roundup ever read my poetical paroxysms. If I had, apprehensions for my personal safety might have made my life on the range a less perfect memory than it is. One night around the fire, while I was cooking for an outfit on the drive, during the alcoholic disability of the regular incumbent, I heard the story of a cowboy, in the Chiricahua mountains, I think, who had roped a bobcat and dragged it to death. The same night Dave asked Bronc to sing a song (a real folk-song I reckon that must have been) which began with the words, ""Way high up on Pecos stream;" but Bronc couldn't remember it. These fragments, with various amazing lies which the boys told of their prowess with the rope, went into my melting pot, however, and a year or so later the rhyme of High-Chin Bob resulted, much as Aaron's golden calf came out of the fire after the Israelitish bracelets and earrings had been thrown in. And so there isn't an atom of mystery about it, nor a scrap of romance. Instead of being some mysterious, sun-tinged singer of the old free days who has now crossed the Great Divide and is drinking straight whisky and shooting holes through the roof of the Valhalla to which Wild Bill and Calamity Jane and Big-nosed George and the Apache Kid and the other old worthies have gone, I am a drearily ordinary Western man who wears shoes and goes to church and boosts for prohibition, like most of the other reformed cowpunchers. Your kind words, though, rattle around in my heart as merrily as the ball on a roulette wheel, and I thank you for them. Badger Clark ANNOUNCEMENT OF AWARDS It is the happy but difficult prerogative of the editorial staff of POETRY to award this month two prizes for poems printed in the magazine during its fifth year-from October, 1916, to September, 1917, inclusive. Poems by members of the committee are withdrawn from competition, the members represented this year being Mrs. Henderson (Alice Corbin), Mrs. Tietjens, Mr. Pound, Mr. Fuller, Miss Wyatt and Miss Monroe. Miss Wyatt, to her great regret, has been unable, however, to serve on the committee of award this year. Translations are not considered. The HELEN HAIRE LEVINSON PRIZE of two hundred dollars, offered by Mr. Salmon O. Levinson, of Chicago, for a poem, or group of poems, by a citizen of the United States, is awarded to MR. CLOYD HEAD of Chicago, for his one-act tragedy Grotesques, published in the number for October, 1916. The prize of one hundred dollars, offered by a guarantor for a poem, or group of poems, without restriction of nationality, is awarded to MR. ROBERT FROST for his poem, Snow, published in November, 1916. Mr. Frost, as we all know, lives in Franconia, N. H., but for the last year or two, as a member of the faculty of Amherst College, he has spent the college year at Amherst, Mass. Both prizes are awarded by a plurality vote of the committee, a minority dissenting and scattering in each case. The following poems receive honorable mention: Sa-a Naraï, by Frank S. Gordon (February). War, by Eloise Robinson (May). Mid-American Songs, by Sherwood Anderson (September). Pocahontas, by Vachel Lindsay (July). Kin to Sorrow, by Edna St. Vincent Millay (August). High Chin Bob, by Badger Clark (August). Wind-flowers, by Mark Turbyfill (May). The News, by Wilfrid Wilson Gibson (January). Songs out of Stress, by Sara Teasdale (June). History, by William Carlos Williams (August). Dirge, by Alfred Kreymborg (April). Prussians Don't Believe in Dreams, by Morris Gilbert (April). The Fugitive, by Gladys Cromwell' (April). Poems, by Edward Eastaway (February). (Edward Thomas was the real name of this poet, who died in action last spring on the English front.) NOTES Mr. Carl Sandburg, of Chicago, author of Chicago Poems (Henry Holt and Co.) needs no introduction to our readers. Nor does Alice Corbin (Mrs. Wm. P. Henderson) also of Chicago but now living in Santa Fé, N. M. Mr. H. Thompson Rich, of New York, now editor of The Forum, has also appeared before; and Marjorie Allen Seiffert (Mrs. Otto S.) of Moline, Ill. Mr. James Joyce, the well known Irish novelist, was introduced to our readers as a poet last spring. Mr. John Drinkwater, the English poet, author of Swords and Ploughshares and Olton Pools (Sidgwick & Jackson, Ltd.), has appeared several times in POETRY. The other poets on our list this month are new to our readers. Mr. Salomón de la Selva, a young Nicaraguan poet who now lives in New York, was a godson and friend of his famous compatriot Ruben Dario. Our readers will remember his study of Dario and his poetry in July, 1916. Mr. de la Selva says of his two lyrics: "The two folk-songs are genuine, the first one especially centuries old; and there is hardly a country where Spanish is spoken but possesses its versions of these songs." Mr. de la Selva has published a number of books abroad, and has contributed verse and prose in Spanish and English to various magazines of the two Americas; among his contributions being Spanish translations of certain modern American poets. Miss Kate Buss, of Boston, is the author of Jevons Block, published last spring by the McGrath-Sherrill Press. And Mary White Slater, of Ironton, Ohio, is the author of The Child Book and a contributor to various magazines. Mr. David O'Neil, of St. Louis, and Mr. Archie Austin Coates, of New York, will soon publish their first books of verse. And Mr. John Black, a young New York journalist, born in Scotland, is now with the American army "somewhere in France." POETRY offers its readers this month the first of a series of articles on modern French poets, to be written by Mr. Pound, Mr. T. S. Eliot, Mr. Jean de Bosschère and perhaps others, and to appear at irregular intervals. The New Age in 1913 printed Mr. Pound's series, The Approach to Paris, but since then French aspects of the act have shifted somewhat and new names must be considered. BOOKS RECEIVED ORIGINAL VERSE: Poems (1904-1917), by Wilfrid Wilson Gibson. Macmillan Co. First Poems, by Edwin Curran. Privately printed, Zanesville, O. Main Street and Other Poems, by Joyce Kilmer. Geo. H. Doran Co, War Ballads and Verses, by William Hathorn Mills. Privately printed, San Bernardino, Cal. Love Songs, by Sara Teasdale. Macmillan Co. Poems, by Maude Lalita Johnson. Privately printed, Los Angeles, Cal. Roses and Rebellion, by Robert DeCamp Leland. Four Seas Co., Boston. Old Christmas and Other Kentucky Tales in Verse, by William Aspenwald Bradley. Houghton Mifflin Co. The Chinese Nightingale and Other Poems, by Vachel Lindsay. Macmillan Co. Wisconsin Sonnets, by Charles H. Winke. Badger Publishing Co., Milwaukee, Wis. ANTHOLOGIES: Christ in the Poetry of Today, an Anthology from American Poets, Notre Dame Verse, Compiled and Edited by Speer Strahan and Hundred Love Lyrics by Women, British and American Poems of the World War, 1914-1917. Edited by George Herbert Clarke. Houghton Mifflin Co. PROSE: Tendencies in Modern American Poetry, by Amy Lowell. Macmillan Co. |