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diff --git a/75854-0.txt b/75854-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6600010 --- /dev/null +++ b/75854-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2561 @@ + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75854 *** + + + + + + THE LITTLE REVIEW + + + Literature Drama Music Art + + MARGARET C. ANDERSON + EDITOR + + JUNE-JULY, 1916 + + Malmaison Amy Lowell + The Philosopher Sherwood Anderson + Song of the Killing of Liars Richard Hunt + Mlle. Poetry Meets Me at the Roscoe Brink + Church + Silhouettes Harriet Dean + Our Migratory Address + Psycho-Analysis Florence Kiper Frank + A Dyptich: Skipwith Cannell + Wonder Song + Scorn + The Deeper Scorn + Hokku Edgar Lee Masters + Poems: Mark Turbyfill + Thin Day + The Rose Jar + The Irish Revolutionists Padraic Colum + Bring Out Your Dead: + Braithwaites Death-Cart Mitchell Dawson + Tree’s “Merchant of Venice” Rollo Peters + Some Imagist Poets, 1916 Mary Aldis + Three Imagist Poets John Gould Fletcher + The Reader Critic + A Vers Libre Prize Contest + + Published Monthly + + 15 cents a copy + + MARGARET C. ANDERSON, Publisher + Montgomery Block + SAN FRANCISCO, CAL. + + $1.50 a year + + Entered as second-class matter at Postoffice, San Francisco, Cal. + + + + + THE LITTLE REVIEW + + + VOL. III + + JUNE-JULY, 1916 + + NO. 4 + + Copyright, 1916, by Margaret C. Anderson + + + + + Malmaison + + + AMY LOWELL + + + I + +How the slates of the roof sparkle in the sun, over there, over there, +beyond the high wall! How quietly the Seine runs in loops and windings, +over there, over there, sliding through the green countryside! Like +ships of the line, stately with canvas, the tall clouds pass along the +sky, over the glittering roof, over the trees, over the looped and +curving river. A breeze quivers through the linden trees. Roses bloom at +Malmaison. Roses! Roses! But the road is dusty. Already the Citoyenne +Beauharnais wearies of her walk. Her skin is chalked and powdered with +dust, she smells dust, and behind the wall are roses! Roses with smooth +open petals, poised above rippling leaves.... Roses.... They have told +her so. The Citoyenne Beauharnais shrugs her shoulders and makes a +little face. She must mend her pace if she would be back in time for +dinner. Roses indeed! The guillotine more likely. + + * * * * * + +The tiered clouds float over Malmaison, and the slate roof sparkles in +the sun. + + + II + +Gallop! Gallop! The General brooks no delay. Make way, good people, and +scatter out of his path, you, and your hens, and your dogs, and your +children. The General is returned from Egypt, and is come in a calèche +and four to visit his new property. Throw open the gates, you, Porter of +Malmaison. Pull off your cap, my man, this is your master, the husband +of Madame. Faster! Faster! A jerk and a jingle and they are arrived, he +and she. Madame has red eyes. Fi! It is for joy at her husband’s return. +Learn your place, Porter. A gentleman here for two months? Fi! Fi, then! +Since when have you taken to gossiping? Madame may have a brother, I +suppose. That—all green, and red, and glitter, with flesh as dark as +ebony—that is a slave; a blood-thirsty, stabbing, slashing heathen, come +from the hot countries to cure your tongue of idle whispering. + + * * * * * + +A fine afternoon it is, with tall bright clouds sailing over the trees. + + * * * * * + +“Bonaparte, mon ami, the trees are golden like my star, the star I +pinned to your destiny when I married you. The gypsy, you remember her +prophecy. My dear friend, not here, the servants are watching; send them +away, and that flashing splendour, Roustan. Superb—Imperial, but.... My +dear, your arm is trembling; I faint to feel it touching me! No, no, +Bonaparte, not that—spare me that—did we not bury that last night! You +hurt me, my friend, you are so hot and strong. Not long, Dear, no, thank +God, not long.” + +The looped river runs saffron, for the sun is setting. It is getting +dark. Dark. Darker. In the moonlight, the slate roof shines palely +milkily white. + +The roses have faded at Malmaison, nipped by the frost. What need for +roses? Smooth, open petals—her arms. Fragrant, outcurved petals—her +breasts. He rises like a sun above her, stooping to touch the petals, +press them wider. Eagles. Bees. What are they to open roses! A little +shivering breeze runs through the linden trees, and the tiered clouds +blow across the sky like ships of the line, stately with canvas. + + + III + +The gates stand wide at Malmaison, stand wide all day. The gravel of the +avenue glints under the continual rolling of wheels. An officer gallops +up with his sabre clicking; a mameluke gallops down with his charger +kicking. Valets-de-pied run about in ones, and twos, and groups, like +swirled blown leaves. Tramp! Tramp! The guard is changing, and the +grenadiers off duty lounge out of sight, ranging along the roads toward +Paris. + +The slate roof sparkles in the sun, but it sparkles milkily, vaguely, +the great glass-houses put out its shining. Glass, stone and onyx now +for the sun’s mirror. Much has come to pass at Malmaison. New rocks and +fountains, blocks of carven marble, fluted pillars uprearing antique +temples, vases and urns in unexpected places, bridges of stone, bridges +of wood, arbours and statues, and a flood of flowers everywhere, new +flowers, rare flowers, parterre after parterre of flowers. Indeed, the +roses bloom at Malmaison. It is youth, youth untrammeled and advancing, +trundling a country ahead of it as though it were a hoop. Laughter, and +spur janglings in tesselated vestibules. Tripping of clocked and +embroidered stockings in little low-heeled shoes over smooth grassplots. +India muslins spangled with silver patterns slide through +trees—mingle—separate—white day-fireflies flashing moon-brilliance in +the shade of foliage. + +“The kangeroos! I vow, Captain, I must see the kangeroos.” + +“As you please, dear Lady, but I recommend the shady linden alley and +feeding the cockatoos.” + +“They say that Madame Bonaparte’s breed of sheep is the best in all +France.” + +“And, oh, have you seen the enchanting little cedar she planted when the +First Consul sent home the news of the victory of Marengo?” + +Picking, choosing, the chattering company flits to and fro. Over the +trees the great clouds go, tiered, stately, like ships of the line +bright with canvas. + +Prisoner’s-base, and its swooping, veering, racing, giggling, bumping. +The First Consul runs plump into M. de Beauharnais and falls. But he +picks himself up smartly, and starts after M. Isabey. Too late, M. Le +Premier Consul, Mademoiselle Hortense is out after you. Quickly, my dear +Sir! Stir your short legs, she is swift and eager, and as graceful as +her mother. She is there, that other, playing too, but lightly, warily, +bearing herself with care, rather floating out upon the air than +running, never far from goal. She is there, borne up above her guests as +something indefinably fair, a rose above periwinkles. A blown rose, +smooth as satin, reflexed, one loosened petal hanging back and down. A +rose that undulates languorously as the breeze takes it, resting upon +its leaves in a faintness of perfume. + + * * * * * + +There are rumours about the First Consul. Malmaison is full of women, +and Paris is only two leagues distant. Madame Bonaparte stands on the +wooden bridge at sunset, and watches a black swan pushing the pink and +silver water in front of him as he swims, crinkling its smoothness into +pleats of changing colour with his breast. Madame Bonaparte presses +against the parapet of the bridge, and the crushed roses at her belt +melt, petal by petal, into the pink water. + + + IV + +A vile day, Porter. But keep your wits about you. The Empress will soon +be here. Queer, without the Emperor! It is indeed, but best not consider +that. Scratch your head and prick up your ears. Divorce is not for you +to debate about. She is late? Ah, well, the roads are muddy. The rain +spears are as sharp as whetted knives. They dart down and down, edged +and shining. Clop-trop! Clop-trop! A carriage grows out of the mist. +Hist, Porter. You can keep on your hat. It is only Her Majesty’s dogs +and her parrot. Clop-trop! The Ladies in Waiting, Porter. Clop-trop! It +is Her Majesty. At least, I suppose it is, but the blinds are drawn. + +“In all the years I have served Her Majesty she never before passed the +gate without giving me a smile!” + +“You’re a droll fellow, to expect the Empress to put out her head in the +pouring rain and salute you. She has affairs of her own to think about.” + +Clang the gate, no need for further waiting, nobody else will be coming +to Malmaison tonight. + +White under her veil, drained and shaking, the woman crosses the +antechamber. Empress! Empress! Foolish splendour, perished to dust. +Ashes of roses, ashes of youth. Empress forsooth! + +Over the glass domes of the hot houses drenches the rain. Behind her a +clock ticks—ticks again. The sound knocks upon her thought with the +echoing shudder of hollow vases. She places her hands on her ears, but +the minutes pass, knocking. Tears in Malmaison. And years to come each +knocking by, minute after minute. Years, many years, and tears, and cold +pouring rain. + +“I feel as though I had died, and the only sensation I have is that I am +no more.” + +Rain! Heavy, thudding rain! + + + V + +The roses bloom at Malmaison. And not only roses. Tulips, myrtles, +geraniums, camellias, rhododendrons, dahlias, double hyacinths. All the +year through, under glass, under the sky, flowers bud, expand, die, and +give way to others, always others. From distant countries they have been +brought, and taught to live in the cool temperateness of France. There +is the _Bonapartea_ from Peru; the _Napoleone Impériale_; the +_Josephinia Imperatrix_, a pearl-white flower, purple-shadowed, the +calix pricked out with crimson points. Malmaison wears its flowers as a +lady wears her gems, flauntingly, assertively. Malmaison decks herself +to hide the hollow within. + +The glass-houses grow and grow and every year fling up hotter reflexions +to the sailing sun. + +The cost runs into millions, but a woman must have something to console +herself for a broken heart. One can play backgammon and patience, and +then patience and backgammon, and stake gold Napoleons on each game won. +Sport truly! It is an unruly spirit which could ask better. With her +jewels, her laces, her shawls; her two hundred and twenty dresses, her +fichus, her veils; her pictures, her busts, her birds. It is absurd that +she cannot be happy. The Emperor smarts under the thought of her +ingratitude. What could he do more? And yet she spends, spends as never +before. It is ridiculous. Can she not enjoy life at a smaller figure? +Was ever monarch plagued with so extravagant an ex-wife? She owes her +chocolate-merchant, her candle-merchant, her sweetmeat purveyor; her +grocer, her butcher, her poulterer; her architect, and the shopkeeper +who sells her rouge; her perfumer, her dressmaker, her merchant of +shoes. She owes for fans, plants, engravings, and chairs. She owes +masons and carpenters, vintners, lingères. The lady’s affairs are in sad +confusion. + +And why? Why? + +Can a river flow when the spring is dry? + + * * * * * + +Night. The Empress sits alone, and the clock ticks, one after one. The +clock nicks off the edges of her life. She is chipped like an old bit of +china; she is frayed like a garment of last year’s wearing. She is soft, +crinkled, like a fading rose. And each minute flows by brushing against +her, shearing off another and another petal. The Empress crushes her +breasts with her hands, and weeps. And the tall clouds sail over +Malmaison like a procession of stately ships bound for the moon. + + * * * * * + +Scarlet, clear-blue, purple epauletted with gold. It is a parade of +soldiers sweeping up the avenue. Eight horses, eight Imperial harnesses, +four caparisoned postillions, a carriage with the Emperor’s arms on the +panels. Ho, Porter, pop out your eyes, and no wonder. Where else under +the Heavens could you see such splendour! + +They sit on a stone seat. The little man in the green coat of a colonel +of Chasseurs, and the lady, beautiful as a satin seedpod, and as pale. +The house has memories. The satin seedpod holds his germs of Empire. We +will stay here, under the blue sky and the turreted white clouds. She +draws him; he feels her faded loveliness urge him to