The New York herald. [volume] (New York, N.Y.) 1920-1924, 1922-02-05

Staining the grass with shivered,
golden things.
She has way of rain against the sun,
OF moonlit orchards, ghostly white
and still,
And the slow silver coming, one by one,
OF burning stars above purple hill.
Very similar in spirit is the follow
ing by Howard Vinal:
My heart can know no pain, While
beauty >weaves
Quaint patterns In the corridors Of
thought,
Patterns of curvinS clouds and waving
All the indifference that time has
wrought V
Will softly pass. when l behold sfar
The lovely beauty of an evening star.
This lis effective even In spite of
the sophomore redundancy Of
lovely beauty" Somewhat less
smooth but considerably more i'm
pressive is '@fhe Mountains by Abb
bic Huston Evans, which begins as
follows:
Wind blows upon them salt-edged from
the ocean;
Rain beats upon them, blacl1ening
the stone:
Frost heaves the lodges with obscure
connection,
And the hilltops bleach like bone.
and ends significantly:
Yet they are at best but a short lived
generation,
Such as stars must laugh at as they
journey forth.
Think OF old Orion, that great con.
stellation,
And the Dipper all alone in the
North!
Something Of the same thought is
expressed in Genevieve Taggard's
ice Age which. however, is married
by its prolixity and by its roughness
Of rhythm. In Miss Taggard's "Boys
and Girls" ON the other hand, there
is delightful lyric quality A typi-
cal stanza follows:
The river skips, but we are quicker.
It's little body's slender glisten
Goes down alleyways of leaves.
Flicker. sun, and river, flicker;
Listen. lover. listen, listen
How the river laughs and grieves.
Otherpromising poets of the young
er school are Babette Deutsch, Hide
garde Flanner and Eda Lou Walton.
Among the better known writers
Christopher Morley stands forth for
his Tavern OF Fools" done in light
er vein: Katherine Lee Bates is con-
spicuous for her beautiful sonnet,
Brief Life; and Scudder Middleton
is to be commended for his original
poem ITO an Inhabitant of Para
disc" which ends:
Oh, guard the gates that shut you in.
Make sure the world behind Your
eyes,
Ny world of men and lust and wheels
Begins to march on Paradise.
Assuming that the Anthology rep
resents the best in American maya
zine verse for the year. is there any
general trend or spirit to be seen be-
meath it all? Is it in any way rep
resentative OF present day condi-
tons? Does it typify anything fun
damental in American life? From
what has already been quoted, the
answer must be in the negative; that
work which really rises to the dig
nifty of poetry has o universally
which lifts it above the bounds of
any particular country and any par
Lon
transcend time and space: they are
of the everywhere and of the for
ever; i. is only the muddy pave
inents and the factory whistles thai
must be confined to a definite place
and moment. And so those poems
which have in them any of the stuff
of peImanence do not contain any
reflection of American life as dis
tinguished from English life, or of
New Jersey traits as opposed to the
traits Of South Carolina. When we
iiEd q poet attempting to narrow
himself to the spirit merely of the
present we are apt To come across
something circumscribed and provin-
cial; or else we are confronted with
a nondescript thing such as the fol-
lowing, for which Maxwell Boden-
helm is responsible:
Do YOU share the present dread
OF being sentimental?
The world has flung its boutonniere
Into the mud, and steps upon it
With elaborate gestures!
Certain people do this neatly,