Evening star., 1925-03-19
THIS AND THAT
BY CHARLES E. TRACEWELL.

Our old friend Subscriber" writes
me the following letter:
"As an interested reader OF your
evening discussions in your column
of This and That may not ask you
If you do not place Edgar Allan Poe
and Sidney Lanier in your literary
square?
"a reply to this much discussed
question would greatly interest many
sition of these two poets, with Eng
lishmen of letters, has long since
been decided"
1 print this letter because ii gives
me a chance to write about one of
my favorite poets, Edgar Allan Poe.
| seldom print an anonymous letter.
because l seldom receive one. My
readers sign their names, just is |
do.
did place Poe and I4anier in my
square, and in proof thereof refer
any one interested to This and That"
of February 81, in which 1 first pro-
posed such a park.
Discussing therein the statues of
eminent American literary men and
women TO be placed in the square,
the writer advocated a commission,
and continued:
Certainly such a literary commits
men as William Cullen Bryant. Edgar
Allan Poe, Walt Whitman. James
Russell Lowell, Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes,
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Sidney LAME r
and John Greenleaf Whittier.
Curtis Hidden Page, in his The
Chief American Poets gives selec-
tions from the above authors The
frontispiece shows their portraits.
,r-f,h Oh
position in the center of the page"
Other names I proposed, in that
original article on Literary Square,
were Nathaniel Hawthorne. James
Fenimore Cooper, Herman Melville,
Washington Irving. Harriet Beecher
Stowe, stephen Crane. o. Henry, Mark
Twain and Benjamin Franklin.
SinSe that time suggestions have
come for the inclusion Of Joaquin
Miller, Bret Harte, James Whitcomb
Riley, Eugene Field and Jean Stratton
Porter
Indeed, a Literary Square without
Poe in II would be no literary square
at all! II would be worse than
Hamlet" with no Hamlet, or that
absurd book published during the war
purporting to deal with the world $
musicians-with German composers
left out.
Today let us consider Poe just as
poet. / believe that he is the best
answer in the world to the group OF
ultramodern intellectuals who feel
that there is something unworthy in
rhyme.
There is nothing unmanly in rhyme
when it is written the way Poe
wrote il.
Helen. thy beauty is to me
Like those Ncean barks Of vore
That gently, DER a perfumed sea.
Inc weary, way wanderer bore
To his own native shore.
On desperate seas long wont 10 roam,
my hyscinth hair, thy classic face,
To the glory that Greece,
And the grandeur that was Rome
The man who wrote that. world
famous and age-famous. as undying
in fame as the stars above. was the
master Of rhyme. II did not master
him. His art was so spontaneous, vet
so mature; so free. yet so careful
that he achieved impressionism with
end rhymes far beyond anything that
the so-called free verse" writer's of
today can get with their studied
effects.
Poe's poems, probably more than
those of any other poet. remind one
or gems. One CLEANS like a diamond
another like ruby. They are per-
feet. clean cut, yet alive with the
inner glow.
His poems remind one of the finish
ed work OF a small group of short
story writers, including Daudet de