replenish it. Her +soft transparent texture woos his nervous fingering. He speaks to her of +debts, of resignation; of her children, and his; he promises that she +shall see the King of Rome; he says some harsh things and some pleasant. +But she is there, close to him, rose toned to amber, white shot with +violet, pungent to his nostrils as embalmed rose-leaves in a twilit +room. + +Suddenly the Emperor calls his carriage and rolls away across the +looping Seine. + + + VI + +Crystal-blue brightness over the glass-houses. Crystal-blue streaks and +ripples over the lake. A macaw on a gilded perch screams; they have +forgotten to take out his dinner. The windows shake. Boom! Boom! It is +the rumbling of Prussian cannon beyond Pecq. Roses bloom at Malmaison. +Roses! Roses! Swimming above their leaves, rotting beneath them. Fallen +flowers strew the unraked walks. Fallen flowers for a fallen Emperor! +The General in charge of him draws back and watches. Snatches of +music—snarling, sneering music of bagpipes. They say a Scotch regiment +is besieging St. Denis. The Emperor wipes his face, or is it his eyes? +His tired eyes which see nowhere the grace they long for. Josephine! +Somebody asks him a question, he does not answer, somebody else does +that. There are voices, but one voice he does not hear, and yet he hears +it all the time. Josephine! The Emperor puts up his hand to screen his +face. The white light of a bright cloud spears sharply through the +linden trees. “Vive l’Empereur!” There are troops passing beyond the +wall, troops which sing and call. Boom! A pink rose is jarred off its +stem and falls at the Emperor’s feet. + +“Very well. I go.” Where! Does it matter? There is no sword to clatter. +Nothing but soft brushing gravel and a gate which shuts with a click. + +“Quick, fellow, don’t spare your horses.” + +A whip cracks, wheels turn, why burn one’s eyes following a fleck of +dust. + + + VII + +Over the slate roof tall clouds, like ships of the line, pass along the +sky. The glass-houses glitter splotchily, for many of their lights are +broken. Roses bloom, fiery cinders quenching under damp weeds. Wreckage +and misery, and a trailing of petty deeds smearing over old +recollections. + +The musty rooms are empty and their shutters are closed, only in the +gallery there is a stuffed black swan, covered with dust. When you touch +it the feathers come off and float softly to the ground. Through a chink +in the shutters one can see the stately clouds crossing the sky toward +the Roman arches of the Marley Aqueduct. + + + + + The Philosopher + + + SHERWOOD ANDERSON + +He was an old man with a white beard and huge nose and hands. Long +before the time during which we will know him he was a doctor, and drove +a jaded white horse from house to house through the streets of +Winesburg, Ohio. Later he married a girl who had money. She had been +left a large fertile farm when her father died. The girl was quiet, +tall, and dark, and to many people she seemed very beautiful. Everyone +in Winesburg wondered why she married the doctor. Within a year after +the marriage she died. + +The knuckles of the doctor’s hands were extraordinarily large. When the +hands were closed they looked like clusters of unpainted wooden balls as +large as walnuts fastened together by steel rods. He smoked a cob pipe, +and after his wife’s death sat all day in his empty office close by a +window that was covered with cobwebs. He never opened the window. Once, +on a hot day in August, he tried but found it stuck fast, and after that +he forgot all about it. + +Winesburg had forgotten the old man, but in Doctor Reefy there were the +seeds of something. Alone in his musty office in the Heffner block, +above the Paris Dry Goods Company’s store, he worked ceaselessly, +building up something that he himself destroyed. Little pyramids of +truth he erected and after erecting knocked them down again that he +might have the truths to erect other pyramids. + +Doctor Reefy was a tall man who had worn one suit of clothes for ten +years. It was frayed at the sleeves and little holes had appeared at the +knees and elbows. In the office he wore also a linen duster with huge +pockets into which he continually stuffed scraps of paper. After some +weeks the scraps of paper became little hard round balls and when the +pockets were filled with these he dumped them out upon the floor. For +ten years he had but one friend, another old man named John Spaniard, +who owned a tree nursery. Sometimes in a playful mood old Doctor Reefy +took from his pockets a handful of the paper balls and threw them at the +nurseryman. “That is to confound you, you blithering old +sentimentalist,” he cried, shaking with laughter. + +The story of Doctor Reefy and of his courtship of the tall dark girl, +who became his wife and left her money to him, is a very curious story. +It is delicious like the twisted little apples that grow in the orchards +of Winesburg. In the fall one walks in the orchards and the ground is +hard with frost underfoot. The apples have been taken from the trees by +the pickers. They have been put in barrels and shipped to the cities +where they will be eaten in apartments that are filled with books, +magazines, furniture and people. On the trees are only a few knarled +apples that the pickers have rejected. They look like the knuckles of +Doctor Reefy’s hands. One nibbles at them and they are delicious. Into a +little round place at the side of the apple has been gathered all its +sweetness. One runs from tree to tree over the frosted ground picking +the knarled, twisted apples and filling his pockets with them. Only the +few know the sweetness of the twisted apples. + +The girl and Doctor Reefy began their courtship on a summer afternoon. +He was forty-five then and already he had begun the practice of filling +his pockets with the scraps of paper that became hard balls and were +thrown away. The habit had been formed as he sat in his buggy behind the +jaded gray horse and went slowly along country roads. On the papers were +written thoughts, ends of thoughts, beginnings of thoughts. + +One by one the mind of Doctor Reefy had made the thoughts. Out of many +of them he formed a truth that rose gigantic in his mind. The truth +clouded the world. It became terrible and then faded away and the little +thoughts began again. + +The tall dark girl came to see Doctor Reefy because she was going to +have a child and had become frightened. She was in that condition +because of a series of circumstances also curious. + +The death of her father and mother and the rich acres of land that had +come down to her had set a train of suitors on her heels. For two years +she saw suitors almost every evening. With the exception of two they +were all alike. They talked to her of passion and there was a strained +eager quality in their voices and in their eyes when they looked at her. +The two who were different were much unlike the others. One of them, a +slender young man with white hands, the son of a jeweler in Winesburg, +talked continually of virginity. When he was with her he was never off +the subject. The other, a black-haired boy with large ears, said nothing +at all, but always managed to get her into the darkness where he began +to kiss her. + +For a time the tall dark girl thought she would marry the jeweler’s son. +For hours she sat in silence listening as he talked, and then she began +to be afraid of something. Beneath his talk of virginity she began to +think there was a lust greater than in all of the others. At times it +seemed to her that as he talked he was holding her body in his hands. +She imagined him turning it slowly about in the white hands and staring +at it. At night she dreamed that he had bitten into her body and that +his jaws were dripping. She had the dream three times, then she became +pregnant by the one who said nothing at all, but who in the moment of +his passion actually did bite her shoulder so that for days the marks of +his teeth showed. + +After the tall dark girl came to know Doctor Reefy it seemed to her that +she never wanted to leave him again. She went into his office in the +morning and without her saying anything he seemed to know what had +happened to her. + +In the office of the doctor there was a woman, the wife of the man who +kept the bookstore in Winesburg. Like all old-fashioned country +practitioners Doctor Reefy pulled teeth, and the woman who waited held a +handkerchief to her teeth and groaned. Her husband was with her and when +the tooth was taken out they both screamed and blood ran down on the +woman’s white dress. The tall dark girl did not pay any attention. When +the woman and the man had gone the doctor smiled. “I will take you +driving into the country with me,” he said. + +For several weeks the tall dark girl and the doctor were together almost +every day. The condition that had brought her to him passed in an +illness, but she was like one who has discovered the sweetness of the +twisted apples and could not again get her mind fixed again upon the +round perfect fruit that is eaten in the apartments. In the fall after +the beginning of her acquaintanceship with him she married Doctor Reefy +and in the following spring she died. During the winter he read to her +all the odds and ends of thoughts he had scribbled on the bits of paper. +After he had read them he laughed and stuffed them away in his pockets +to become round hard balls. + + + + + Song of the Killing of Liars + + + RICHARD HUNT + + My hands have grown strong + Wanting to clutch throats. + I have looked about me, Love, + And you are the only one + I do not want to kill. + + They tried to kill me + When I was young and helpless: + They almost did for me, + And I cannot forgive them. + + Whom shall I choke first?— + The minister who told me a piece of bread + Was Christ’s body to be chewed weepingly? + Or my father who nearly frightened me to death + Because I dreamed about a girl? + Then there is my old teacher + Who made me write five hundred times, + “A man’s first duty is to his flag.” + + Liars! + + First I will insult them + And strip them naked of their lies: + Then I will choke them dead, + And burn their institutions. + + There will be nothing left + But the clean earth and some children— + Our child, Love, and a child for it to mate with. + The air they breathe will be pure + For the lies will be all dead. + + + + + Mlle. Poetry Meets Me at the Church + + + ROSCOE WILLIAM BRINK + +To a New York poetry society one night with a friend of a friend.... I +had always wanted to see that society. Long have I listened in awe to +the unutterable rhythms of the city itself: the daily ictus of the +workward crowds in the morning, the beat again in the homeward evening, +lyric activity of the weeks rising to a crest like an Elizabethan sonnet +to end in a Saturday-Sunday couplet of application to the heart of man, +involved quatrains of the seasons, free verse epochs and tensions, years +and decades. As I listened to these bigger canticles of New York City I +have wanted to see its poetry society, fancying it some homely cricket +on its communal hearth—my pleasant heart-warming dream. You see, also, +besides listening in on this great, loud city voice, I once wanted to +write poetry myself—but that was long ago before, under penalty of death +by starvation, they took me and put me to work and rediscovered vers +libre. + +As I sat beside the friend of a friend, gazing in glad surmise at an +elegant assembly of ladies and gentlemen, the poetry society meeting +came to order. Not since I was fourteen-fifteen, and went to +prayer-meeting because the girl I adored would be there, have I +experienced such emotions as I experienced then. + +I don’t suppose you know my particular old white church prayer-meeting. +I used to go, rain or shine, every Friday night, and sit where I could +watch the door admit the pretty upward toss of curls of my affections’ +desire. Sometimes she didn’t come and didn’t come. The opening hymn +would be sung and I would hear it not, for my eyes were upon the door. +Another hymn and the preacher would begin to speak with a gentle, +gushing, splashing sound at the mouth, but the door would remain closed; +and knotted, stifling disappointment be clutching at my throat. Another +hymn, and the discussion would be thrown open to the congregation. Well, +the door was stolid; I would slide back from the edge of my chair and +breathe thickly of the resisting air. So late, she