Poetry is one of the realities that persist. The façade and dome of
palace and temple, the monuments of heroes and saints, crumble before
the ruining breath of time, while the Psalms last. So when another
year passes and we sum up our achievements, there is no achievement
more vital in registering the soul of a people than its poetry. But in
all things that men do, their relationship is objective except those
things in which art, religion, love, and nature express their influence
through the private thoughts and feelings of men. These four things
are the realities, all the others are symbols. And the essence of art,
as well as religion and love and nature, is a conscious and mysterious
thing, called Poetry. And men will find, if they will only stop to
look, that at the bottom of all this poetry, no matter what the theme
or the particular artistic shaping, there is something with which they
are familiar, because in their own souls there has been an unceasing
mystery which they find named in the magic utterance of some lonely and
neglected maker of verses.
The poetry in the magazines for this past year has been of a general
high standard. The long poems have been well sustained, and there has
been a larger quantity of pure lyric pieces than in the past two or
three years. The influence of Masefield has shown itself in American
verse, notably in the two long poems by Harry Kemp, “The Harvest
Hand” and “The Factory.” One of the noblest poems of the year is Henry
van Dyke’s “Daybreak in the Grand Cañon of Arizona,” which breathes a
fine national spirit, full of reverence for the greatness with which
the American destiny is symbolized in the natural grandeur of our
country. Mr. Markham has a long narrative in “The Shoes of Happiness,”
full of his visionary and spiritual promptings. And in “The Vision of
Gettysburg” Mr. Robert Underwood Johnson reflects also the national
spirit with particular significance.
The poetry of the year in volumes has not been as ample as last year.
The three poets who have aroused most discussion are the Bengali poet
Tagore, who brought to the Western world in “Gitanjali” a spiritual
message full of mystic but exalted idealism; Francis Thompson, the
great Catholic poet, because of the publication of his collected
works; and Robert Bridges, who, by his appointment to the English
laureateship, became known to a large number of readers who had
hitherto been unfamiliar with his very perfect and delicate gift of
lyric beauty. Of American poets the volumes by Fannie Stearns Davis,
William Rose Benét, Josephine Preston Peabody, Margaret Root Garvin,
and George Edward Woodberry are the most significant. The most
important book of poems of the year by an American poet, however, is
that of Nicholas Vachel Lindsay, “General William Booth Enters into
Heaven and Other Poems.” Here is a man with a big vision, with a
fine originality, and an art that is particularly his own. There has
been no “Lyric Year” this autumn, but a little volume that serves
in some sense its purpose is Miss Jessie B. Rittenhouse’s “Little
Book of Modern Verse,” which is intended to represent the quality of
contemporary American verse.
I want to call attention to a poet who has not yet presented himself
except through an occasional magazine piece, but who has written two
of the finest sonnets in American poetry. Last year I reprinted, in my
annual summary, Mr. Mahlon Leonard Fisher’s “As an Old Mercer,” and
pronounced that an achievement which could hardly be surpassed. But
in the sonnet “November,” which is reprinted in this book, Mr. Fisher
has done, I believe, something that is even greater. It must rank with
Lizette Woodworth Reese’s “Tears” and Longfellow’s “Nature” as the best
sonnets that have been accomplished by American poets. I have known one
competent judge and lover of poetry to declare that not since Keats’
“On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” and Miss Reese’s “Tears” has
there appeared so fine a sonnet in English poetry. The man who has
written “November” has added something to American poetry that cannot
be too highly estimated.
Another poet who has enriched the magazines this year, after a period
of silence, is Mr. Edwin Arlington Robinson, and in “The Field of
Glory” we are under the spell once more of that characteristic magic
with which he is endowed alone among American poets.
As in former years, in my annual summary in the _Boston Transcript_, I
have examined the contents of the leading American monthly magazines.
I originally started, nine years ago, when the first summary appeared,
with these six: The Atlantic, Harper’s, Scribner’s, Century,
Lippincott’s, and McClure’s. Later I turned to The Forum. The poetry in
McClure’s during the two years previous to the beginning of the present
year had fallen off; the magazine would reprint occasionally verses
from the books of accomplished but little known English and Irish
poets, which, with the small amount of space that it devoted to verse,
left but little chance of encouragement to native singers. This year
I have included The Smart Set, which, under the new editorship of Mr.
Willard Huntington Wright, himself a poet of considerable attainment,
has been the means of offering the public a high and consistent
standard of excellence in the verse it printed.
To the six magazines, namely, Harper’s, Scribner’s, Century, Forum,
Lippincott’s, and The Smart Set, I have added this year a weekly, The
Bellman. West of New York it is the best edited and most influential
periodical published. Indeed, it is widely read in the East. In its
pages three of the younger American poets of distinctive achievement
have been presented. Though the late Arthur Upson had published some
two or three books of verse before The Bellman was established, yet it
was practically the first American magazine to print his work. Amelia
J. Burr made her first considerable poetic appearance in The Bellman,
and the best work, the sonnets that have placed Mr. Mahlon Leonard
Fisher in the forefront of contemporary American, or English, sonnet
writers, appeared in this same publication. As last year, I have
winnowed from other magazines distinctive poems for classification and
notice, one each from The Outlook, The Independent, the North American
Review, Poetry, A Magazine of Verse; three from the Poetry Journal and
three from the Yale Review.
