Poems. By Katharine Howard. (Sherman, French: $1.00 net.) Minor verse in vers libre, which is frequently pleasing and always individual. It is the expression of a whimsical personality who wears her singing robes lightly, and who is most successful in verse of macabre suggestion.
* Des Imagistes: An Anthology. (Boni: $1.00.) The best collection of “imagiste” poetry, in which the work of Ford Madox Hueffer, F. S. Flint, Amy Lowell, and others is represented. There are many poems in the volume which will give pleasure, but as a collection it is uneven and rather tenuous. The work of F. S. Flint which it contains justifies the volume’s purchase.
The Thresher’s Wife. By Harry Kemp. (Boni: $.40 net.) A narrative poem well told in the manner of Masefield, whose influence upon it has been great.
* Trees, and Other Poems. By Joyce Kilmer. (Doran: $1.00 net.) The spirit of youth and grave faith expressed in lyric numbers. This slight little book defines a personality of poetic interest. The book shows less alien influence than most recent American poetry, and is quite individual in its affirmations. Though unassuming, the book will not meet with just treatment unless we recognize the fine lyric accomplishment of such poems as Trees and Martin. Is this volume the prelude of a little Catholic Renaissance in American poetry?
* The Shadow of Ætna. By Louie V. Ledoux. (Putnam: $1.00 net.) Severely chaste poetry on classical models of distinguished beauty. They reveal fine intellectual feeling that recalls Shelley in its intensity and Arnold in its disciplined reticence. They have all the warmth of life seen against an eternal background, and a passionate message which cannot go unheeded.
* The Sharing. By Agnes Lee. (Sherman, French: $1.00 net.) Agnes Lee’s new book has all her familiar qualities, but in addition it presents a new criticism of life which reveals a feeling for human values akin in many respects to that of Browning. In its brevity and search for the polished word, it suggests the sculptor’s art, and many of these poems would have pleased Landor for their freight of suggestion and elemental simplicity.
* Sword Blades and Poppy Seed. By Amy Lowell. (Macmillan: $1.25 net.) A volume, not only of interesting experiment in vers libre and exotic rhythms, but of notable accomplishment in poetry. Though associated with the “imagiste” school of English poetry, Miss Lowell’s talent is independent of it, and in her narrative and lyric poems alike one feels an artistic firmness and restraint which results in clear vision clearly sung. Best of all, this “imagiste” poetry is healthy and able to fight for its existence. In so far as it is derivative from French influences it adds a new note to English verse, and reveals a subtle use of free cadenced rhythms which is fully responsive to the mood and feeling of the poem. Far more genuine and spontaneous than Miss Lowell’s first volume.
The Passing Singer and Other Poems. By Samuel Henry Marcus. (Stratford Pub. Co.: $1.00 net.) A modest first volume which is likely to receive less attention than it deserves. Mr. Marcus has not yet found himself in poetry, but he sings the present condition of humanity sincerely and passionately. When he sings it simply, he will be more satisfying, but this volume will give pleasure to any one who really cares for poetry.
* Poems. By Edward Sandford Martin. (Scribner: $1.50 net.) The collected verse of the Editor of Life. Mellow Horatian philosophy and wit not yet frost-bitten by a man whom Dr. Johnson would have pronounced clubbable and with whom Boswells must feel uncomfortable.
You and I. By Harriet Monroe. (Macmillan: $1.25 net.) A bulky volume of verse by the editor of Poetry: A Magazine Of Verse. In it the social note is voiced strongly, and expression is given to many phases of modern effort, but its intellectual content rather overshadows its lyric quality.