would not come now. +To be sure, the congregation was some comfort: there were the frisky +young lady and the frisky middle-aged lady who would pop to their feet +with a squeal of enthusiasm, the deacons and the elders, the sincere +girls, the succinct young men with a duty to perform, the conservatives +and the infirm—all of them to speak. There came one night when there was +rejoicing in heaven’s hour. Somebody had sent a check to pay for a new +coat of white paint for the church. The treasurer arose from his chair +and lifted up the check for all to see. Then were hymns and glad talks +with God and with woman and man. The banks next day refused to honor the +check. + +In the New York poetry society meeting appeared no novelty for me. I had +been there before, so it seemed. Then, as of old, the meeting-room was +more charming, the congregation more elegant, but the same, even to the +frisky ones, with an exception in the authors’ literary agent I saw just +a few feet from me. Otherwise the same—a prayer-meeting, the great +American habit, a community impulse boiled down to four-square-wallsful. + +As the meeting progressed I knew I had been there before. Absently I +looked toward the door for the pretty upward toss of curls again, but I +caught myself in time. Notices were read—again I looked toward the door, +and stopped. Jokes were made about vers libre; several very interesting +recitations were given; restlessly my eyes wandered doorward again. One +always forms such bad habits when he is young. Poems now were being +read, and criticized. But I had given up: I was looking toward the door +and willing to acknowledge it. But she for whom I looked, came not. Then +the leader with pleasure read a list of several new members—one of them +with the name of a certain rich person, a name I had often seen +associated with the millions of commerce but never with the measures of +verse. An uncrushed sigh of self-congratulation went up over the room. I +took my last look at the stolid door, slid back from the edge of my +chair; gave up. I knew She would not come. My heart beat as of old, +whimsically and sadly. She would not come. + +I took my friend of a friend by the hand and sidled out of the room into +the night. A few corners away we came upon a news-stand, full of +magazines, upon every magazine a cover, upon every cover a girl, one and +the same forever and ever. “If She had come, would She have been so +grown that She would have looked like them?” I asked. + +“Who come?” asked my friend of a friend. + +“The Spirit of Poetry,” says I. “She hadda right, you know.” + +American modernity, I bless thee through closed teeth—get thee to thy +prayer-meetings or some Billy Sunday will Carl Sanburg thee. + + + + + Silhouettes + + + HARRIET DEAN + + + Barn-Yarding + +I cannot joyously write little things. Perhaps that is why I write none +at all. The little people about me fill me with disgust. They are +cocksure bantam hens, loose and fertile, laying egg-thoughts carelessly. +The crack of shells is loud, but tiny wet chicks roll out, smaller than +the rest. God forbid that I am of the same breed! If I must linger in +the barn-yard for a few days, studying the swagger of these hens and +silently measuring my own, may I in the end fly away to my +mountain-top—alone in the night. Strut, if I must, but quite alone. + + * * * * * + +Their voices are splinters of sound which prick my desolation to shreds. +My one great fear is that clumsily they may stumble against my +loneliness. What matter if the tongue be unknown to me! These tone +arrows beat at my door like undesired rain; they hurl themselves against +my tissue walls until I shall go mad with their urgence. + +The only true friendliness near me is the blank brick wall of the house +next door. I wrap myself in its unresponsiveness and stop up my ears +with its cold silence that I may have courage to go on with my work. + + * * * * * + +Flame curtains flap in my grate and send grey indistinctness shivering +and stumbling over my walls. + +A dusty mirror in a lonely house waits.... + + + Departure + +“And now you, too, must go,” she said to me; I who had already gone, +silently, tenderly lest my steps break the stairs of her heart. + + + + + Announcements + + + _The Migratory Magazine_ + +We have been invited to spend the summer in San Francisco, so we decided +to carry THE LITTLE REVIEW along and publish it there until October or +November. Then we shall go back to Chicago for a couple of months, and +by the first of the year we plan to establish ourselves in New York, +where all good things seem to turn at last. Our travels have been so +exciting that it was impossible to get out a June issue on the way. (In +all honesty I should add that the chronic low state of the treasury had +even more to do with it.) So we have combined the June and July issues, +as we did last year. Subscriptions will be extended accordingly. + + + _Charles Kinney’s Article_ + +Mr. Kinney’s exposure of conditions at the Chicago Art Institute, which +was advertised in the last issue, has not come in time to go in. The +court procedures have taken much of Mr. Kinney’s time. It will be +published in the August issue. + + + + + Psycho-Analysis + + + Some Random Thoughts Thereon + + FLORENCE KIPER FRANK + +Why not history rewritten from the researches of the Freudians? We have +our economic determinism; why not our psycho-sexual? The tendencies of +the individual studied in their relations to world-breaking and +world-making! Hannibal and his mother, Queen Elizabeth and her nurse, +Frederick the Great and the Oedipus complex! + +The priest of the future will be the Inspired Physician. All tendencies +seem so to point. The Christian Scientist and New Thought healers are +vague and emotional answers to this social demand, the psycho-analytic +physician a more sophisticated and precise one. The functions of those +who now minister separately to soul and to body will, as in primitive +society, again be united. The modern medicine-man shall be the priest of +the new order! + +To the adolescent, the value of the Inspired Physician can scarcely be +over-stated. Jeanne D’Orge has thus written of the sixteen-year-old +period: + + I wish there were Someone + Who would hear confession: + Not a priest—I do not want to be told of my sins; + Not a mother—I do not want to give sorrow; + Not a friend—she would not know enough; + Not a lover—he would be too partial; + Not God—he is far away; + But Someone that should be friend, lover, mother, priest, God all in + one, + And a Stranger besides—who would not condemn nor interfere, + Who when everything is said from beginning to end + Would show the reason of it all + And tell you to go ahead + And work it out your own way. + +What of the functions of the physician-priest in marriage! The +possibilities are, to say the least, interesting. As substitute for the +churchly bunk talked at the average churchly ceremony, an intimate +tete-a-tete between, say, the Inspired Physician and the woman. It might +do much to validate the “sacredness” of wedlock. And, incidentally, I +wonder what data the Freudians are going to contribute during the next +ten years to feminism. Ellis states that sexual normality isn’t possible +to determine because there isn’t enough material by which to base a +norm. Especially, says he, is this true of the sexual psychology of +women. Valuable, then, will be the testimony of those who have been +hearing confessions! + +One of the most powerful functions of the Catholic Church united with +modern scientific research! I wonder if the need for the confessional +isn’t eternal. + +Amazing, isn’t it, that the most remarkable contributions to the study +of personality come out of the modern Prussianized Teutonic empires? On +the one hand men mowed down by the socialized thousands; on the other +this incredibly patient and exhaustive searching into the bewildering +complexities of the individual soul. + +Break through the crust of any man as he thinks he is, and you are +plunged into currents undreamed of. And isn’t one amazed at how much +alike we all of us are—and how different! + +The Freudian searching into motives is the accredited material of the +novelist; the use of dream symbols the very stuff of the poet. The +successful psycho-analytic physician ought to combine the adroitness of +the fictionist with the imagination of the versifier. + +From the standpoint of medical technique Freud and Jung may have +diverged importantly—philosophically the younger man builds on the +Freudian researches and there is no break in the continuity. Freud is +perhaps more valuable to the physician; to the layman Jung opens up a +realm of speculation and discovery more fascinating than that of +Darwinism. + +The old sweet mythos, as friend Browning says, has been rediscovered. We +are more wonderful than we thought. We are carrying about in our +compassed personalities all dreams and imaginings. What avails the +modernity of elevators and skyscrapers! You, betrousered one, walking +Michigan Avenue—in your psyche are the ancient Hindus and the dancing +sun-worshippers. You with the hand-bag and that 1916 model frock, do you +truly think you are thinking in terms of American asphalted Chicago? +Indeed! It was the symbolism of the Eleusinian mysteries that was used +in the image which flashed into your mind just then. How was it +recreated? Heaven knows—or Dr. Jung! And in your dreams, when the censor +is quite off guard—how did you, prosaic being, become suddenly the +wildest of poets? + +The average man—by that I mean the average man of cultivation—is not at +all cognizant yet of the large significance of the psycho-analytic +studies. He thinks them some libidinous sex-stuff come out of Germany, +or perhaps one of the many new methods to be tried on the insane and the +neurotic. Their immense import for the normal (whatever _he_ is!) he has +not yet understood. It will take perhaps another five years, for the +discoveries of psycho-analysis to penetrate the popular consciousness. +Perhaps less—for some Augustus Thomas (God save us from such!) may +before then write a play about it. + + + + + A Dyptich + + + SKIPWITH CANNELL + + + Wonder Song + + No man who borrows + Should return the exact debt; + Let him return more, + Or let him return less. + + I borrowed twelve dollars + From a rich uncle of mine: + I paid him back a hundred’s worth of poetry. + + He is not satisfied. + I am not forgotten. + + I borrowed from a stranger + An old coat full of lice; + The cloth became strong serge, + The lice became buttons. + + The stranger + Wanted his old coat back again, + He got an old joke instead + And went away laughing. + + I gave my God some second-hand prayers, + Prayers that were used and fingered and worn; + In return He gave me + My heart’s desire. + + I gave my God all the love that’s in me.... + He put it in His pocket, + Absently, + With talk of the weather: + He’s a wise God, knowing His own worth. + + No one who borrows + Should make exact payment; + If he does as I say + He’ll be remembered forever. + + + Scorn + + I will not lay bricks for the homes of other men; + I prefer to fell trees in the forest, + To fell them and let them lie. + If I go to the forests, I will starve; + If I lay bricks for those others, + They will feed me soup and black bread and onions. + + I will fell trees + Angrily, + And I will let them lie. + + + The Deeper Scorn + + I will lay many bricks: + And that I may lay them better, + I will take their bread and their soup ... + Courteously returning thanks + For the wages they offer.... + + I will lay many bricks, + And in a straight row, + As befits one who has knowledge of his freedom. + + + + + Hokku + + + EDGAR LEE MASTERS + + I lift my eyes from the humus + Up the sea-green stalk to the flower. + The base of the petals is red as blood; + But I cannot see the line that divides + The rim of the petals from the sun light. + + + + + Poems + + + MARK TURBYFILL + + + Thin Day + + Bright, alert, + Arise these wild blue buds + Above this crystal jar. + + But they have no soul, + And bear no sweetness + On their lips. + + Oh pity of azure days + Like these blue flowers! + We cannot endure in their thinness: + Our hearts sink + Through their petal-gauze. + + + The Rose Jar + + O Earth, + You have brought me out too soon! + + He whom I love + Still clings upon the branch, + Firm, a slender bud. + But you have spread me wide. + + Take these broken leaves, + Now fallen from the