* * * * *
The poems published during the year in the seven representative
magazines I have submitted to an impartial critical test, choosing from
the total number what I consider the “distinctive” poems of the year.
From the distinctive pieces are selected eighty-one poems, to which
are added five from the other magazines not represented in the list of
seven, making a total of eighty-six, which are intended to represent
what I call an “Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1913.”
By a further process of elimination, similar to that of previous years,
I have made another selection of forty poems which for one reason or
another in the purpose of this estimate seem to stand grouped above the
others.
The medium of magazine publication, towards which some critics,
and some poets too (a fact which can hardly be justified), and a
considerable portion of the reading public have a disparaging opinion,
is deserving of better repute for the general high quality of poetic
art that is published. Not many years ago it was a favorite exercise of
the reviewer, when noticing the average book of verse which happened
to include selections reprinted from various magazines, to term the
work “magazinable,” or the poet a “magazine poet.” Even poets who
detested being called “minor” poets preferred that rather vague and
indiscriminate distinction, rather than the unrespectable “magazinable.”
Quoting what I have written in previous years, to emphasize the
methods which guided my selections, the reader will see how impartial
are the tests by which the distinctive and best poems are chosen: “I
have not allowed any special sympathy with the subject to influence
my choice. I have taken the poet’s point of view, and accepted his
value of the theme he dealt with. The question was: How vital and
compelling did he make it? The first test was the sense of pleasure the
poem communicated; then to discover the secret or the meaning of the
pleasure felt; and in doing so to realize how much richer one became in
a knowledge of the purpose of life by reason of the poem’s message.”
In one hundred and twenty-one numbers of these seven magazines I find
there were published during 1913 a total of 506 poems. The total number
of poems printed in each magazine, and the number of the distinctive
poems are: Century, total 58, 30 of distinction; Harper’s, total 57, 29
of distinction; Scribner’s, total 45, 30 of distinction; Forum, total
53, 27 of distinction; Lippincott’s, total 66, 21 of distinction; The
Bellman, total 53, 25 of distinction; The Smart Set, total 169, 49 of
distinction.
Following the text of the poems making the anthology in this volume, I
have given the titles and authors of all the poems classified as the
distinctive, published in the magazines for the year, only excepting
those that are included in the anthology; in addition I give a list
of all the poems and their authors in the one hundred and twenty-one
numbers of the magazines examined, for the purpose of a record which
readers and students of poetry will find useful.
I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness and thanks to the editors
of Scribner’s Magazine, Harper’s Magazine, The Forum, The Century
Magazine, The Outlook, Lippincott’s Magazine, The Bellman, The
Independent, The Smart Set, the Yale Review, Poetry, A Magazine of
Verse; and to the publishers of these magazines, including The Poetry
Journal, for the permission kindly given to reprint in this volume the
text of the poems making the “Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1913.” To
the authors of these poems I am equally indebted and grateful for their
willingness to have me reprint their work in this form. Since their
appearance in the magazines and before the close of the year when the
contents of this volume was made up, two poems herein included appeared
in the original volumes of their authors. For the use of William Rose
Benét’s “The Marvelous Munchausen” I have also to thank The Century
Co., publishers of “Merchants of Cathay,” in which volume it appears.
As far as I know, only three of the poems here included are to come
out immediately in books by their authors. The last four stanzas of “A
Threnody,” by Mr. Louis V. Ledoux, are reprinted by permission of the
editor of Scribner’s Magazine, and the rest of the poem is published in
advance, by permission of Messrs. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, from a volume
of Mr. Ledoux’s poems, which is also to include the “Hymn to Demeter”
from “A Sicilian Idyl,” they are to issue in January, under the title
of “The Shadow of Ætna.” The two selections by Mr. Richard Burton,
“Here Lies Pierrot” and “Human”; the two by Willard Huntington Wright,
“What of the Night?” and “Later”; the one by George Edward Woodberry,
“St. John and the Faun”; and the two by Richard Le Gallienne, “May is
Building Her House” and “Desiderium” (which while this Introduction
is being written has come out in Mr. Le Gallienne’s volume, “The
Lonely Dancer and Other Poems,” John Lane Co.), are also being issued
immediately in forthcoming volumes. If there are any others I do not
know of them, and in which case I would gladly give credit, so I
trust any omission of such will be charged to ignorance rather than
intention. I wish it to be understood that the privilege extended me so
courteously, by both the authors and the magazines, to print the poems
in this volume, does not in any sense restrict the authors in their
rights to print the poems in volumes of their own.
A significant fact which the poetry in this volume must bring to the
reader’s mind in considering American poetry of today is, that these
selections have been published for the first time during the current
year. Our poetry needs, more than anything else, encouragement and
support, to reveal its qualities. The poets are doing satisfying and
vitally excellent work, and it only remains for the American public to
do its duty by showing a substantial appreciation.
Lastly, I wish to thank the Boston Transcript for the privilege of
reprinting material in this book which originally appeared in the
columns of that paper.
_Cambridge, December, 1913._ W. S. B.