effect, if any, climate and conditions exert on the creator's expression: how much the gaunt and quiet hills of New Hampshire manifest themselves in the New England soliloquies of Robert Frost or how the noisy energy of the Middle West booms and rattles through the highpitched syllables of Vachel Lindsay. The notes, with their brief critical as well as bibliographical data, have also been prepared on the theory that poet and person have a definite relation to each other and the enjoyment of the one is enhanced by an acquaintance with the other. While emphasis has avowedly been placed upon the contribution of living writers, practically no stress has been laid upon the controversial subject of Form. Teachers no less than students are intent upon discovering the kernel rather than analyzing the shell that covers it. It is the matter which concerns us, not the manner. Vers libre, that bugaboo of many of our otherwise liberal critics, has produced an incalculable quantity of trivial and tiresome exhibitions. But so, the vers librists might reply, has the sonnet. Any form, in the hands of the genuine artist, not only justifies but dignifies itself. Free verse (a misnomer, by the bye, for free verse instead of being "free" obeys certain well-known though flexible laws of rhythm, balance, return and cadence) is capable of many exquisite and unique effects impossible of achievement in a strict, metrical pattern. Nor is free verse as one-dimensional or as much of a piece as is often charged. Its variety is as great as its exponents. It can be as vigorous as the unrhymed "voluntaries" of Henley or as delicately chiselled as the frail but firm precision of H. D.'s imagiste lines. We find it in various tones and textures: rough-hewn and massive as in the iron solidity of Carl Sandburg, brilliantly glazed and riotously colorful as in the enamelled pictures of Amy Lowell, restrained and biblical as in the sonorous strophes of James Oppenheim. But though vers libre has been the subject of much curious debate, it is only one feature of the surface resemblances as well as the wide differences of modern poets on both sides of the Atlantic. A sweeping inclusiveness distinguishes their dissimilar verse; it embraces all themes, irrespective of technique; it employs old forms and new departures with impartiality and equal skill. There is this outstanding difference between latter-day American and British poets. Broadly speaking, modern British verse is smoother, more matured and, molded by centuries of literature, richer in associations and surer in artistry. American poetry, no longer imitative and colonial, is sharper, more vigorously experimental; provocative with youth and youth's occasional-and natural -crudities. Where the English product is formulated, precise and (in spite of a few fluctuations) true to its past, the American expression is far more varied and, being the reflection of partly indigenous, partly naturalized and largely unassimilated ideas, temperaments and races, is characteristically uncoördinated. English poetry may be compared to a broad and luxuriating river with a series of tributaries contributing to the now thinning, now widening channel. American poetry might be described. as a sudden rush of unconnected mountain torrents, valley streams and city sluices; instead of one placidly moving body, there are a dozen rushing currents. It is as if here, in the last fifteen years, submerged springs had burst through stubborn ground. For this reason, I have included in both sections, not only the often quoted poems by those poets who are accepted everywhere as outstanding figures, but examples of lesser known singers who are also representative of their age. The same spirit has impelled me to reprint a liberal portion of that species which stands midway between light verse and authentic poetry. The Eugene Fields, the J. W. Rileys, the Anthony Deanes may not occupy the same high plane as the Masefields and Frosts, but there is scarcely a person that will not be attracted to them and thus be drawn on to deeper notes and larger themes. In the dialect verses of Irwin Russell, Paul Laurence Dunbar and T. A. Daly there is dignity beneath the humor; their very broken syllables reveal how America has become a melting-pot in a poetic as well as an ethnic sense. With the realization that this gathering is not so much a complete summary as an introduction to modern poetry, it is hoped that the collection, in spite of its obvious limitations, will move the young reader to a closer inspection of the poets here included. The purpose of such an anthology must always be to rouse and stimulate an interest rather than to satisfy a curiosity. Such, at least, is the hope and aim of one editor. January, 1922. L. U. |