core. + (O Earth, + You have brought me out too soon!) + Drop them into your Jar + For him who shall surely pass this way, + At last! + + + + + The Irish Revolutionists + + + PADRAIC COLUM + +The British Government, which was quite willing to exploit the sympathy +felt here on the premature death of the young English poet, Rupert +Brooke, shot to death three Irish poets, Padraic Pearse, Thomas +MacDonagh, and Joseph Plunkett. + +Not only in Ireland, but the whole world is at a loss by the extinction +of these three brave, honorable, and distinguished lives. + +The English illustrated journals that have just come to New York enable +us to estimate by a contrast the world’s loss. They have published the +photographs of the Irish revolutionary leaders; and with them they have +published the photograph of the man who ordered their execution, General +Maxwell. On one side they give you intellectual and spiritual faces—the +faces of men who liberate the world. On the other side they give you a +heavy, non-intellectual, non-spiritual face—the face of a man who could +never liberate himself. + +The vision and the aspiration of Pearse, MacDonagh, and Plunkett is on +record for the world to know. A man cannot lie when he speaks of his +vision or his aspiration in poetry. We know what Padraic Pearse thought +of personal life. He has recorded it in his poem _To Death_, which has +been translated from the Irish: + + I have not gathered gold; + The fame that I won perished; + In love I found but sorrow + That withered my life. + + Of wealth or of glory + I shall leave nothing behind me + (I think it, O God, enough!) + But my name in the heart of a child. + +And what vision of life had Thomas MacDonagh? We know, for it is in his +poem _Wishes For My Son_: + + But I found no enemy, + No man in a world of wrong, + That Christ’s word of Charity + Did not render clean and strong— + Who was I to judge my kind, + Blindest groper of the blind? + + God to you may give the sight + And the clear undoubting strength + Wars to knit for single right, + Freedom’s war to knit at length; + And to win, through wrath and strife, + To the sequel of my life. + + But for you, so small and young, + Born of Saint Cecilia’s Day, + I in more harmonious song + Now for nearer joys should pray— + Simple joys: the natural growth + Of your childhood and your youth, + Courage, innocence, and truth: + + These for you, so small and young, + In your hand and heart and tongue. + +And we know the vision of life that Joseph Plunkett had—it was the same +vision that the great mystics and the great religious had. It is in his +poem _I See His Blood Upon the Roses_: + + I see his blood upon the rose + And in the stars the glory of his eyes, + His body gleams amid eternal snows, + His tears fall from the skies. + + I see his face in every flower; + The thunder and the singing of the birds + Are but his voice—and carven by his power + Rocks are his written words. + + All pathways by his feet are worn, + His strong heart stirs the ever-beating sea, + His crown of thorns is twined with every thorn, + His cross is every tree. + +These three men had a vision for their country that could not be +expressed in a proclamation, no matter how nobly worded that +proclamation might be. + +Padraic Pearse gave all his thought and all his effort to bring back a +chivalry to Ireland—the Heroic Age of Celtic History, when, as he said, +“the greatest honor was for the hero with the most childlike heart, for +the King who had the largest pity, and for the poet who visioned the +truest image of beauty.” The first thing you saw when you entered his +school in Cullenswood House was a fresco representing the boy Cuchullain +taking arms. The Druid has warned him that the youth who takes arms that +day will make his name famous, but will have a short life. And written +round the fresco, in the old Irish words, was Cuchullain’s answer, “I +care not if my life have only the span of a day and a night if my deeds +be spoken of by the men of Ireland.” This was the spirit that Padraic +Pearse sought to kindle in his boys—this was the spirit that he tried to +bring back again into Ireland. + +Thomas MacDonagh strove to create an Ireland that would be free as his +intelligence was free, as eager for deeds as he himself was eager. Those +who knew MacDonagh in his literary expression thought of him as a poet +with a tendency towards abstractions, as a scholar with a bent towards +philology. Those who knew him intimately knew him as a man who was the +best of comrades. And they knew that there was something in MacDonagh +that he never expressed. What was fundamental in him was an eager search +for the thing to which he could give the whole devotion of his life. He +found it in his vision of the Irish Republic. + +Joseph Mary Plunkett strove to bring back the spirit and the defiance of +the martyrs. He came of a family whose name has been in Irish history +for six hundred years. The proudest memory of his people was the memory +of martyrdom. The last priest martyred in England—the Venerable Oliver +Plunkett—was of his blood. + +These men, with their comrades—the good and brave Connolly, who gave all +of his will and all of his ability to the workers of Ireland, the +upright Eamonn Ceant, the soldierly O’Rahilly, the adventurous MacBride, +Shaun MacDermott, “kindly Irish of the Irish,” and the others—have done +a great thing for our country at this great moment of history. + +They have made Ireland not a British question but a European question. + +They have shown us that the country should be redeemed by the heroic +spirit as well as by the political intelligence. + +They have belittled danger and death for generations of Irish +nationalists. + + + + + Bring Out Your Dead + + + Braithwaite’s Death-Cart + + _The Poetry Review of America, edited by William Stanley + Braithwaite, Cambridge, Massachusetts._ + +The plague being upon us—God knows whence it came—the plague being upon +us, poisoning men and women, and turning them into minor and sub-minor +poets, and catching some in their youth so that they can never become +men and women—the plague being upon us, I suppose there must be men +brave enough to fashion death-carts for the corpses. It is a sanitary +precaution. The more carts the better. The builders should be commended; +the drivers medalled and ultimately pensioned. We should not bother much +about the wheels—how they bang and rattle. Let the corpses leer and +quarrel. But keep the carts well burdened and speed them to the pyres of +oblivion. + +This is not criticism, but the exaggeration of bitterness; and you, Mr. +Braithwaite, should not complain if our lips writhe back at the cup +which you have held out to us and if our tongues are twisted to a +sincerity that sounds like malice. When _Contemporary Verse_ issued from +Philadelphia like an ancient tumbril reconstructed by children we +laughed and said, “God speed you while you last.” But when rumors came +of a new poetry magazine in Boston we waited with the wonderful hope of +eager youth. Ah, the new Poetry Review! The new Poetry Review! And what +have you done? You have given us the old doll without even new tinsel. +Do you wonder that I would smash your doll and tear its frayed and +tawdry clothing? + +“To serve the art we all love,” you say. Does Benjamin R. C. Low serve +it with sentimental buncombe like _Jack O’Dreams_? Does Amelia Josephine +Burr serve it with a library tragedy like _Vengeance_? And you, Mr. +Braithwaite, do you serve it by writing a muddled article on _The +Substance of Poetry_? The bad grammar and proofreading can be forgiven, +but who can cleave his way through the jungle of incoherent thought? And +I may add seriously that Mr. Edwin F. Edgett, with his puerile remarks +about Shakespeare, sounds very much like your younger brother. + +There is the beginning of service in the competently written criticisms +by Messrs. Untermeyer, O’Brien and Colum, and especially in the +tantalizing quotations in fine print from Donald Evan’s new book _Two_ +_Deaths in the Bronx_. Amy Lowell contributes a short story in her +recent colloquial vein and Sara Teasdale a sincere lyric. + +If live men and women have been sand-bagged and put in the death-cart, +let them awake and revive the corpses of their companions. Let them turn +the cart into a tally-ho and gallop on with daring and exuberance, +cracking a whip at critics. + +I do not know your age, Mr. Braithwaite, but I feel that I have the +wisdom of greater youth. You have not quite killed hope in me, for I +know your true devotion to your work. What will you give us in the +forthcoming numbers of your magazine? + + MITCHELL DAWSON. + + + Herbert Tree’s “_Merchant of Venice_” + +Could I invent some acid, bitter-stinging speech, some new tongue far +beyond English in sharpness, I might begin to describe the spectacle of +incredible vulgarity—of miserable intent and culmination—which is to be +viewed upon the New Amsterdam stage this month. English shrinks—becomes +the prattled language of babes—at thought of it. + +Is the great wind which has blown the dust from the theatres of Germany, +bearing Craig and Reinhart and Barker upon its back, echoing even here +in America, to be completely discounted, silenced, by this vulgarian, +this soulless, thoughtless, casual, shambling buffoon? + +To _The Merchant of Venice_—a rambling, untidy comedy at best, a play +for reading, or only to be played by a man of genius—he brings a +graceless cast, a marvelous pot-pourri of music (tom-toms for “Morrocco” +and Spanish jingles for “Arragon”), a quite distended and “improved” +version of the original play, himself (God save us), and a theory of +decoration quite incomprehensibly fearful. Brown palaces shaking to the +conversation of the players—brown palaces with hangings of decayed +green, a sham, paper Venice, elaborately stenciled, a Portia in +landlady’s pink, a Jessica (a spirited Cockney girl) in Turkish costume, +roysterers garbed with all the delicate art of Timbuctoo, a Shylock in +old dressing gown. No detail, no fragment of the picture of vulgarity is +lacking—from red-plush curtains to modern rattle-jacks for the Carnival, +from mouthed speeches to maudlin groupings—a complete whole. + +This to an apparently delighted audience, to a receptive press. + +Barker departed from America, a semi-success, embittered towards us. +_The Weavers_, finely played and brilliantly produced, clung to the +shadow of an audience at the Garden Theatre, got as far as Chicago and +failed completely there. The two great things in the theatre of the past +year trodden out of sight of the easy public at the absurd and dolorous +prancing, at the loud cajoling of popularity of bourgeois neighbor Tree. + +How long is the theatre to cling to ragged precedent; to these mournful +gentlemen of a dusty yesterday, raving through their paper and lattice +Venices, showing us their entrail-colored Belmonts, barring sun and +light and poetry and singing from the song-starved people of America? + + ROLLO PETERS. + + + + + Some Imagist Poets, 1916[1] + + + MARY ALDIS + +It is a matter of speculation why six poets of widely dissimilar +viewpoints, if similar technique, should choose to band themselves +together to publish in a yearly anthology selections from their works. + +An examination into the prefaces and poems of the three anthologies sent +forth by the Imagists and a study of various articles on the subject by +individual members of the group fail to give adequate explanation. + +The principle tenets of Imagism, i. e., clear presentation, the +abolishing of outworn phrases and extra adjectives, the necessity of +rhythm in all poetry, the absence of reflective comment, are those +common to most of the modern serious writers of verse; and although the +Imagists have done well to lay fresh emphasis on the difficulty and +desirability of putting these tenets into practice, this hardly +constitutes a new school. As for a definite understanding of the term +Imagism, God help the man who thinks he can explain to another its +meaning. + +The Imagists, all six of them (there were more in the first anthology, +but seemingly some fell from grace), write poetry. That they choose to +employ a sub-title need not concern us; nor does their exposition of +certain theoretical ideals. What does concern us is the quality of the +poems they write. If it seems well to these six poets to publish +together a collection of chosen poems, let us pay our seventy-five cents +for