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.