Immagini della pagina
PDF
ePub

NOTES

Only four of the poets of this number have appeared before in POETRY. Miss Amy Lowell needs no introduction; her latest book of verse is Men, Women and Ghosts (1916), and of prose Tendencies in Modern American Poetry (1917), both published by the Macmillan Co.

Mr. Ajan Syrian, who is a rug-dealer in New York, made his first appearance as a poet in POETRY for June, 1915. Born in 1887 on the Syrian desert, he came early to this country, was adopted by Mr. Gajor M. Berugjian of Brooklyn, and studied at Columbia University. His history, and the quality of his English work, suggest what artistic enrichment we may expect in the future from our immigrants of widely different races.

Mr. James Church Alvord, of South Attleboro, Mass., also appears for the second time. Ditto Mr. Mark Turbyfill, a young Chicagoan now in the service. Ditto Mr. Arthur Symons, the distinguished English poet, who after a long silence seems to have renewed his youth during the last two or three years.

Another distinguished English poet, Mr. Herbert Trench, appears for the first time in POETRY. His first book of verse, Dierdre Wedded, was published in London in 1901,followed in 1907 by New Poems, Apollo and the Seaman, etc. Poems with Fables in Prose, whose most important poem is The Battle of the Marne, has just appeared. In 1910 Mr. Trench was director of one of the London art-theatre companies, which gave a beautiful production of The Bluebird, by Maeterlinck; but he is now living in Settignano, near Florence. His poems, so far as I know, have not been published in America, though one of the finest of them is a tribute to Poe, contributed to a London weekly at the time of the Poe centenary. Miss Theodosia Garrison, of Elizabeth, N. J., is the author of three or four books of verse, of which the latest, The Dreamers and Other Poems, published last year by Geo. H. Doran & Co., was recently reviewed in POETRY.

The other poets of this month have not yet published volumes, or appeared much in magazines. Mr. Leslie Jennings, of Rutherford, Napa Co., Cal., will soon issue his first book, however. Mr. Henry C. Thomas is another young Californian, living in Berkeley. Miss Beatrice Stevens hails from Dyersburg, Tenn. Miss Margaret I. Postgate lives in London, and Mildred Cummer Wood (Mrs. Clement Wood) in New York. Mr. Robert Redfield, Jr., of Chicago, was for a year or more an ambulance driver in France.

Miss Edith Chapman Tracy, of Milwaukee, the translator of the Balmont poems, sends the following note about their author from Chapter VI of Russia and the Russians, by H. W. Williams:

"The modernist movement expressed itself most distinctly as a poetical revival, and the leaders in this revival were Balmont and Briusov, the former half-consciously, the latter of deliberate purpose. Konstantin Balmont is a poet for the sheer love of the music of poetry. "During the revolutionary period Balmont wrote political verse. He has consequently been compelled since 1906 to live abroad, chiefly in Paris, and exile has had a paralyzing effect upon a talent of rare spontaneity. Balmont has translated into Russian the works of many foreign poets, including Calderon, Shelley, Ibsen and Poe. He knows foreign languages well, but is too subjective to be a good translator, and his version of the English poet is much more suggestive of Balmont than Shelley. The English poet whom Balmont most resembles in quality, though not in range of talent, is Swinburne."

Balmont is the author of Free Russia, the new national hymn of the Russian republic.

ORIGINAL VERSE:

BOOKS RECEIVED

Arma Virumque, by Robert Withington. Hampshire Bookshop. Northampton, Mass.

Rain in May and Other Verses, by Forntassin Gift. Four Seas Co. Motley and Other Poems, by Walter de la Mare. Henry Holt & Co. Poems of West and East, by V. Sackville-West (Mrs. Harold Nicolson). John Lane Co.

The Angel in the Sun, by Edith Daley. Pacific Short Story Club, San Jose, Cal.

Dust from the Southern Cross, by Walt Mason, Jr. Privately printed, Cristobal, Canal Zone.

Inspirations of a Bachelor-Idyls and Ideals, by Arthur Miller Easter. Privately printed, Baltimore.

The Divine Image-a Book of Lyrics, by Caroline Giltinan. Cornhill Co.

As Thou Wilt and Other Poems, by Ethelwyn Dithridge. Stratford Co.

Song-Flame, by Amy Sherman Bridgman. Stratford Co.

The Gardener and Other Poems, by Luther A. Lawhon. Privately printed, San Antonio, Tex.

[graphic]

A Magazine of Verse

SEPTEMBER, 1918

THE EMPIRE OF CHINA IS CRUMBLING

DOWN; poem,

Dedicated to William Rose Benét

N

I

OW let the generations pass

Like sand through Heaven's blue hour-glass.

By the capital where poetry began,

Near the only printing presses known to man,
Young Confucius walks the shore

On a sorrowful day.

The town, all books, is tumbling down

Through the blue bay.

From rusty musty walls the bookworms come;
They drown themselves like rabbits in the sea.
Venomous scholars harry mandarins

With pitchfork, blunderbuss and snickersnee.

« IndietroContinua »