the modest green paper volume, to read and re-read those that please +us best; or, let us go our way untroubled, giving our affection to safe +and sure collections—Rittenhouse, Braithwaite, or even good Edmund +Clarence Stedman. + +There is a patient note discernible in the preface of this third volume +which seems to say, “Once again we will endeavor to make clear what we +are trying to do. Kindly make an effort to understand.” One may question +the desirability of any preface, but it is not surprising that the +Imagists wish to make clear their aims and purposes. One wonders at the +breath expended in attacks on them. There are disadvantages in this +banding together: if one of the group makes a misstep the whole six are +anathematized; but, after all, it is quite futile, this effort to kill +by ridicule. Denunciation, however fierce, has never yet crushed +anything which had in it the living flame of beauty, as much Imagist +poetry has. + +Miss Amy Lowell is represented in this 1916 Anthology by three poems. +The first is her _Patterns_, named by Braithwaite as the first of the +five best poems of 1915. It is difficult to quote, as the poem must be +taken in its entirety to appreciate its beauty. Here are the first two +stanzas: + + I walk down the garden paths, + And all the daffodils + Are blowing, and the bright blue squills. + I walk down the patterned garden paths + In my stiff, brocaded gown. + With my powdered hair and jewelled fan. + I too am a rare + Pattern. As I wander down + The garden paths. + + My dress is richly figured, + And the train + Makes a pink and silver stain + On the gravel, and the thrift + Of the borders. + Just a plate of current fashion, + Tripping by in high-heeled, ribboned shoes. + Not a softness anywhere about me, + Only whale-bone and brocade. + +Studying it again one finds new beauties—the delicacy of the occasional +rhyme, used as a musician uses the flute in an orchestra, the curious +“pattern” of the rhythm, which cannot be defined and yet fits the theme +with inimitable grace; the unforgettable picture of the garden with its +stiff paths, its white fountain, its carelessly gorgeous flowers, and +the woman walking down the path with slow and stately tread. Her head is +straight and high, pink and silver is her stiff brocaded gown, yet one +knows that underneath it throbs a human heart for which there is no +place in the pattern. Here is certainly a new way of conveying emotion. +We are stirred by the passion of the poem up to its terrible +climax—“Christ! what are patterns for?” + +A masterpiece this poem, one to learn and repeat and make one’s own. +There follows by Miss Lowell _A Spring Day_ in polyphonic prose, a +series of word pictures scintillating with color and dancing light. The +day has five color divisions: the Bath, where “little spots of sunshine +lie on the surface of the water and dance, and their reflections wabble +deliciously over the ceiling”; the Breakfast Table, where golden coffee, +yellow butter and silver and white make another symphony. Then comes the +Walk, with more color, from boys with black and red, amber and blue +marbles, “spitting crimson” when they are hit, to a man’s hat careering +down the street in front of white dust “jarring the sunlight into spokes +of rose-color and green.” Next comes Midday and Afternoon, then Night +and Sleep. “Wrap me close, sheets of lavender. Pour your blue and purple +dreams into my ears.... Pale blue lavender, you are the color of the sky +when it is fresh-washed and fair.” + +Miss Lowell also includes her amazing paraphrase of Stravinsky’s +_Grotesques_, too amazing for an unmusical person’s comment. + +Richard Aldington has seven poems. The finest is a short Elizabethan +lyric named _After Two Years_. It is a lovely bit, but why it should be +published in an “Imagist” collection no man may say. Its delicate beauty +is indefinable. + + + After Two Years + + She is all so slight + And tender and white + As a May morning. + She walks without hood + At dusk. It is good + To hear her sing. + + It is God’s will + That I shall love her still + As He loves Mary. + And night and day + I will go forth to pray + That she loves me. + + She is as gold + Lovely, and far more cold. + Do thou pray with me, + For if I win grace + To kiss twice her face + God has done well to me. + +Aldington’s _Eros and Psyche_ has both beauty and distinction, but no +one of the seven poems by him can compare with his _Choricos_ in the +Anthology of 1915. That is an achievement not easily repeated. + +Perhaps H. D. is the purest Imagist of the group. To the uninitiated she +is the most obscure because the most abstract. She loves the sea and +high, windy places and her poems catch something of the freshness one +feels standing on a headland, beaten and buffeted by the wind and the +salt spray. Nature is to her as a living presence, sometimes gentle, +more often cruel. She vibrates to beauty as sensitively as a Greek +dryad, and in reading her poems one has a curious sense of a worshipper +offering incense to the gods. Here are some lines from the last one of +the four poems she contributes. It is called _Temple—The Cliff_: + + High—high and no hill-goat + Tramples—no mountain-sheep + Has set foot on your fine grass. + You lift, you are the world-edge, + Pillar for the sky-arch. + + The world heaved— + We are next to the sky. + Over us, sea-hawks shout, + Gulls sweep past. + The terrible breakers are silent. + + Shall I hurl myself from here. + Shall I leap and be nearer you? + Shall I drop, beloved, beloved. + + Over me the wind swirls. + I have stood on your portal + And I know— + You are further than this, + Still further on another cliff. + +In their passion for clearness, for the exact word, Imagists often use +certain words which sound ugly. In this poem of fourteen stanzas, the +word “lurch” occurs three times. It is not a pretty word, it does not +suggest a graceful action, yet apparently no other will do. + +John Gould Fletcher is, first of all, pictorial. His conception of +Imagism differs slightly, it would seem, from his confreres. His +imagination is so strong he sees significance in every changing image of +this changing world. His rhythm is so vague that sometimes it is hardly +discoverable. His poetry could be printed about as well in block as in +line, as doubtless he would admit. He loves color—revels, glories, riots +in color; and he has a way of seeing resemblances to dragons and +serpents and other ungodly things in the simplest of natural +phenomena—trees or clouds or rain or even sunrise. His vocabulary is +astonishing. He plunges into a sea of words and plays with them, tossing +them up like jewels to sparkle in the sun, or burying them in pits to +see if they will still shine. He loves words, caresses them with a +lover’s touch, kisses them for luck, and then hurls them together in +such an incredible combination that the critics blink. A serious workman +withal, with much to say seething in his mind and a determination to say +it in his own way. There is perhaps no line in the six poems in this +Anthology equal to the much-quoted “Vermillion pavilion against a jade +balustrade.” _The Mexican Quarter_ is a poem of forty-two lines wherein +is depicted and symbolized the very spirit of Mexican life and love. It +ends with an unexpected little lyric. One can almost hear the twang of +the guitar. Here is Fletcher’s picture of _An Unquiet Street_: + + By day and night this street is not still: + Omnibuses with red tail-lamps, + Taxicabs with shiny eyes, + Rumble, shunning its ugliness. + It is corrugated with wheel-ruts, + It is dented and pockmarked with traffic, + If has no time for sleep. + It heaves its old scarred countenance + Skyward between the buildings + And never says a word. + + On rainy nights + It dully gleams + Like the cold tarnished scales of a snake: + And over it hang arc-lamps, + Blue-white death-lilies on black stems. + +I think only a poet’s eye in a fine frenzy rolling could see in our +municipal arc lamps “blue-white death-lilies on black stems,” but I am +going to look more carefully after this. + +F. S. Flint has given us more beauty in his earlier work, notably in +_London My Beautiful_ and _The Swan_, than is to be found here, save +perhaps in _Chalfont Saint Giles_, which has simplicity and dignified +stateliness. It is a picture of village folk gravely filing into church, +past ivy and lilac, as the bell rings. The sadness of England in +war-time is in the picture. Here are two stanzas: + + Walk quietly + along the mossy paths; + the stones of the humble dead + are hidden behind the blue mantle + of their forget-me-nots; + and before one grave so hidden + a widow kneels, with head bowed, + and the crape falling + over her shoulders. + + The bells for evening church are ringing, + and the people come gravely + and with red, sun-burnt faces + through the gates in the wall. + +D. H. Lawrence contributes what may be considered, except for +_Patterns_, the most notable poem in the book, _Erinnyes_, although +again why it should be called Imagism is a mystery. It is certainly, +however, a poem, and a profound and beautiful one. In its form and its +long, slow, melancholy rhythm it suggests Aldington’s _Choricos_, and +the theme is the same—Death. Here are five stanzas: + + There are so many dead, + Many have died unconsenting, + Theirs ghosts are angry, unappeased. + + They come back, over the white sea, in the mist, + Invisible, trooping home, the unassuaged ghosts + Endlessly returning on the uneasy sea. + + What do they want, the ghosts, what is it + They demand as they stand in menace over against us? + How shall we now appease whom we have raised up? + + Must we open the doors, and admit them, receive them home, + And in the silence, reverently, welcome them, + And give them place and honour and service meet? + + For one year’s space, attend on our angry dead, + Soothe them with service and honour, and silence meet, + Strengthen, prepare them for the journey hence, + Then lead them to the gates of the unknown, + And bid farewell, oh stately travellers, + And wait till they are lost upon our sight. + +There is another poem of Lawrence’s called _Perfidy_ that gives an +elusive sense of horror and calamity. This effect lies partially in the +five-line stanza formation with the first, third, and fourth lines +rhyming. There is no particular reason for calling this poem Imagism +either; but we have agreed by now, I trust, that is not our first +consideration. No less a person than Miss Lowell herself gives us +justification in this viewpoint, for in a review of the poems of +Aldington and Flint in the June _Poetry Review_ she says, “Let us take +these little volumes as poetry pure and simple, forgetting schools and +creeds.” + +There are thirty-two poems in all in the book. One person will like this +one best, another that. Suffice that the book is a valuable contribution +to contemporary literature. + +---------- + + [1] _Some Imagist Poets, 1916: An Annual Anthology. Boston: + Houghton Mifflin._ + + + + + Three Imagist Poets + + + JOHN GOULD FLETCHER + + (_Continued from the May issue_) + + + III + +To pass from the poetry of Mr. Aldington to the poetry of H. D. is to +pass into another world. For H. D. not only is a modern poet, she is in +the best sense of the word a primitive poet. She deals with Greek themes +in the same way as the Greeks of the seventh century B. C. might have +dealt with them. She is not like Mr. Aldington, a sceptic enamoured of +their lost beauty. In a sense she is indifferent to beauty. Something +speaks to her in every rock, wave, or pine tree of those sunlit +landscapes in which she seems to live. For her the decadence of +antiquity, the Middle Ages, the modern world seem never to have existed. +She is purely and frankly pagan. + +How is it that so many people interested in Imagism seem never to have +grasped this essential distinction between her work and Mr. Aldington’s? +I must suppose it is because very few people have ever tried to analyze +and rank the Imagist poets on any other basis than that of form. But as +I have already pointed out, the form of the Imagists is, after all, a +matter of lesser importance than the spirit, with which they approach +that form. Aldington writes about life: H. D. is almost completely a +nature poet. Nature to her is not mere inanimate scenery or beautiful +decoration: it is packed with a life and significance which is beyond +our individual lives, and all her