modern painters who are so intent on giving "form" to each object in a picture that the whole lacks cohesion. Poetry is the language of crisis, and H. D.'s verse is admirably adapted to passionate utterance, but all crisis and no relief is like a jewel with no setting. Her work could be more fluid without loss of precision. Mr. Fletcher's poems are more descriptive than usual, a tendency which he knows how to avoid on occasion, although it sometimes swamps his poems. In these verses his words seem to have been mustered into service somewhat unwillingly. They serve his mood, but they do not themselves create or evoke the mood as in some of his most distinctive work. The war seems to have had a peculiarly unhappy effect upon Mr. Flint's poetry; it is almost purely reportorial, without the excuse of journalism, which is to convey news. Bare statement, even statement of sensations, will not of itself make a poem. Mr. Lawrence, on the other hand, is introspective to the point of obscurity, but he is not in the least unintelligible to one who understands states of consciousness beneath the surface. Terra Nuova records a psychological experience with the sort of unflinching truth which one has learned to expect from Mr. Lawrence. There are, perhaps, people so undifferentiated that they could not possibly understand what Mr. Lawrence "is driving at:" to them this poem will be as dark as the tomb. Miss Lowell's contribution to the book is a series of Lacquer Prints, translations or reflections from the Japanese, expressed with true Japanese brevity, delicacy of feeling, although a little more terse and epigramatic than one feels Japanese originals to be. A. C. H. NOTES Mr. Alfred Kreymborg, of New York, is well known as the author of Mushrooms (Alfred A. Knopf), and the founder and first editor of Others, the interesting and provocative organ of the more radical vers-librists. When the Willow Nods, as the readers of POETRY were informed in our January number, was given for the first time by the Players' Club of St. Louis, on the evening of December third, Mr. Orrick Johns enacting the cryptic commentator with an effect of rare dramatic beauty. The play, or dance-accompanied monologue-if the miming girl and boys may be said to have danced-proved to be born for the stage, and its author was saluted by the enthusiastic audience as a poetic playwright of rare quality. Lieutenant_Baker Brownell, who has been for some months in training at Camp Doniphan, Ok., and Fort Myers, Fla., makes his initial appearance as a poet. St. Charles, Ill., is his birthplace and residence; in 1912-13 he held the James Walker travelling fellowship in philosophy from Harvard, and since then he has done journalistic and editorial work until he entered the army. A still younger poet is Mr. Emanuel Carnevali, of New York, who was born in Florence twenty years ago, was educated in Italian technical schools, and came to America at sixteen. Since then he has earned his living in various difficult ways, studied English, and written his first poems in both languages. He writes: "I want to become an American poet because I have, in my mind, rejected Italian standards of good literature. I do not like Carducci, still less d'Annunzio. Of American authors I have read, pretty well, Poe, Whitman, Twain, Harte, London, Oppenheim and Waldo Frank. I believe in free verse. I try not to imitate." Mr. Edwin Curran, of Zanesville, O., is also a stranger to printer's ink. He is a telegraph operator on duty in a railroad tower from 10 P. M. to 6 A. M., and most of his writing is done in the wee sma' hours. Another poet new to our readers, though a contributor to Reedy's Mirror, The Smart Set and other magazines, is Susan M. Boogher (Mrs. John P.), of St. Louis. Miss Gladys Cromwell, of New York, who has appeared before in POETRY, is the author of The Gates of Utterance (Sherman, French & Co.). Miss Cromwell sailed for France last month to work for the Red Cross. ORIGINAL VERSE: BOOKS RECEIVED Trackless Regions, by G. O. Warren. B. H. Blackwell, Oxford, Eng. Heart Songs, by Henry Weston Frost. Gorham Press. Service Rhymes, by Burt Franklin Jenness. Privately printed, El Paso, Texas. The Trench Lad and Other Poems, by Saxe Churchill Stimson. Gorham Press. Songs of the Skokie and Other Verse, by Anne Higginson Spicer. Ralph Fletcher Seymour, Chicago. The Door of Dreams, by Jessie B. Rittenhouse. Houghton Mifflin Co. Renascence and Other Poems, by Edna St. Vincent Millay. Mitchell Kennerley. Hillsboro in the War, by Richard D. Ware. Gorham Press. Clusters of Poetry, by Daniel Veldring. Privately printed, Chicago. ANTHOLOGIES: Sunflowers-a Book of Kansas Poems, selected by Willard Wattles. A. C. McClurg & Co., Chicago. The Poets of the Future-a College Anthology for 1916-17, edited by Henry T. Schnittkind. Stratford Co. PROSE AND TRANSLATIONS: Dialogues of Fontenelle, translated by Ezra Pound. The Egoist, Ltd., London. Songs of Hafiz, translated by Edna Worthley Underwood. Four Seas Co. The Undying Spirit of France, by Maurice Barres, translated by W. B. Corwin with a foreword by Theodore Stanton. Yale Univ. Press. The Life of Algernon Charles Swinburne, by Edmund Gosse. Macmillan Co. The livest art in America today s poetry, and the livest expression of that art is in this little Chicago monthly. New York Tribune (Editorial) POETRY for MARCH, 1918 When the Willow Nods The Splendid Commonplace PAGE Alfred Kreymborg 287 Emanuel Carnevali 298 In This Hotel-His Majesty the Letter-carrier—Drôlatique- Departure The Number-Reveille-On the Road-South- Manuscripts must be accompanied by a stamped and self-addressed envelope. Inclusive yearly subcription rates: In the United States, Mexico, Cuba and American possessions, $2.00 net; in Canada, $2.15 net; in all other countries in the Postal Union, $2.25 net. Entered as second-class matter at Post-office, Chicago. Published monthly at 543 Cass St., Chicago Copyright 1918, by Harriet Monroe. All rights reserved. |