from A. to Z. Isn't that all so-called criticism amounts to? The impressions I offer, touching upon only the most significant, or the most widely advertised, of the denizens of The New Poetry, are neither arbitrary nor impersonal,. neither infallible nor final.

It is impossible for me to enthuse about the work of Conrad Aiken. I admire the man and critic, but not the poet. He is hemmed in by electicism, the poetical, and an affectation of method due perhaps to that ancient enemy of the creative faculty, inhibition. I don't question his integrity as a man and critic, but the poet in him is too often a mockingbird. Richard Aldington, one of the most potent forces of the days when Mr. Pound was the Barnum of imagism, is a shadow of the poet who wrote Choricos. Choricos is a magnificent dirge, with an authentic rhythm and choice of language. The Poplar is as fine a tree poem as the new movement has contributed, and Lesbia an effusion containing at least five famous lines, one of them a quotation. Popularity and too much publicity have since led Aldington from art to cleverness.-Walter Conrad Arensberg is richer and poorer through a scholarship which begets and hampers expression. Nevertheless, Voyage à L'Infini is more than a tour de force. Scholarship only intrudes far enough to polish an idea which is as original as it is profound.—As a rule, William Rose Benét is tiresome. He abuses the footrule and at the same time fails to remove its traces after his carpentry job is finished. He is too often that damnable citizen, the facile craftsman. I prefer the work of his

younger brother, Stephen Vincent Benét.-Maxwell Bodenheim was at one time my arch enthusiasm. Today he represents for me the arch example of the man who fits Renoir's warning: "Success is harder to combat than poverty." Bodenheim is joined in this combat by the great majority of poets who have deservedly won the reputation which is theirs. They find it impossible to throw away the prize of a style perfected through the most arduous labor. In other words, they are as self-imitative as the average sonneteer is imitative of the past: academic form prevails over a form naturally evolved from new adventuring. Bodenheim has made a fetish of his extraordinarily rich gift for images. His greatest strength is his greatest weakness.-Rupert Brooke is tremendously overrated.-Witter Bynner, like Aiken, is often threatened with that bugaboo, the poetical. However, it does not scare away an easy flow of lyricism which is native to Bynner. The three poems, To Celia, are lovely, persuasive songs which do not require the aid of wild-eyed controversy.-Joseph Campbell is a better imagist than some of the imagists themselves. At Harvest and On Waking sway to provocative cadences.-Skipwith Cannell, who has not been writing for the past three or four years. is well represented by The Red Bridge and The King. Primarily, Cannell's influences are two such varied forces as the Bible and the Russian ballet, to which he has added a note of personal scorn which is healthier than the mawkish optimism so often mistaken for a virile attitude towards living.-Padraic Colum sings quietly and with straightfor

ward diction about Irish folk. His jovial nature and unaffected narrative style move forward like companionable horses dragging along the themes of country life.-Adelaide Crapsey, a courageous human hewing out tiny five-line etchings as huge as mountains, with death peering out from behind, should go down in American poetic lore with Emily Dickinson. Death was the earthly victor after a short struggle, but life will cherish her art for years to come.I am tempted to continue the same strain around H. D., and why should I be ashamed of so doing? Aren't women a valiant and integral part of the renascence of American poetry? H. D. is the finest of the imagists, and the single one who has maintained an unflagging devotion to what one might call the best a fellow can attempt. The selection made by the editors reflects credit on all three women concerned.Still another woman, Mary Carolyn Davies, of California, might, if she would-but simply refuses to measure up with the three preceding poets. When first I saw her work, I turned somersaults of pleasure. Here was a girl expressing the girl consciousness with delightful naiveté. But Miss Davies came to New York, grew popular, joined the Poetry Society of America, and sold yards of verse to editors.— Walter de la Mare is my favorite English poet. Whimsical sorrow inventing tunes which are as simple and as subtle as Schubert do not require analysis. And analysis would only lose the duel.-T. S. Eliot's two long poems, Portrait of a Lady, and The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, easily confute the recent statement of that overrated pudding of

conceit, Mr. H. L. Mencken, who asseverates not only that a long poem is an act of criminal procedure, but that a story is lost when told in verse. Eliot is an exquisite satirist with an uncanny power for intricate narrative.-Major Arthur Davison Ficke is another member of the fraternity of poetical poets. When John Gould Fletcher "is good," he is almost the best of Americans; when he "is bad," he is almost the worst. If one is concerned only with a man's magnificent qualities, Fletcher will pass the glittering gate. His Irradiations, of which four are quoted, and The Blue Symphony, a splendidly sustained composition, belong to an earlier period of Fletcher's expression. He is the experimenter among the imagists, and as such is certain to emerge from the rut in which he is traveling at present.-F. S. Flint is the least significant of the imagists. He contributed several lovely poems to the first imagist anthology, some of which have been chosen by the editors. Sentimentality is the bain of Flint.-Need one spill further rhetoric in behalf of Robert Frost? He is a greater poet than any of the early New-Englanders-which has probably been said by another.-Wilfrid Wilson Gibson, leading imitator of John Masefield, is a literateur patronizing the lowly. Perhaps that is why he is so popular with the intelligenzia.-Ralph Hodgson is responsible for my favorite Eve poem. this, my heart holds him blessed. The poem is not included in The New Poetry.-Helen Hoyt makes a genuine appeal in her woman poems. Had she the courage of a Rousseau, we might eventually learn what this thing called, woman,

For

is! But she is often side-tracked by her Puritanical forebears.-Orrick Johns' Songs of Deliverance are Whitmanesque in their breadth of feeling and eloquence of expression. I wish there had been room, as well, for his Country Rhymes, originally presented in POETRY. They well nigh stamp Johns as our finest American lyrist.—It was William Gillette, wasn't it, who said that if a man speaks well of himself, nobody believes him; if he speaks ill, everybody believes him. So I leave the work of a certain A. K. to others.D. H. Lawrence is a poet who writes good novels, whether in verse or prose. His prime fault is exaggeration. He doesn't fit into imagist anthologies.-Vachel Lindsay, the Billy Sunday, Ty Cobb and Bert Williams of poetry, has made art out of vaudeville-and then again, and alas, vaudeville out of art. He has immortalized rag-time.—Amy Lowell is represented by her best poem, Patterns, by an atrocious piece of journalism, 1777, and some miscellaneous numbers. The Lowell following is to me one of the mysteries of this planet: she is facile, prolific, a reader of good books, a genius as a propagandist, and a scintillating lady; but she has contributed absolutely nothing which is new to poetry. For this sin, may Hell pardon me!--John Masefield, though a greater poet than Amy Lowell, is not a great poet. George Moore said of Victor Hugo that his novels live along the same level of excellence, which expresses my objection to Masefield.-By way of luring me still closer to Beelzebub, along comes Edgar Lee Masters. Spoon River is universal material handled by an islander. The