Mr Wallace Stevens, of Hartford, Conn., needs no further introduction to readers of POETRY, to which he first contributed in our War Number of Nov., 1914. He now returns to the subject of the war, his motive being furnished by that remarkable little book, Lettres d'un Soldat, published in Paris by the Librairie Chapelot two years or more ago. The name of its author, the young soldier-architect to whom six months at the front brought extraordinary spiritual exaltation, is still withheld by his family because of the possibility of his being a prisoner in Germany. The letters were written to his mother from August, 1914, to April, 1915, from which date he has been among the missing. Mr. Stevens' mood is less acquiescent than that of the young Frenchman, but not less profoundly felt. Other poets who are familiar to our readers are Agnes Lee (Mrs. Otto Freer), of Chicago, whose latest book is The Sharing (Sherman, French & Co.); Mr. Orrick Johns, of St. Louis, whose Asphalt was published last year by Alfred A. Knopf; Mr. Thomas Wood Stevens, author of numerous plays and pageants, who is now dramatic director of the Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh; and Miss Viola I. Paradise, of Chicago, an employee of the government in the Children's Bureau, who has published little. An unusual number of poets, none of whom has published a volume as yet, appear in POETRY for the first time. Of these: Mr. Haniel Long, born in Rangoon, Burmah, in 1888, is now Professor of English in the School of Fine Arts of Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh. Miss Hortense Flexner, a journalist of Louisville, Ky., is the author of several short plays, one of which, Voices, was printed in the Seven Arts Magazine and given by the Portmanteau Theatre Company. Flora Shufelt Rivola (Mrs. Charles E.) has lived since infancy near Yankton, S. D. She has contributed to The Masses and other magazines. Mr. John V. A. Weaver, Jr., a young Chicago journalist, is now in military training at Camp Zachary Taylor, Ky. Mr. Dean B. Lyman, Jr., born in 1896 at New Haven, Conn., is now a student at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tenn. Miss Ida Judith Johnson, a Missourian, teaches Latin and history at the Cape Girardeau high school. Mr. Solomon J. D. Fendell, of Brooklyn, was born in London in 1895, came to America ten years later, and has recently graduated from Trinity College, Hartford, Conn. Mr. Howard Unger, of St. Louis, writes, "Put me down as an emigrant from Russia." Miss Cecily Fryer is an English poet resident in Woodbridge, Suffolk. BOOKS RECEIVED ORIGINAL VERSE: Toward the Gulf, by Edgar Lee Masters. Macmillan Co. Herbs of Grace, by Wilfrid Blair. B. H. Blackwell, Oxford, Eng. Rimes in Olive Drab, by Sergeant John Pierre Roche. Privately printed. Flashlights and Depths, by Werther Friedman. Summit Pub. Co., New York. Seven Sonnets and Other Poems, by J. Carey Thomas II. Gorham Grass-grown Trails, by Badger Clark. Richard G. Badger. A Cabinet of Jade, by David O'Neil. Four Seas Co. Verse: 1914-1918, by Gregory Scott Robbins. Privately printed by John Crawford Park, Pittsburgh. The World and the Waters, by Edward F. Garesché, S. J. Queen's Work Press, St. Louis. The Shadow-Eater, by Benjamin De Casseres. Wilmarth Pub. Co., New York. Etchings, by Robert Earl Barclay, N. N. V. Privately printed, Cambridge, Mass. Poems, Sonnets and Sacred Songs, by R. M. Bartley. Gorham Press. Melodies in Verse, by Mary B. Ehrmann. Stewart & Kidd Co., Cincinnati. ANTHOLOGY: Georgian Poetry, 1916-1917. G. P. Putnam's Sons. A Magazine of Verse European me Poetry / JUNE, 1918 . HE WAR TIMES THE SONG OF THE CHEECHAS THF Cheechas defended Chachak fourth line held her third capital: For a man is a grandfather here at forty, and a fighter at eighty until he dies. And the Germans found it out and flinched and fled from them. They had no uniform but their gray hair and beards, and needed none. They had no rations but half a pound of dry bread a day, and it sufficed them. They were armed with rifles as old and battered as themselves, and they battered the Germans back. |