_The Lyric Year_, Mr. Kennerley's new annual, contains among its hundred
contributions nearly a score of live poems, among which a few excite the
kind of keen emotion which only art of real distinction can arouse.
Among the live poems the present reviewer would count none of the
prize-winners, not even Mr. Sterling's, the best of the three, whose
rather stiff formalities in praise of Browning are, however, lit now and
then by shining lines, as--
Drew as a bubble from old infamies....
The shy and many-colored soul of man.
The other two prize-poems must have been measured by some academic
foot-rule dug up from the eighteenth century. Orrick Johns' _Second
Avenue_ is a _Grays Elegy_ essay of prosy moralizing, without a finely
poetic line in it, or any originality of meaning or cadence. And the
second prize went to an ode still more hopelessly academic. Indeed, _To
a Thrush_, by Thomas Augustine Daly, is one of the most stilted poems in
the volume, a far-away echo of echoes, full of the approved "poetic"
words--_throstle_, _pregnant_, _vernal_, _cerulean_, _teen_, _chrysmal_,
even _paraclete_--and quite guiltless of inspiration.
But one need not linger with these. As we face the other way one poem
outranks the rest and ennobles the book. This is _The Renascence_, said
to be by Edna St. Vincent Millay, who, according to the editor, is only
twenty years old. This poem is the daring flight of a wide-winged
imagination, and the art of it, though not faultless, is strong enough
to carry us through keen emotions of joy and agony to a climax of
spiritual serenity. Though marred by the last twelve lines, which should
be struck out for stating the thesis too explicitly, this poem arouses
high hopes of its youthful author.
Among the other live poems--trees, saplings or flowers--are various
species. _Kisa-Gotami_, by Arthur Davison Ficke, tells its familiar
story of the Buddha in stately cadences which sustain the beauty of the
tale. _Jetsam_, a "_Titanic_" elegy by Herman Montagu Donner, carries
the dread and dangerous subject without violating its terrors and
sanctities with false sentiment or light rhythm. Ridgeley Torrence's
_Ritual for a Funeral_ is less sure of its ground, sometimes escaping
into vapors, but on the whole noble in feeling and flute-like in
cadence. Mrs. Conkling's bird ode has now and then an airy delicacy, and
Edith Wyatt's _City Swallow_ gives the emotion of flight above the roofs
and smoke of a modern town.
Of the shorter poems who could ignore Harry Kemp's noble lyric dialogue,
_I Sing the Battle_; _The Forgotten Soul_ by Margaret Widdemer, _Selma_,
by Willard H. Wright; _Comrades_ by Fannie Stearns Davis, or Nicholas
Vachel Lindsay's tribute to O. Henry, a more vital elegy than Mr.
Sterling's? These are all simple and sincere--straight modern talk
which rises into song without the aid of worn-out phrases. _Paternity_,
by William Rose Benét, _To My Vagrant Love_, by Elouise Briton, and
_Dedication_, by Pauline Florence Brower, are delicate expressions of
intimate emotion; and _Martin_, by Joyce Kilmer, touches with grace a
lighter subject.
To have gathered such as these together is perhaps enough, but more may
be reasonably demanded. As a whole the collection, like the prizes, is
too academic; Georgian and Victorian standards are too much in evidence.
The ambition of _The Lyric Year_ is to be "an annual Salon of American
poetry;" to this end poets and their publishers are invited to
contribute gratis the best poems of the year, without hope of reward
other than the three prizes. That so many responded to the call, freely
submitting their works to anonymous judges, shows how eager is the
hitherto unfriended American muse to seize any helping hand.
However, if this annual is to speak with any authority as a Salon, it
should take a few lessons from art exhibitions. Mr. Earle's position as
donor, editor and judge, is as if Mr. Carnegie should act as hanging
committee at the Pittsburg show, and help select the prize-winners. And
Messrs. Earle, Braithwaite and Wheeler, this year's jury of awards, are
not, even though all have written verse, poets of recognized distinction
in the sense that Messrs. Chase, Alexander, Hassam, Duveneck, and other
jurymen in our various American Salons, are distinguished painters.
In these facts lie the present weaknesses of _The Lyric Year_. However,
the remedy for them is easy and may be applied in future issues.
Meantime the venture is to be welcomed; at last someone, somewhere, is
trying to do something for the encouragement of the art in America.
