the slightest of Claudel’s books, is the volume by which Claudel may be most fittingly introduced to the American public. If any reader can set down this volume without realizing that a great new force in literature and life has been born into the world, he is incapable of imaginative appreciation.
* The Single Hound: Poems of a Lifetime. By Emily Dickinson. (Little, Brown, & Co.: $1.25 net.) A new volume by one of the world’s great spiritual artists, which contains much poetry that is imperishable as an integral part of American literature. With Blake’s naked uncompromising vision, and his absorption in the eternal shadows of mortality, she has a personal and fragrant beauty of feeling and expression which is unique and incomparable. Her verses are like flashes of lightning illumining the chaos of our material existence. The Single Hound is the rich legacy of a great spiritual imagination. There are few books in American poetry of which we can more confidently predict immortality.
* Collected Poems. By Norman Gale. (Macmillan: $1.50 net.) The poet’s choice of the lyrics and longer poems by which he wishes to be definitely remembered. Indispensable to every library. No poet since the Elizabethans has managed to convey such an infectious joy into pastoral poetry, and the best of these poems are permanent treasure trove for the anthologist. Such a volume as this would alone dignify a season.
* Georgian Poetry. Edited by E. M. (Putnam: $1.50 net.) A superb collection of representative poems by the younger English writers who have won their reputation in the last four or five years. This book, which has gone through nine English editions already, should meet with as great success in this country. Here, and here only, will you find the authentic younger singers adequately represented by hitherto unpublished work. If this volume introduces Rupert Brooke and Lascelles Abercrombie to America, it will have done our literature a service great enough to justify its publication.
* The Congo and Other Poems. By Vachel Lindsay. (Macmillan: $1.25 net.) A new volume of verse by Mr. Lindsay, whose first book was the most significant publication in American poetry last year. While this book does not mark an advance, many of the poems written to be chanted aloud fully sustain the poet’s reputation, and the volume is graced with a selection of the best and less strident of the Rhymes to be Traded for Bread. As the poetic interpreter of the Middle West, Mr. Lindsay is performing a great social service, as well as a great service to poetry by bringing it into the homes and hearts of the people. The Firemen’s Ball and I Heard Immanuel Singing have qualities of permanence, and in the former Mr. Lindsay has perfected a new medium of poetic expression. But we are in danger of losing sight of Mr. Lindsay’s more delicate talent by virtue of which he is preëminently a poet
* The Present Hour: A Book of Poems. By Percy MacKaye. (Macmillan: $1.25 net.) The poems dealing with the present war reaffirm Mr. MacKay’s authority of utterance, and the best of the sonnets surpass William Watson’s “The Purple East.” But it is in “Fight” and “School” that the poet has at last found himself and invented a medium admirably fitted to express what he desires. These two poems have all the distinction of Masefield with the originality and shrewdness of New England feeling, and a homeliness which is unique in contemporary poetry. The volume includes many poems of occasion, all adequate, and in the case of “Goethals” and one or two others, noble. So far, Mr. MacKaye’s best volume of poems.
* The Complete Poems of S. Weir Mitchell. (Century Co.: $2.00 net.) The definitive edition of Dr. Mitchell’s poetry revised according to his final wishes. It should serve to make known to the present generation the graceful contemplative poetry of that rival to America’s other distinguished physician-poet, Dr. Holmes. Dr. Mitchell’s poems of occasion at their best are equal to the best of Dr. Holmes, while his “Ode to a Lycian Tomb” surpasses “The Chambered Nautilus.” It is one of the anomalies of literature that Dr. Mitchell’s novels have so long overshadowed his poetry. In this volume the best of his dramatic work is included, and “Drake” is a play of poetic distinction in its way. The volume may rest pleasantly with its peers on the same library shelf with the poems of Longfellow and Holmes. It is the harvest of sixty years devoted to poetry.
* Songs for the New Age. By James Oppenheim. (Century Co.: $1.25 net.) The most significant volume of new poetry of the year 1914, as Vachel Lindsay’s General William Booth Enters Into Heaven was the most significant volume of 1913. With more self-conscious art than Whitman, in the verse form which Whitman was once thought to have perfected, Mr. Oppenheim sings the joys and sorrows of the race now and to come. The vision of these poems is swift and sure: their philosophy, mature and American. If there is one volume of verse this year which we might safely recommend to every American man and woman who has not read poetry before, it is this book, where they will find their dreams and strivings sung and interpreted in a book which has qualities of greatness. The form of these poems is so difficult to shape perfectly that Mr. Oppenheim’s technical achievement can only be characterized as masterly. The volume is the only one in which the use of “polyrhythmic verse” can claim complete justification since Leaves of Grass, and its art is as individual as its matter. Songs for the New Age may reaffirm much of Whitman, but they do not echo him. The volume will prove more and more satisfying with each rereading. And its message to the American people may not pass unheeded.