must be that same quality of ineffable beauty which is found in paintings, sculptures, potteries, from Chou to Sungnay, even in the Temple of Heaven of the Manchu conquerors of Peking. This quality goes far to cheapen all occidental art-whom did it not strike with divine despair during the recent exhibition, at the Chicago Art Institute, of Chinese masterpieces of the great ages chosen by Charles L. Freer of Detroit-that generous servant of beauty-from the wonderful collection which he is making for the people of the United States! Alas that Dürer and Michel Angelo could not have wandered there! H.M.

REVIEWS

ANTHOLOGIES AND TRANSLATIONS

Others, An Anthology of the New Verse, edited by Alfred Kreymborg. Alfred A. Knopf.

A new Others anthology! This time the editor has not limited his choice, as in the 1916 compilation, to material which first appeared in the magazine Others, but has drawn from several periodicals including The Masses, The Egoist, The Little Review, and four of the poetry magazines. There is also another change of policy: fewer poets are represented, so that each one may have more space. The first anthology had thirty-five names, this one has seventeen: five women-Mary Carolyn Davies, Jeanne D'Orge, Helen Hoyt, Mina Loy, Marianne Moore; and twelve menMessrs. Arensburg, Bodenheim, Cannéll, Eliot, Johns, Kreymborg, O'Neil, Rodker, Sanborn, Sandburg, Stevens,

and Williams. The only name new to Others is David O'Neil.

You do not expect friends to change in a little over a year and a half. Mr. Bodenheim, Mr. Cannéll, Miss Davies, have the same flavors to be tasted as before. Mr. Sanborn has become less interesting. Orrick Johns offers new Songs of Deliverance, but they lack some of the aplomb of the earlier ones, and nothing could quite take the place of his Olives in the first anthology. T. S. Eliot pictures the moods of dingy furnished-rooms-"with smells of steak in passage ways"—instead of the Boston Evening Transcript elegance one might look for. And Mina Loy has strangely turned understandable and less fragmentary-though still scorning the use of punctuation marks.

We are glad Marianne Moore's There is a great amount of poetry in unconscious fastidiousness was included in this book. It is a fascinating thing, and unlike anyone but Marianne Moore, as all her poems are. But some of her pieces are too compact and keen-too "fastidious"-for comfort. Jeanne D'Orge also is distinct, never echoes, and while seemingly at opposite poles in temperament and style from Marianne Moore, these two have in common a satirical power, and humor; in which Mina Loy also shares.

From the editor himself several new poems appear, as fine as any he has written. Berceuse Ariettes is a picture of honeymoon housekeeping, most charming. From the Williams group a reader of the magazine misses that sharply etched and delighting Portrait of a Lady in Bed and also the

Persian Cat. The "lady" in bed and the Persian cat behaved as nature, rather than the convenience of society, dictated, and perhaps success is making Others proper: success often does that.

Wallace Stevens shows variety of interest and manner, and originality in experiment. The poem about Saint Ursula, and the one called Explanation are less sure in touch than the others. There is not much of the new poetry that mouths well, but this, The Worms at Heaven's Gate, is rich on the tongue:

Out of the tomb we bring Badroulbadour
Within our bellies-we her chariot.

Here is an eye; and here are, one by one,
The lashes of that eye and its white lid.
Here is the cheek on which that lid declined;
And finger after finger; here, the hand,
The genius of that cheek. Here are the lips,
The bundle of the body and the feet.
Out of the tomb we bring Badroubadour.

Walter Conrad Arensburg, who told us in the last anthology of "the swan existing," has abandoned, we surmise, his Voyage à l'Infini for a voyage in the fourth dimension. Here follows the Arithmetical Progression of the Verb "To Be":

On a sheet of

paper

dropped with the intention of demolishing

space

by the simple subtraction of a necessary plane Draw a line that leaves the present

in addition

carrying forward to the uncounted columns

of the spatial ruins

now considered as complete

the remainder of the past.

The act of disappearing

which in the three-dimensional

is the fate of the convergent
vista

is thus

under the form of the immediate
arrested in a perfect parallel
of being

in part.

This is the most intelligible of the poems by Mr. Arensburg, and therefore a good one to begin on. I believe I have arrived at an understanding of it, and if some other reader gets any one of the other five I shall be glad to exchange assistance. Often it is only necessary to be given the clue to a seemingly unintelligible poem for it to assume immediately full meaning. Such a poem is the one in this book by Carl Sandburg entitled Others, Fantasia for Muskmelon Days:

O Pal of Mine, O Humpty Dumpty, shake hands with me.
O Ivory Domes, I am one of You:

Let me in.

For God's sake-let me in.

This was the answer to an invitation. There was to be a gathering of the contributors to Others in the summer of 1916 in the muskmelon days-and the jovial Carl's acceptance was the above fantasia. A "regular absolute humpty-dumpty business" expresses well the general verdict at that time on the Others magazine and group; but

those who shook their heads are now growing used to the new verse, and they will feel less bewildered with this volume than with the first one. David O'Neil's delicate carvings, John Rodker's picture of the lovers playing with the croquet ball in the garden and his Spring Suicide; and many more of the poems, are directly enough in line with the accepted traditions for anyone to like them who has come into sympathy with the new verse at all. That the whole book will be a treasury for those who admire the Ivory Domes may be assured.

H. H.

The Answering Voice-One Hundred Love Lyrics by Women, selected by Sara Teasdale. Houghton Mifflin Co.

Those who will receive this book the most eagerly are feminists and lovers. The feminist may find that she is disappointed, or, rather, that she cannot quite tell whether she is disappointed or not. Surely the poems are of fine quality, for the whole sex to take pride in-what did she expect of a collection of love-poems by women? and may the lack of what is missing be charged against the editor, or against woman herself? It is still too early in woman's dawning day of expression for many questions to be answered. Neither of herself nor of love does she tell us in this book anything that we could not have learned in a book of love-poems by men. A larger amount of material, or material of greater variety, might have let her tell more.

The editor's definition of lyric is narrower, perhaps, than poems are usually measured to. The volume is made up