poems are in a sense acts of worship +towards it. Civilization for her does not exist, in our modern sense: +she seeks a civilization based only on the complete realization of +natural and physical law, without any ethical problems except the need +of merging and compounding all one’s desires and emotions in that law. +Her poetry is like a series of hymns of some forgotten and primitive +religion. + +I like to think that this primitive quality in H. D.’s poetry comes from +the fact that she is an American. There can be no doubt that we are an +uncultivated, a barbarous people. Our ancestors, by migrating to an +immense and utterly undeveloped continent, without traditions, were +thrown face to face with nature and lost, in consequence, nearly all +feeling for their previous culture. If you take a child of civilized +parents and bring him up among savages, he will revert to savagery, and +in the same way our forefathers, as soon as they ceased to cling to the +Atlantic seaboard, changed, through contact with the immense wilderness +of the interior, not only mentally but physically. For example, +Washington was physically and mentally an English squire of his period: +Lincoln, about a hundred years later, was, in appearance and habits of +thought, like a man of another race. The Indian, although conquered, +gave to his conquerors the Indian way of thinking; or rather the +Indian’s surroundings—the endless forest—produced in the newcomers’ +minds something of the same way of thinking as the Indian had before +their coming. What a pity it has been for art that we, as a nation, did +not admit without shame this return to nature! But instead, we were +ashamed of our barbarism, and we have striven and are still striving to +outdo Europe on its own grounds, with the result that so much of our art +seems merely transplanted, exotic, and false. We might have been the +Russians of the western hemisphere; instead of that we were almost the +provincial English. Instead of Fenimore Cooper and _The Song of +Hiawatha_, we might have given to the world a new national epic. But the +opportunity is now lost and whatever fragments of that epic may be +written will have to be very sophisticated and in a sense artificial +products. + +To make an end of this long digression, I can truly say that I find +nothing transplanted in H. D.’s poetry. She has borrowed a few names of +gods from the early Greek, but that was because she found herself in +complete sympathy with this people, who, if we are to believe the modern +school of archaeology, were quite as barbarian themselves in the Homeric +period as the Red Indians, and who lived in the closest contact with +nature. Let us take an early example: + + + Hermes of the Ways + + The hard sand breaks, + And the grains of it + Are clear as wine. + + Far off over the leagues of it, + The wind, + Playing on the wide shore, + Piles little ridges, + And the great waves + Break over it. + + But more than the many-foamed ways + Of the sea, + I know him + Of the triple path-ways, + Hermes, + Who awaiteth. + + Dubious, + Facing three ways, + Welcoming wayfarers, + He whom the sea-orchard + Shelters from the west, + From the east, + Weathers sea-wind: + Fronts the great dunes. + + Wind rushes + Over the dunes, + And the coarse salt-crusted grass + Answers. + + Heu, + It whips round my ankles! + +This is only one-half of the poem, but it will serve to show this poet’s +method. Here Hermes is identified with the yellow barrier of sand dunes +which breaks the wind, and splits it into three directions, as it comes +in from the sea. The scenery and the feeling are not Greek. In fact, as +someone has pointed out, the whole poem might have been called “The +Coast of New Jersey.” But just as Coleridge found a way to give a +feeling of the emptiness of the sea by narrating the tale of a legendary +voyage on it, so H. D. has given us the eternal quality of the New +Jersey coast by identifying its savagery with Greek myth. + +The difference between H. D.’s poetry and Aldington’s is therefore a +difference between an apparent complexity which cannot be analysed, +since it is really the simplest synthesis of primitive feeling, and a +studied simplicity which on analysis, reveals itself as something very +complex and modern. Aldington’s work when studied carefully, raises +questions about our life: H. D. goes deeper and offers us an eternal +answer. With the single exception of the _Choricos_, I know of no work +of H. D.’s which is not superior to Aldington’s in rhythm, as I know of +no work of Aldington’s which does not seem to have more unsolved +problems underlying its thought. Aldington is monodic, H. D. is +strophaic: Aldington writes on many themes: H. D. on two or three: H. +D.’s art is more perfect within its limits; Aldington’s is more +interesting because of its very human imperfection. + +There is another short thing of H. D.’s which fulfils perfectly the +Greek dictum that a picture is a silent poem, a poem a speaking picture: + + Whirl up, sea— + whirl your pointed pines, + splash your great pines, + over our rocks. + Hurl your green over us, + cover us with your pools of fir. + +A chorus of Oreads might very well have sung that to the wind. Over and +over again, H. D. never tires of giving us the sea, the rocks, the +pines, the sunlight. There is such a hard brightness of sunlight in some +of the poems that it makes us fairly dizzy with its intensity: + + O wind, + rend open the heat, + cut apart the heat, + rend it sideways. + + Fruit cannot drop + through this thick air: + fruit cannot fall into heat + that presses up and blunts + the points of pears + and rounds the grapes. + + Cut the heat, + plough through it, + turning it on either side + of your path. + +These poems are like cries to unknown gods. Some are simply stark in +their dramatic magnificence: + + + The Wind Sleepers + + Whiter + than the crust + left by the tide, + we are stung by the hurled sand + and the broken shells. + We no longer sleep, + sleep in the wind, + we awoke and fled + through the Peiraeic gate. + + Tear, + tear us an altar, + tug at the cliff-boulders, + pile them with the rough stones. + We no longer + sleep in the wind. + Propitiate us. + + Chant in a wail + that never halts; + pace a circle and pay tribute + with a song. + + When the roar of a dropped wave + breaks into it, + pour meted words + of sea-hawks and gulls + and sea-birds that cry + discords. + +Recently H. D. has been giving us longer and more complex +poems—condensed dramas of nature and life. Her style has become broader +and deeper, and her thought more weighty. I wish I could quote all of a +poem of this nature called _Sea-Gods_. I can only give a brief analysis +of it. + +The entire poem is a sort of invocation and service of propitiation to +the powers of the sea. In its opening lines the poet cries out: + + They say there is no hope— + sand—drift—rocks—rubble of the sea, + the broken hulk of a ship, + hung with shreds of rope, + pallid under the cracked pitch. + + They say there is no hope + to conjure you. + +In short, the gods are merely broken wrecks of the past. The forces of +nature cannot help us, it is useless to cry out to them, for they are + + —cut, torn, mangled, + torn by the stress and beat, + no stronger than the strips of sand + along your ragged beach. + +But, says the poet, in a beautiful passage: + + But we bring violets, + great masses, single, sweet: + wood-violets, stream-violets, + violets from a wet marsh, + violets in clumps from the hills. + +Every kind of violet is brought and strewn on the sea. For what reason? +Here is the answer: + + You will yet come, + you will yet haunt men in ships— + you will thunder along the cliff, + break—retreat—get fresh strength— + gather and pour weight upon the beach. + + You will bring myrrh-bark, + and drift laurel wood from hot coasts; + when you hurl, high—high— + We will answer with a shout. + + For you will come, + you will answer our taut hearts, + you will break the lie of men’s thoughts, + and shelter us for our trust. + +Has the sea, then, in this poem been used in some way as a symbol of the +eternal drift, change and reflux of our life which we have tried to +conceal under theories of ethics, of progress, of immortality, of +civilization? Perhaps it has. And the violets—what, then, are they but +simply the recollections of our earlier sea-state, of our endless, +unconscious drift with the tides of life? + +I do not propose here to examine H. D.’s mystic philosophy. That +philosophy cannot be disengaged from its context. But from a quite +recent poem of hers—a poem very beautiful and baffling, I may perhaps be +permitted to quote these few lines, wrenched from their context, without +comment: + + Sleepless nights, + I remember the initiates, + their gesture, their calm glance, + I have heard how, in rapt thought, + in vision they speak + with another race + More beautiful, more intense than this— + + I reason: + another life holds what this lacks: + a sea, unmoving, quiet, + not forcing our strength + to rise to it, beat on beat, + a hill not set with black violets, + but stones, stones, bare rocks, + dwarf-trees, twisted, no beauty, + to distract—to crowd + madness upon madness. + + Only a still place, + and perhaps some outer horror, + some hideousness to stamp beauty— + on our hearts. + + + IV + +The third poet whose work I have to examine, Mr. F. S. Flint, was +already an accomplished writer of rhymed vers libre before he joined the +Imagist movement. Mr. Flint’s early work is contained in a volume +entitled, _In the Net of the Stars_, a volume which is still worth +reading. _The Net of the Stars_ told a love-story in rather uncommon +fashion. The poet and his beloved were presented throughout the book, +against the background of the starry sky: + + Little knots in the net of light + That is held by the infinite Dragon, Night. + +This bringing into relation of a quite human love-story, with the +impassive and changeless order of the Universe, threw a flavour of +supreme irony over the whole book. The work is otherwise remarkable +technically. At the date when it was published, 1909, Mr. Flint already +revealed that he was an assiduous student of Verhaeren, De Regnier, and +other French vers-librists. Hence its importance as a document in the +Imagist movement. + +But to come to Mr. Flint’s later work which has been assembled under the +title of _Cadences_. We find here a poet, first of all, of sentiment. +What, you say, an Imagist who deals with sentiment? My reply to that is, +that it is time people understood that an Imagist is free to deal with +whatever he chooses, so long as he is sincere and honest about it. Mr. +Flint’s sincerity is his finest point. He is in some sense the Paul +Verlaine of the Imagist movement. His work gives one the same delicacy +of nuance, the same fresh fragrance, the same direct simplicity, the +same brooding melancholy. He lacks the strain of coarseness which ruined +Verlaine; he has, in place of it, a refined nobility. He has not humour. +At times he has attempted irony, but I cannot think he has altogether +succeeded in it. He feels life too poignantly to ever mock at life. +There remains tenderness, wistful pathos, imaginative beauty. + +On reading Mr. Flint one obtains a very distinct impression of Mr. +Flint’s personality. One pictures him as a shy, sensitive, lonely +dreamer filled with a desire to attain to the noblest and finest life, +but somehow kept back from it. Mr. Flint is one of the few poets I know +who have preserved intact today a spark of the old lyrical idealism. He +is, perhaps, though he may not realize it, even closer to Keats and +Shelley than to Verlaine—he might almost be called a modern Shelley. His +affiliation with these earlier and greater romantics is more marked +because it is an affiliation of spirit, not of form. Mr. Flint’s form +has always been his own, and by holding conscientiously to his own form, +he has come closer, to my way of thinking, to poets like Keats and +Shelley than the innumerable tribe of imitators who have rashly taken +the form for the substance. + +Here is an early example of Mr. Flint’s work: + + London, my beautiful, + it is not the sunset, + nor the pale green sky + shimmering through the curtain + of the silver birch, + nor the quietness; + it is not the hopping + of the little birds + upon the lawn, + nor the darkness + stealing over all things + that moves me. + + But as the moon creeps slowly + over the treetops + among the stars; + I think of her, + and the glow her passing + sheds on men. + + London, my beautiful, + I will climb + into the branches + to the moonlit treetops + that my blood may be cooled + by the wind. + +And here is another, equally beautiful: + + Under the lily shadow, + and the gold, + and the blue, and the mauve, + that the whin and the lilac + pour down upon the water, + the fishes quiver. + + Over the green cold leaves, + and the rippled silver, + and the tarnished copper + of its neck and beak, + toward the deep black water, + beneath the arches, + the swan floats slowly. + + Into the dark of the arch the swan floats, + and the black depths of my sorrow + bears a white rose of flame. + +If Mr. Flint had written nothing else but these two poems he would be +immortal for their sake, in spite of his disregard—shared by H. D.