PRAYER Now that I know Lord, take Thy rod And change me to a tree. Now that I see And now the best is known, Lord, wave Thy hand And turn me to a stone; A dull dumb stone, Or a stark old tree; Thy rain, Thy wind, Thy lightning over me! HELENE MULLINS Helene Mullins was born July 12, 1899, at New Rochelle, New York, and was educated in convent boarding-schools. She began writing poems at the age of eleven and in 1922 began publishing in the magazines. She soon attracted attention in F. P. A.'s column, “The Conning Tower," where her poems appeared for several years on the average of more than one a week. In collaboration with her sister, Marie Gallagher, she published a novel, Paulus Fy (1924). Her first book of poems, Comedy and Distress, which appeared in an exquisite limited edition in 1928, reveals an unusual craftsmanship. But it is something more than a display of technique which one finds here. Beneath the facile joining of words, Miss Mullins justifies her title. The poem reprinted here is an excellent instance of how this poet can vary the tight form of the quatrain and use an irregular rhythm most effectively. ANXIETY IN SOLITUDE This evening I await an elegant young gentleman Who has known me a number of years, and sometimes reads my verse. He has avowed to me not once, but again and again, That he thinks me an honest poet, and is sure there are many worse. I have this day finished a lyric he has not seen before. with it, like a queen with a gem sum; that has cost a fabulous Yet sitting here and awaiting his knock upon the door, I am ill at ease, I twist my hands, I pray he forget to come. I begin to fear the evening will be rather droll; He will long to regard me with tenderness; yet think! Whose poetry is charming, but whose fingers are stained with ink, And whose gown is not very bright, and not of the latest fashion? DOROTHY E. REID Dorothy E. Reid was born in 1900 in Bucyrus, Ohio. At Ohio State University, from which she was graduated in 1925, she won the annual Vandewater Prize and was editor-in-chief of The Candie, a magazine of "revolt against opinionless student life." After some school teaching and newspaper work, she became engaged in advertising in Columbus, Ohio. Coach Into Pumpkin (1925) is definitely the work of a beginner, but a beginner with charm and sensitivity. The unusual turn of phrase is evident even in her less successful poems; the poet possesses a "point of view" which is as "different" as her personal blend of observation and fantasy. This combination is more apparent in her later work which continually fluctuates between lightness and poign ance. Langston Hughes was born February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri. He was brought up in several cities in the Middle West, was graduated from Central High School in Cleveland and at eighteen became a teacher of English in Mexico, where he lived for a year and a half. He spent a year at Columbia University and some time as a worker on the high seas. Then we find Hughes going to Paris in midwinter with only seven dollars in his pocket. He stayed in France ten months, worked his way through Italy and Spain, and returned to New York with twenty-five cents. Working as a busboy in Washington, he was discovered by Vachel Lindsay, who read several of his poems to a fashionable audience in the very hotel in which Hughes carried trays of dishes. This incident attracted the attention of the press of the country, and people who never would have glanced at the poetry for its own sake became interested in the career of so extraordinary a singer. The Weary Blues, Hughes' first volume, appeared in January, 1926. One of the poems had already won first prize in a contest conducted by Opportunity, a magazine which did great service in fostering creative work by negroes. Hughes' poetry appearing at the same time as Countee Cullen's justified those who claimed we were witnessing a revival of negro art. Among the whites, Eugene O'Neill, Waldo Frank, Sherwood Anderson and Carl Van Vechten had already shown the significance of the negro in literature. The negroes themselves began to prove the quality of their inheritance. Johnson's The Book of American Negro Poetry appeared, two books of American negro spirituals disclosed the genuine melodic fertility of the black singers, and various collections of blues revealed how greatly all American composers were indebted to the rude rhythms and sobbing saxophones of the dark musicians. Hughes was the first to express the spirit of these blues in words. In his note to his second volume, Fine Clothes to the Jew (1927), he writes, "The Blues, unlike the Spirituals, have a strict poetic pattern: one long line repeated and a third line to rhyme with the first two. Sometimes the second line in repetition is slightly changed and sometimes, but very seldom, it is omitted. The mood of the Blues is almost always despondency, but when they are sung people laugh." Although at least half of Hughes' work centers about the blues much of his poetry is grim in an essentially modern manner. His portraits of negro workmen (as evidenced in the remarkable "Brass Spittoons") are more memorable than those produced by any of his compatriots. Beneath the physical struggle one senses the still more suffering spirit. HOMESICK BLUES De railroad bridge's I went down to de station; |