Chicago Granite

ing, and when he talks back to the loud-mouthed Billy Sunday the swing of a smashing prose hammer is good enough.

But again, under softer inspiration, this poet's touch becomes exquisitely delicate. Indeed, there is orchestral richness in his music; he plays divers instruments. Such lyrics as The Great Hunt, Under, Beachy, At a Window, The Road and the End, have a primal, fundamental beauty, a sound and swing as of tides or bending grain. Many of these POETRY has had the honor of printing, but this one is new:

The spirit of the book is heroic, both its joy and its sorrow. It says, "Keep away from the little deaths!"

H. M.

THE INDEPENDENTS

Catholic Anthology—1914-1915. Elkin Mathews, London. Compared to Mr. Braithwhite's annual poetry salon this book might be called a Salon d'Indépendents. We have Mr. T. S. Eliot's very interesting attempt to bring vorticism into poetry by breaking up thoughts, moods, scenes, into fragments, and making them play on one another. We have several pure-flame pieces from Mr. Masters' Spoon River. We have Miss Monroe's poem from Peking written in 1910, where we already see Poetry walking freely, with all the ropes and chains off. Walking?—I should perhaps say dancing, but I believe that sober thoughtful walking is a form of dance in itself. We have Harold Monro's real and "cute" Cat and interesting Suburb. And we have a very beautiful Williams-William Carlos Williams' In Harbor.

Alice Corbin, in One City Only, gives her heart to us entirely for a while, laying bare every nook and cranny of her mood.

In Mr. Rodker's interpretation of a young girl's passion-the drawing of her heart, and the fear in it, before she submits to her lover, and the terror and happiness after a study purposely misnamed Twilight and Lunatic-I do not find the reverence for sheer truth which I find in Tolstoi's treatment of these situations, nor the gentleness and tenderness of Maeterlinck, by whom this poet seems to be strongly influenced. It is carelessly read Maupassant; or Bourget and

worse.

The Independents

I liked both Carl Sandburg's-The Harbor and The Road and the End. In the latter the poet allows the subject to carry him to a certain extent instead of his carrying the subject; but the reader is carried along just as strongly. The pulse of the line in The Harbor is normal; in The Road and the End it is a little fast; yet I think Mr. Sandburg is better in these rhythms than in his later and slower ones, where he is often a little monotonous.

The selection from Mr. Kreymborg's works does not do that writer justice; the poem about the toothless pirate is much better than the one in this volume. Orrick Johns' rather crude symbols are not to my taste. Nor am I entirely satisfied with "M. B.", our Chicago friend Maxwell Bodenheim. In my opinion this writer seems to believe that his readers are not deeply critical, and does not perfect his work. It is perhaps less noticeable in In Old Age than in Crucifixion, for instance, where he begins with a concrete image and ends with a cliché. Allen Upwards' Chinese Lanterns, in spite of their new wisdom, seem to have something hoary in them-like all good lore.

Douglas Goldring's tapestry story makes one who has not read anything else of his wonder what that fellow has up his sleeve. There is an interesting experiment in conversation-poetry by T. E. Hulme; and a preface-poem by the W. B. Yeats of 1916, who is a somewhat different poet from the earlier Yeats, a poet of deeper wisdom and more austere rhythms.

Of the selection from Mr. Pound-well, whenever I read

him I seem to forget for awhile what I am reading and think of the man-of his self-abnegation. He is to me the most interesting figure in the recent awakening of poetry. Like Cézanne he always seems to say, "I am nothing-my work is everything." What Cézanne would have said with a scowl and in different terms, Mr. Pound cries out with a "damn you!" perhaps: "Do you think this piece too simple, crude, thin? But this is the way!" He will translate another writer instead of writing something of his own for you to admire, if he believes it will show you the way. He will be vulgar, noble, profane, just to show you. One only wishes that he would stop brooding about himself in his weaker moments, and forget the legend that he is so much. disliked.

Of course one misses many writers he would like to find. To me a collection of modern poems is incomplete without H. D. and four or five other writers.

I do not quote anything from the book because I believe every intelligent person interested in poetry should own it. Max Michelson

TWO BELGIAN POETS

Maurice Maeterlinck, a Critical Study, by Una Taylor. Dodd, Mead and Co., New York.

Poems by Maurice Maeterlinck, done into English by Bernard Miall. Dodd, Mead and Co.

Poems of Emile Verhaeren, selected and translated by Alma Strettell. John Lane, London.

Two Belgian Poets

The Cloister, a Play in Four Acts, by Emile Verhaeren, translated by Osman Edwards. Houghton Mifflin Co.

Maurice Maeterlinck and Emile Verhaeren are both vital figures in the literature of their country; in fact, they cannot be far from the same age. For twenty years English-speaking people have been familiar with Maeterlinck's works; he has been a force in their literature, and has given to their poetry and drama a new infusion of life. Yet Verhaeren, writing in French for three decades, influential among French writers everywhere, and conspicuous in the new movement in poetry Verhaeren, who has bared the bleeding soul of the Belgium of today, has only recently been at all widely translated into English. Of course we have heard of his genius for years, but he has not been a master in our thought, a name upon every English and American tongue, as has Maeterlinck. We must look for a reason.

The author of America, when asked what, in his opinion, caused the widespread affection for his song, replied that he was sure it was the word my. He said that he had at first written Our country, 'tis of thee, but that this line hadn't the right go. He changed the universal to the more intimate word, and the song became famous.

Verhaeren paints splendid landscapes, flaming narratives, large beliefs, larger hopes, gives out a wealth of sound and color, makes ennobling pictures of life's every-day. Maeterlinck enters the very sanctuary of self, touches its inmost problems-terror, love, dread, sacrifice, sickness, death. Thus