—of +the convenient device which begins each line of a poem with a capital +letter, and of the laws of punctuation. They weave a perfect hypnotic +spell in my mind, and they fulfill completely a recent definition of Mr. +E. A. Robinson, that poetry is a language which expresses through an +emotional reaction something which cannot be said in ordinary speech. + +Mr. Flint has given us other poems not less beautiful, but with a strain +of greater pathos: + + Tired faces, + eyes that have never seen the world, + bodies that have never lived in air, + lips that have never minted speech; + they are the clipped and garbled + blocking the highway. + They swarm and eddy + between the banks of glowing shops + towards the red meat, + the potherbs, + the cheapjacks, + or surge in + before the swift rush of the charging teams; + pitiful, ugly, mean, + encumbering. + + Immortal? + In a wood + watching the shadow of a bird, + leap from frond to frond of bracken, + I am immortal, + perhaps. + But these? + Their souls are naphtha lamps, + guttering in an odour of carious teeth, + and I die with them. + +Perhaps the last poem in Mr. Flint’s book will give the most complete +exposition of his art and vision: + + + The Star + + Bright Star of Life, + Who shattered creeds at Bethlehem, + And saw + In the irradiance of your vision shining, + Children and maidens, youths and men and women, + Dancing barefoot among the grasses, singing, + Dancing, + Over the waving flowery meadows; + So calmly watched the universe and men, + And yet + So fiery was the heart behind the light; + + The creeds have been re-made by men + Who followed as you walked abroad, + And gathered up their shattered shards; + Then with a wax of sticky zeal, + Each little piece unto its fellow joined; + But over the meadows comes the wind + Remembering your voice: + + _O my love,_ + _O my golden-haired, my golden-hearted,_ + _I will sing this song to you of Him,_ + _This golden afternoon._ + _This song of you;_ + _For where love is, is He,_ + _Whose name has echoed in the halls of Time,_ + _Who caught the wise eternal music, ay,_ + _And passed it on—_ + _For men to sing it since_ + _In false and shifting keys—_ + _Who hears it now?_ + + But the hearts of those who have heard it rightly, + Grew great; + And behind the walls and barriers of the world, + Their voices have gone up in sweetness + Unheeded, + Yet imminent in the wings and flight of change; + Comes there a time when men shall shout it, + And say to Life: + You have the strength of the seas, + And the glory of the vine; + You shall have the wisdom of the hills, + The daring of the eagle’s wings, + The yearning of the swallow’s quest. + And, in the mighty organ of the world, + Great men shall be as pipes and nations stops + To harmonize your Song. + + _O my love,_ + _Like a cornfield in summer_ + _Is your body to me;_ + _Golden and bending with the wind,_ + _And on the tallest ear a bird is piping_ + _The lonely song._ + _And scarlet poppies thread the golden ways._ + _Out of the purple haze of the sea behind it_ + _Appears a white ship sailing,_ + _And its passengers are harvesters._ + _But who dares sing of love?_ + + The jackals howl; the vultures gorge dead flesh. + +In despite of the last line, which is undoubtedly true, and, under the +present circumstances, certainly necessary to the context of all that +precedes it, yet I feel I cannot share Mr. Flint’s despair of this +world. For as long as there is any poet who can have such visions as +this is, in such a world as ours, the earth cannot be altogether given +over to crime and slaughter. Which one of the Imagists could have given +us with so direct and poignant sincerity—scorning all artifice—such a +vision of beauty? Or, for that matter, which one of the poets of today? + + + + + The Reader Critic + + + What Is Anarchy? + +_Alan Adair, London_: + +In the March number of THE LITTLE REVIEW, Miss Alice Groff criticises +Anarchy. She criticises it badly and unfairly. She writes as though she +did not understand what anarchy is. Have you room in your paper for me +to tell her? + +Anarchy is the name given to those periods in the life of a people +during which the principle of domination is held in abeyance and men are +no longer accountable to any magistracy. It is properly a political +word. It has no philosophical significance. All it means is absence of +material government. It is in that sense that Milton uses it and Swift +uses it. It is in that sense that writers of history books employ it. It +is a term, and the only correct term, for a certain condition of +society. That condition has occurred in the past and will doubtless +occur in the future. It is the result of an equality of strength among +the different elements, or “social-egos” that make up a community. There +is Anarchy only so long as these forces remain equal. Once they cease to +be equal, so soon as one begins to tend towards dominance, so soon does +the Anarchy end. According to the “social-ego” that has triumphed, the +changed commonwealth becomes an oligarchy or a kingdom; a military +republic, an ochlocracy or a federation of communes. But until then, +while there is still absence of supreme coercive power, while there is +still _no dominant “social-ego,”_ so long is the community correctly +termed an Anarchy. + +Between this, the Anarchy of fact and of history, and the Anarchy of +theory and modern revolutionists, there is no substantial difference. +The anarchist, in any age, is simply and without qualification, a man +who desires an end put to the political power under which he lives. The +reason _why_ he desires such a thing does not matter. He may think +government to be eternally an evil or only presently an evil. He may be +egoist or communist. What makes him an anarchist is that he hates the +social order around him and would precipitate its destruction by +paralyzing the centers of its administrative and legislative authority. + +The theoretical case against government has little part in the mind of +the modern anarchist. Miss Groff altogether overestimates the importance +that he attaches to it. The war against authority _as authority_ is +past. We are beyond that kind of mysticism. Scepticism is a big +ingredient of Anarchy and the anarchist knows only too well that we know +too little of psychology and too little of philosophy to judge the worth +of abstractions like justice or liberty or the principle of domination. +We can only fix temporary, conditional values to such things. Actual, +modern authority is the only sphinx that troubles the contemporary +anarchist. He has no desire to control the destinies of his people and, +as anarchist, he has no theories about the future form of its political +institutions. His business is solely with present facts. His task is +simply destruction. It may be that he does not start from a “basis of +reason.” He has seen and thought too much to trouble greatly about +reason. He knows too many books to have much optimism. He sees sprawled +across the earth a tragic and incoherent civilization and he sees the +most virile of the races of man lose under its influence the spontaneity +of their actions and the region of their instincts. That, possibly more +than the desire to “complete a circuit of reason,” is at the root of his +attitude to society. The question of the moral significance of archist +or an-archist is beyond the answering of Miss Groff or any one else. The +question of whether it is well to endure the present order; to be +dwarfed and poisoned by its ideals; to be devoted by its economy to +contemptible pursuits; to be forced to conjunction with base influences +by every circumstance that past power has created for the control of +present humanity; that is at least an answerable question. Of the value +of the anarchist answer there may be many opinions, but that it is an +intelligible answer is not to be denied. It is simple and coherent. +Society is sick of its many counsellors and rulers. Its sources of +spiritual vitality are dried up. It is full of confusion; bereft of +consistent purpose; continuing only in mechanical existence. To +precipitate its decay is the one wise action possible to mankind. All +things are grown fatigued; without simplicity of soul or rigour of +desire. Religions, institutions and codes of law are no longer animated; +solely the dead weight of the past holds them in position. Of what use +to plan, meditate or invent, to conquer elements or to evoke from the +earth new, fantastic and wonder-working metals, when that which has +custody of all such things, that which alone can give continuity to the +works and achievements of man our mother civilization itself is in +dissolution? + +To the mind of the anarchist, there are but two courses open to +humanity. First: there may be a continuance of the present conditions: a +society stratified as now, stupidified as now, completely organized, of +antique institutions, growing perpetually enfeebled in spirit, the +current of its vitality becoming attenuated until lost in the morass of +an enormous racial degeneracy. Or else, secondly, the mechanism of +civilization may break and a period of administrative and moral chaos +not easily distinguishable from barbarism supervene upon dilatory +decadence. It is this second course that commends itself to the +anarchist. Only in a partial cessation of its continuity, only in a +barbaric forgetfulness of its eternal problems and speculations can an +exhausted humanity come once more to a zest for existence and the will +to achievement. + +And an Anarchy is commonly an epoch of such confusion and recovery. + + + Impressions of the Loop + +_A Boy Reader, Chicago_: + +Is the following good enough for you to print? + + As I walk through the streets of the Loop, + Big, fat, double-chinned women fan by; + They reek of Melba perfume: + They might have used some other kind, + But they like Melba: fat women, I mean. + Then there are whining old ladies; + They look disdainfully at the gay styles, + Whining, because they are disgusted— + (Envious disgust). + They are old, you know, and can’t do such things. + And drunken men tumble from the corner saloons; + I envy them, for they are very happy. + Miserable, begging men and women sit in comfort + On every corner. + Some have _an_ arm, some _a_ leg, + But they had _another_ once. + Why don’t the rich people take care of them? + They might lose their arms and legs! + Big limousines glide by; + Painted blonde ladies sit on soft cushions. + They must sit there! + What would the jewelry stores do without them! + Diamonds glitter on their perfumed hands; + They cannot smile, for the paint would crack + And fall from their faces. Besides, they are select. + Ragamuffins weave in and out. + They hop cars, scream, and envy the blossoming windows + Of cheap Delicatessens. + Flip stenographers flit by; + Their ankles are gay with many-colored stilty shoes, + But their stockings are full of holes and Jacob’s ladders + Under it all. + Terrible odors fill the air: + Fish, gasoline, booze, sachet-powder (lots of Melba), + Gas, cheap roses, and peanuts; coffee, smoke, + And other things. + Dirty men, clean men, dudes, street mashers, + Cheap Musicians and Artists.... + This is life! + + + Statement of Ownership, Management, + Circulation, Etc., Required by the Act of + Congress of August 24, 1912 + + Of THE LITTLE REVIEW, published monthly at + Chicago, Ill., for April 1st, 1916. + + State of Illinois, County of Cook—ss: + + Before me, a Notary Public in and for the State + and county aforesaid, personally appeared + Margaret C. Anderson, who, having been duly + sworn according to law, deposes