_Poetry_, which is embarked in the same adventure, rejoices in
companionship.
_H. M._
* * * * *
Already many books of verses come to us, of which a few are poetry.
Sometimes the poetry is an aspiration rather than an achievement; but in
spite of crude materials and imperfect artistry one may feel the beat of
wings and hear the song. Again one searches in vain for the magic touch,
even though the author has interesting things to say in creditable and
more or less persuasive rhymed eloquence.
Of recent arrivals Mr. John Hall Wheelock has the most searching vision
and appealing voice. In _The Human Fantasy_ (Sherman, French & Co.) his
subject is New York, typified in the pathetic little love-affair of two
young starvelings, which takes its course through a stirring, exacting
milieu to a renunciation that leaves the essential sanctities intact.
The poet looks through the slang and shoddy of the lovers, and the dust
and glare of the city, to the divine power of passion in both. In _The
Beloved Adventure_ the emotion is less poignant; or, rather, the poet
has included many indifferent pieces which obscure the quality of finer
lyrics. More rigorous technique and resolute use of the waste-basket
would make more apparent the fact that we have here a true poet, one
with a singing voice, and a heart deeply moved by essential spiritual
beauty in the common manifestations of human character. At his best he
writes with immense concentration and unflagging vigor; and his hearty
young appetite for life in all its manifestations helps him to transmute
the repellant discords of the modern town into harmony. The fantasy of
_Love in a City_ is a "true thing" and a vital.
Mr. Hermann Hagedorn is also a true poet, capable of lyric rapture, but
sometimes, when he seems least aware, his muse escapes him. _The
Infidel_, the initial poem of his _Poems and Ballads_ (Houghton Mifflin
Co.), recalls his _Woman of Corinth_, and others in this book remind one
of this and of his Harvard class poem, _The Troop of the Guard_, in that
the words do not, like colored sands, dance inevitably into the absolute
shape determined by the wizardry of sound. He is still somewhat hampered
by the New England manner, a trend toward an external formalism not
dependent on interior necessity. This influence makes for academic and
lifeless work, and it must be deeply rooted since it casts its chill
also over the Boston school of painters.
But now and then Mr. Hagedorn frees himself; perhaps in the end he may
escape altogether. In such poems as _Song_, _Doors_, _Broadway_,
_Discovery_, _The Wood-Gatherer_, _The Crier in the Night_ and _A Chant
on the Terrible Highway_, we feel that he begins to speak for himself,
to sing with his own voice. Such poems are a challenging note that
should arrest the attention of all seekers after sincere poetic
expression.
Mr. Percy MacKaye, in _Uriel and Other Poems_ (Houghton Mifflin Co.),
shows also the Boston influence, but perhaps it is difficult to escape
the academic note in such poems for occasions as these. With fluent
eloquence and a ready command of verse forms he celebrates dead poets,
addresses noted living persons, and contributes to a number of
ceremonial observances. The poems in which he is most freely lyric are
perhaps _In the Bohemian Redwoods_ and _To the Fire-Bringer_, the
shorter of his elegies in honor of Moody, his friend.
In two dramatic poems, _The Tragedy of Etarre_, by Rhys Carpenter
(Sturgis & Walton Co.), and _Gabriel, a Pageant of Vigil_, by Mrs.
Isabelle Howe Fiske (Mosher), the academic note is confidently insisted
on. The former shows the more promise of ultimate freedom. It is an
Arthurian venture of which the prologue is the strongest part. In
firm-knit iambics Mr. Carpenter strikes out many effective lines and
telling situations. Indeed, they almost prompt the profane suggestion
that, simplified and compressed, they might yield a psychological
libretto for some "advanced" composer.
Mrs. Fiske's venture is toward heaven itself; but her numerous
archangels are of the earth earthy.
In _The Unconquered Air and Other Poems_ (Houghton Mifflin Co.), Mrs.
Florence Earle Coates shows not inspiration but wide and humane
sympathies. Her verse is typical of much which has enough popular appeal
and educative value to be printed extensively in the magazines; verse in
which subjects of modern interest and human sentiment are expressed in
the kind of rhymed eloquence which passes for poetry with the great
majority.
These poets may claim the justification of illustrious precedent. The
typical poem of this class in America, the most famous verse rhapsody
which stops short of lyric rapture, is Lowell's _Commemoration Ode_.