New-York tribune., 1922-10-08
A Booknan's Day Book
By Burton Rascoe


true magic, singing of love and sor-
row, aspiration and defeat-all age
old things but with a true poets tone
and in a natural and gifted manner.
SATURDAY, SEPT. 80
Went up to the Doran Offices this
morning and Gene Saxton showed me
the handsome new books they had
made out Of Milton Raison's "Spind-
thrift and John Dos Passos' "A Push
Cart at the Curb" both of them coll
lections of poems. Dos Passos is an
excellent water colorist and his color
fnl and interesting impression of the
Ghetto is reproduced al a cover for
the book. For his poetry / have an
imperfect sympathy, preferring his
prose. AS 3 poet he seems only to
write in sensuous and languorous ca
dence, employing the familiar triple
accented adjectives and tinkling orien-
tai geographical names in poems with
ont much body; or, on The other hand,
employing heavy and harsh colloauial-
Isnis with great deal of body and
not much poetry. He falls then, /
think, between the two stools of the
strained and wistful, mandolin strum-
ming of the rhetorical romantic and
the brittle imagism Of the slice-of- life
school OF poets. The fact that there
are poems In practically every mod
srn genre is sufficient indication that
DOS Passos has not found himself
as poet as certainly as he has found
nnimself as novelist. Here is one Of
LOS Passos's poems, printed here as
prose and following il are the openinp
sentences of q tale by popular maga-
zine writer:
There was King IN China. He s,t
of
a black slave scratched his back with q
t',,,h paes scr scrateher Of emerald. Beyond the
lets Of fiery wine, stood the poets in a
row. One sang the intricate patterns of
s9ownakes ss WAX One the henna-tipped breasts
rubbed with altar. One sang red bows Of
Tartar horsemen and whine of arrows and
Diooa clots on new spear shafts. The
purple bowls and one in a dronlng voice
recited the maxims OF Lao Tse.'
TO day he lives In Bokhara. in the old
quarters OF the desert town that the ma
tiVes call Bokhara-i-Shereef. He has
store IN g bazaar not far from the Sam
threaded brocades of Khiva and the striped
Bokhariot belts that the caraven men ex-
change for brick-pressed tea across the
border in Chinese Turkestan and where
methodicaly filling mis- pipe with tobacco
from q carved pumpkin shell at his elbow,
ne praises the greatness. of Russia.
In those days he lived in certain gay
and turbulent city not far from the north
eastern foothills of the Himalayas where
three great countries link elbows and swap
Hes and intrigues and occasional murders,
and where the Afghan mist falls down
like n purpie-gray veil. In those days
Russia was not on his lips and he called
himself an Herati, an Afghan from Herat,
city y-bred and, city-eourteous. but with a
strain of maternal blood that linked him
TO the mountains and the sharp red feud
OF the mountains. But city bred he was
and as such he isped Persian, slipped coffee
havored with musk and gave soft answer
to harsh word.
The latter quotation is from story
by Captain Achmed Abdullah. who
writes under contract for the popular
magazines what are called "commer-
cial" stories in Greenwich Village. Both
Mr.. Dos Passos and Captain Abdullah
have here employed tricks of mood
and suggestions, Captain Abdullah /
think rather more effectively than Mr..
Dos Passos.
Raison is infant member Of the ter
rible younger generation, being aged
to the extent of seventeen summers.
"Spindrift" is his first book: it is full
of immaturities and uncertainties and
yet it reveals definite singing gift
and it has an airy, self-assured charm.
William McFee has described the
poems in this book perfectly in a SEN
tence in the preface: "These brief
pieces are like the clear melodious
whistle of boy on fine summer
evening"
Ran into Raison with Maron Stro-
bel and we called upon Dos Passos and
finding him out, we climbed into his
studio through window and left him
q note. A little later on / called up
Mary Blair and we went to Seward
sollins,s apartment, wheIe we found
Passos. They had all been house
hunting for the Fitzgeralds and had
rented one in Great Neck. Dos was
dancing about In gay abandon with a
piano lamp on his head and Zelda was
initiating Gilda Gray Scott was
apathetic, observing once that danced
as badly as George Jean Nathan and
bestirring himself later to inquire
whether / was "going to pieces"
MONDAY, OCTOBER
To lunch to-day with Grant Overton,
who has Just published an informative
volume, when Winter Comes to Main
Street" which is made up entirely of
biographical material, personalia and
sympathetic accounts of the aims and
achievements of the authors on the
extensive fall list of the George H.
Doran Company. That such, book
and found it interesting be
published about a single seasons list
of one firm is a tribute to that list.
Chatted with Albert Jay Mock
who told me that the most entertaining
book he had read recently was Maurice
Francis Egan's Confessions of Book
Lover He said it contained some en-
cellent stuff. "But the two writers /
am most interested in at the present
moment he said, "are writing for The
Freeman Alexander Harvey and Edwin
Muir. Harvey is great Greek and
Latin scholor and his interesting in
terpfetations of the classics in terms
OF modern thought make them as live
ly and as refreshing as can be. If L
could have got hold Of stndies like that
when ! was a Latin teaches / would
have danced with JOY, because he
makes the classics TEEN with life and
lJnterest. .. Grantland Rice and
came back to the office together and he
told me that he had seen Frederick
O'Brien at the Century Office and had
meant to ask O'Brien what the atolls
mean in O'Bricn's new book, "Atolls of
the SUM-" but had forgotten to and no.
body around the Century office seemed
to know. DO you know?n he asked
| me; and answered, Mot at al1.s ButsI
looked 1t up as soon as / got to the
] office. Atolls are "annular islands con-
sisting of q reef formed by the petri-
ned skeletons of coral polyps and in
closing central lagoon.' Annular IS
| from the Latin word "anulus," which Is
/ q diminutive of stanus.n which means