and says that + she is the Editor of THE LITTLE REVIEW, and + that the following is, to the best of her + knowledge and belief, a true statement of the + ownership, management (and if a daily paper, + the circulation), etc., of the aforesaid + publication for the date shown in the above + caption, required by the Act of August 24, + 1912, embodied in section 443, Postal Laws and + Regulations, printed on the reverse of this + form, to wit: + + 1. That the names and addresses of the + publisher, editor, managing editor, and + business managers are: + + Publisher, Margaret C. Anderson, 834 Fine Arts + Building; Editor, Margaret C. Anderson, 834 + Fine Arts Building; Managing editor, Margaret + C. Anderson, 834 Fine Arts Building; Business + manager, Margaret C. Anderson, 834 Fine Arts + Building. + + 2. That the owners are: (Give names and + addresses of individual owners, or, if a + corporation, give its name and the names and + addresses of stockholders owning or holding 1 + per cent or more of the total amount of stock.) + + Margaret C. Anderson, 834 Fine Arts Building. + + 3. That the known bondholders, mortgagees, and + other security holders owning or holding 1 per + cent or more of total amount of bonds, + mortgages, or other securities are: (If there + are none, so state.) None. + + 4. That the two paragraphs next above, giving + the names of the owners, stockholders, and + security holders, if any, contain not only the + list of stockholders and security holders as + they appear upon the books of the company but + also, in cases where the stockholders or + security holder appears upon the books of the + company as trustee or in any other fiduciary + relation, the name of the person or corporation + for whom such trustee is acting, is given; also + that the said two paragraphs contain statements + embracing affiant’s full knowledge and belief + as to the circumstances and conditions under + which stockholders and security holders who do + not appear upon the books of the company as + trustee, hold stock and securities in a + capacity other than that of a bona fide owner; + and this affiant has no reason to believe that + any other person, association, or corporation + has any interest direct or indirect in the said + stock, bonds, or other securities than as so + stated by him. + + MARGARET C. ANDERSON. + + Sworn to and subscribed before me this 31st day + of March, 1916. + + (SEAL) + + MITCHELL DAWSON, Notary Public. + (My commission expires December 20, 1917.) + + + + + A Vers Libre Prize Contest + + +Through the generosity of a friend, THE LITTLE REVIEW is enabled to +offer an unusual prize for poetry—possibly the first prize extended to +free verse. The giver is “interested in all experiments, and has +followed the poetry published in THE LITTLE REVIEW with keen +appreciation and a growing admiration for the poetic form known as _vers +libre_.” + +The conditions are as follows: + +Contributions must be received by August 15th. + +They must not be longer than twenty-five lines. + +They must be sent anonymously with stamps for return. + +The name and address of the author must be fixed to the manuscript in a +sealed envelope. + +It should be borne in mind that free verse is wanted—verse having beauty +of rhythm, not merely prose separated into lines. + +There will be three judges: William Carlos Williams, Zoë Aikens and +Helen Hoyt. + +There will be two prizes of $25 each. They are offered not as a first +and second prize, but for “the two best short poems in free verse form.” + +As there will probably be a large number of poems to read, we suggest +that contributors adhere closely to the conditions of the contest. + + + + + THE NEW POETRY SERIES + + A successful attempt to give the best of contemporary verse a + wide reading in its own generation. + + NEW VOLUMES NOW READY + + SOME IMAGIST POETS, 1916 + + A new collection of the work of this interesting group of + poets—Richard Aldington, “H. D.”, John Gould Fletcher, F. S. + Flint, D. H. Lawrence, and Amy Lowell—showing increased scope and + power and confirming their important position in modern poetry. + The volume includes Miss Lowell’s “Patterns” and “Spring Day,” + and Mr. Fletcher’s Arizona poems. + + GOBLINS AND PAGODAS + By JOHN GOULD FLETCHER + + This volume includes “Ghosts of an Old House” and ten + “Symphonies” interpreting in terms of color the inner life of a + poet. In originality of conception, in sheer tonal beauty, and in + the subtlety with which moods are evoked, these poems mark a + distinct advance in the development of the art of poetry. + + ROADS + By GRACE FALLOW NORTON + + The author of “The Little Gray Songs from St. Joseph’s” writes in + the old metres but with all the artistic vitality of the newer + school of poets. The poems of this volume represent the best work + she has yet done. + + TURNS AND MOVIES + By CONRAD AIKEN + + “Most remarkable of all recent free verse.”—Reedy’s St. Louis + Mirror. + + A SONG OF THE GUNS + By GILBERT FRANKAU + + Wonderfully vivid pictures of modern war written to the roar of + guns on the western front by a son of Frank Danby, the novelist. + These are the war poems the world has been waiting for. + + IDOLS + By WALTER CONRAD ARENSBERG + + Contains many interesting experiments in new metres and + reflective verse of much beauty as well as novel and effective + renderings of Mallarmé’s “Afternoon of a Faun,” and of Dante’s + Fifth Canto. + + Each 75 cents Net, except “A Song of the Guns,” which is 50 + cents Net. + + HOUGHTON MIFFLIN CO. + At all Bookstores 4 Park Street, Boston + + + + + READ THE MISCELLANY + + An Illustrated QUARTERLY for + Connoisseurs of the Book-Beautiful + + Occasional Book Reviews and Articles on + Prints, Etchings and Fine + Engraving + + THE OFFICIAL JOURNAL OF + THE AMERICAN BOOKPLATE SOCIETY + + $1.00 a Year 25 Cents a Copy + + Address + EDITOR, THE MISCELLANY + 1010 Euclid Avenue Cleveland, Ohio + + + Are you really opposed to the war and are you anxious to + do anti-military propaganda? Then help spread + + + ANTI-MILITARY LITERATURE + + Preparedness, the Road to Universal Slaughter + By Emma Goldman, 5c each, $2.50 a hundred + + Patriotism, a Menace to Liberty + By Emma Goldman, 5c each, $2.50 a hundred + + War and Capitalism + By Peter Kropotkin, 5c each + + The Last War + By George Barrett, 5c each + + For sale by MOTHER EARTH PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION + 20 EAST 125th STREET, NEW YORK CITY + + “Et j’ai voulu la paix” + + + + + POÈMES + + Par ANDRÉ SPIRE Author of “Versets,” “Vers les Routes + Absurdes,” &c. + + A little book of unpublished poems written just before and during + the war. M. Spire has been in Nancy, within a few kilometres of + the firing-line, since August, 1914. + + THE EGOIST, in publishing these poems by as well known an author + as M. Spire, hopes to reach that fairly numerous public in + England which reads French, and hopes also to follow up this book + with other small collections of new French poetry by the younger + poets. + + Copies may be obtained from + THE EGOIST, or from RICHARD ALDINGTON, 7 Christchurch Place, + Hampstead, N. W. + + Price 6d net. Postage 1d + + EDITION LIMITED TO 750 COPIES + + A List of Interesting Papers to Appear in Early Issues of + + + THE QUARTERLY NOTEBOOK + + Homage to Watteau* + _By W. G. Blaikie-Murdoch_ + + Seventeenth Century Type-Making* + _By Dard Hunter_ + + The Centenary of Charlotte Brontë + _By E. Basil Lupton_ + + Synge and Borrow: A Contrast in Method + _By Miriam Allen deFord_ + + Dickens as a Student of Scott + _By E. Basil Lupton_ + + Ivories + _By N. Tourneur_ + + *Illustrated + + + + + The Little Review + + + Literature, Drama, Music, Art + + MARGARET C. ANDERSON, Editor + + The monthly that has been called “the most unique journal + in existence.” + + THE LITTLE REVIEW is a magazine that believes in Life for Art’s + sake, in the Individual rather than in Incomplete People, in an + Age of Imagination rather than of Reasonableness; a magazine + interested in Past, Present, and Future, but particularly in the + New Hellenism; a magazine written for Intelligent People who can + Feel, whose philosophy is Applied Anarchism, whose policy is a + Will to Splendour of Life, and whose function is—to express + itself. + + One Year, U.S.A., $1.50; Canada, $1.65; Great Britain, 7/- + + + + + The Little Review + + + + + THE FLAME + + A JOURNAL FOR THE NEW AGE + + Irwin Granich and Van K. Allison, Editors. + 3 Bellingham Place, Boston, Mass. + + “The Flame” is to be a monthly journal of revolution, soon to + take life. It is to burn against oppression and authority + everywhere, and is to be as pure and merciless as the flower of + light after which it is named. + + We want you to help us make “The Flame.” It is not to be one of + those vehicles for the delivery of the vast thoughts of an + unrecognized “genius,” but a little forum where every + revolutionist of high heart and purpose can speak. We can pay + nothing, of course. Cartoons, poems, stories, sketches, tracts, + philosophies, news reports—all will be welcomed. + + No creed or philosophy will be barred from our columns if only + its devotee writes in a beautiful and furious and yes-saying + gesture. The editorials will be flavored by the anarchy of the + publishers. + + + INVITATION + TO + MEMBERSHIP + + SOCIETY OF MODERN ART + + Every copy of M. A. C. (Modern Art Collector) is spreading the + new form of art throughout America, is adding the law of + recognition to these hard-working, self-sacrificing, unselfish + artists. + + Support of the Collector is a direct and potent method of + manifesting your interest in Modern Art and of aiding its advance + in the betterment of the Modern Artist. + + A fee of eighteen dollars will be charged by the publishers of + the Modern Art Collector to those desiring to lend support to the + Modern Art Movement. The payment of the fee will be acknowledged + by an engraved certificate signed by the Society’s officers and + will entitle the contributor to copies of M. A. C., containing + collections of Modern Artists’ work for the period of two years. + + Those who have previously subscribed to M. A. C. may procure the + same advantages by paying the difference between the subscription + rate and the membership fee. + + + + + EMMA + GOLDMAN + + THE NOTED ANARCHIST + + + Will Lecture in San Francisco, Cal., + at Fillmore Street Averill Hall + + 1861 Fillmore St., Bet. Sutter and Bush + + SUNDAY, JULY 16th, 8 P. M. + “Anarchism and Human Nature—Do they harmonize?” + + TUESDAY, JULY 18th, 8 P. M. + “The Family—Its Enslaving Effect upon Parents and Children” + + WEDNESDAY, JULY 19th, 8 P. M. + “Art For Life” + + THURSDAY, JULY 20th, 8 P. M. + “Preparedness, The Road to Universal Slaughter” + + FRIDAY, JULY 21st, 8 P. M. + “Friedrich Nietzsche and the German Kaiser” + + SATURDAY, JULY 22nd, 8 P. M. + “The Educational and Sexual Mutilation of the Child” + (The Gary System Discussed) + + SUNDAY, JULY 23rd, 8 P. M. + “The Philosophy of Atheism” + (The Lecture delivered before the Congress of Religious Philosophies + held at San Francisco during the Exposition) + + Questions and Discussions at all Lectures + + Admission 25 Cents + + + + + Transcriber’s Notes + + +Advertisements were collected at the end of the text. + +The table of contents on the title page was adjusted in order to reflect +correctly the headings in this issue of THE LITTLE REVIEW. + +The original spelling was mostly preserved. A few obvious typographical +errors were silently corrected. All other changes are shown here +(before/after): + + [p. 3]: + ... when the First Consul sent home the news of the victory of + Merengo?” ... + ... when the First Consul sent home the news of the victory of + Marengo?” ... + + [p. 25]: + ... in landlady’s pink, a Jessicca (a spirited Cockney girl) in + Turkish costume, ... + ... in landlady’s pink, a Jessica (a spirited Cockney girl) in + Turkish costume, ... + + [p. 26]: + ... if similar technique, should chose to band themselves + together ... + ... if similar technique, should choose to band themselves + together ... + + [p. 41]: + ... And, in the mightly organ of the world, ... + ... And, in the mighty organ of the world, ... + + [p. 43]: + ... now, stupified as now, completely organized, of antique + institutions, growing perpetually ... + ... now, stupidified as now, completely organized, of antique + institutions, growing perpetually ... + + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75854 *** |