Where you, O Poet, give us back lost wonder,
Leisure, sweet fields, clean skies to travel under!
Sentence Reviews
[Inclusion in this category does not preclude a more extended notice.]
The Titan, by Theodore Dreiser [John Lane Company, New York], will be reviewed at length in the July issue.
Clay and Fire, by Layton Crippen. [Henry Holt and Company, New York.] A provocative philosophical discussion of the basal problem of religion by an author who treats pessimism according to the homeopathic principle. Reasonable hopes are made to seem hopeless. A morbid retrospectiveness may, however, force thought into light, and the book leaves one in a strange illumination effected by spiritual fire.
At the Sign of the Van, by Michael Monahan. [Mitchell Kennerley, New York.] These essays include The Log of the Papyrus with Other Escapades in Life and Letters. Whether he is praising Percival Pollard, explaining Whitman’s cosmic consciousness—which he did to a Whitman Fellowship gathering—or wistfully telling us how he would like to have had a look in on the doings in Babylon, the amorous dallyings which Jeremiah muckraked in the name of his Comstockean Jehovah, Michael Monahan is always interesting even if he is not always as stormy as his designation “the stormy petrel of literature” would indicate. In truth it would take a number of birds of different species—but all pleasant ones—to make up the tale of the qualities which this versatile essayist exhibits in these pages.
Aphrodite and Other Poems, by John Helston. [The Macmillan Company, New York.] Mr. Helston does not write great poetry,—though he comes close to very good poetry at times,—but he writes greatly about love. His attitude is a refusal to divorce the spiritual from the earthly with which we have a hearty sympathy. No franker love poetry has been written, probably; but somehow we failed to find in it the sensuality that its critics have discovered. It is richly pagan.
Love of One’s Neighbor, by Leonid Andreyev. [Albert and Charles Boni, New York.] A very excellent translation of a one-act play which will probably sell well, though coming from the author of The Seven Who Were Hanged it seems a mere trifle. The translator, Thomas Seltzer, should be urged to undertake the more worthy task of introducing Andreyev’s really great work to English-speaking readers.
New Men for Old, by Howard Vincent O’Brien. [Mitchell Kennerley, New York.] The first novel of a new young writer, especially when he is as sincere as Mr. O’Brien and as deeply interested in the joy of Work, is a matter of importance. The book has its obvious faults technically, even psychologically, but it preaches socialism from an interesting standpoint and makes good reading.