Part 2

The green shadowed trance of the water Is splintered to little white-tasseled awakenings By the beat of long black oars. So do your words cut the massed smoothness of thoughts of you.

Split, brown-blue clouds press into each-other Over hills dressed in mute, clinging haze. So do my thoughts slowly form over the draped mystery of you.

The two prizes of $25 each go therefore to H. D. and Mr. Bodenheim.

But it may be interesting to print some of the others. For instance, not a single judge mentioned the following:

Stream

Richard Aldington

I.

Pebbles, that gleam dully, white, faint ochre, drab green: mosaic under pale sliding water.

II.

Foam; mobile crests leaping, sinking: thin fingers grasping round cold rocks.

III.

Pines, white ash-trees, black-thorns, winter grass, mirrored trembling in you, O vagrant, bending away from you and towards you: hesitating, importunate lovers.

IV.

Small blue waves straining to meet, never touching, always elusive: mocking, half-virginal lips.

Eunice Tietjens mentioned _Flower_ and _Foam_ with this qualification: “Provided Richard Aldington wrote them. Otherwise not. My point is that if he wrote them they are authentic as well as lovely, but if he did not so flagrant an imitator ought not to be encouraged even if he is a successful copyist.”

Flower

Edward J. O’Brien

Here by the pastures of Hybla Dreameth in azure stillness Daphne, a maiden. Her throat was softer than light and honey-haunted.

Foam

Here by the foaming sky with cloud-capped horses, I, a maiden, lie by the windy ocean, Dreaming of quiet waters Guarded by willows.

Dr. Williams’s first choice was _The Master_, “for the reason that it has most imaginative charm while possessing at the same time a fairly even unity of rhythm, a simple straight forward diction and a very subtle depth of thought. The image is progressively developed to a fine and natural conclusion with great simplicity and restraint, without waste of materia, without redundancy of any kind.”

What or where is the subtle depth of thought? Almost every kind of person in the world has had this thought: it is not even a poetic thought. And what is there in the treatment to make it poetry?

The Master

Jeanne D’Orge

In the dusk a child sits playing Five-finger exercises Up and down, down and up Jagged notes and even, Down and up, up and down Interminably. About him all unseen In the folds of the shadows Stand the great shades Bach ... Beethoven ... Brahms ... Listening with exquisite attention As to a master.

Helen Hoyt mentioned the following:

Autumn Ballet

Charles Wharton Stork

Oh dancers in yellow!— Tall, saffron-garmented poplars with arms uplifted, Slender-limbed beeches Draped in a modester russet, Chestnuts, walnuts and sassafrasses, And ruffle-skirted maples— Why do ye stand at pause? When will the music begin For you, oh dancers in yellow?

Dr. Williams’s fourth choice is a poem of Charles Ashleigh’s which he describes as “a spirited and well-constructed defiance.” I think it is a very trite effort—one of those loose though rather happy expressions of mood that has no more to do with art than a man’s exclamation that he means to tramp in the woods on a bright spring day.

Once More—The Road

Charles Ashleigh

The printed page Whispers vainly In my memory.... The locomotive howls!

Limping philosophies Murmur weakly And then are silenced By the laughter of wanderers.

The sadness of creeds Dies Under tramps’ ribaldry.

And my road-thirst, Avid and aching, Conquers the muttering Of puling scholarship.

Let my heart blossom in journeying; And my maw be well stuffed With delectable incident!

Eunice Tietjens would have been willing to give _Lovescape_ a prize if either of the other judges had chosen it, but they did not. And in spite of its cadenced mounting and falling—which is an attribute of technique, not necessarily of art—it remains merely a slight puff of poetic feeling, not a good poem.

Lovescape

Adolf Wolff

Sky Deep blue sky Clouds Thin clouds Drifting drifting Grass Soft cool grass Breeze Soft warm breeze Hands pressing Mouths mingling Love Passion Ecstacy Faintness Calm Resting Sky Deep blue sky Clouds Thin clouds Drifting drifting.

Helen Hoyt chose the two following for the prizes. Now I hope these judges will not get provoked with me or feel that I am being personal or any of the other things that one is usually accused of when one is most impersonally talking his “cause.” I am simply overflowing with criticism of their valuations and I must speak it out. These two poems are pretty awful, I think. Where are the winged words that make poetry something beyond thoughts or ideas of emotions?

Victory

Sarah Bard Field

When we were lifted high on the crest of the wave And Passion made you oblivious, I reached above you for a star And caught it. When we sank deep into the trough of the wave And satisfied desire over-flooded you, I reached below you for a pearl And possessed it. You have nothing left from that night But a memory, chained to yourself. I have something left from that night That will one day fill his eyes with star-dust, Measuring the heavens, And tangle his feet in sea-weed, Searching the Ocean. Because of that night A thought stirs in you. It will grow weaker with Time It will be dead when you are dead. Because of that night, A child stirs in me. He will grow stronger with Time He will plant pansies on our graves When we are dead.

Art Is Born

Miriam van Waters

My leisure has flowered: a new thing has come into my hands, Time has come. I possess time as though it were a thing. I lie still in the scented grass and the hours come into my hands. They float up as little balloons float from the hands of children,— Like golden, silken spheres sailing high into the air, One by one they mount slow and as fragile as dreams. The hours from my hands go up like kites,— I hold their slender thread, I move it faintly and they sway, Rocking in the clear blue of the sky. They do not return to me, but very gently they vanish.... Somewhere, While I hold their silken, slender thread in my hands.

My leisure has come sharp, like a crystal: It glows and is pointed, The poignancy of weapons has come into my leisure. I possess time as though it were a thing. The hours come into my hands like spears— Flashing crystal spars of light That is winged. I seize them as they come to me. I throw the weight of my body Into my stroke and boldly I hurl them into space,—into the heart of my enemy The Stillness who lurks there in the depths of the dark.

Dr. Williams says of _The Flower Smeller_: “It might have been a very fine thing indeed had the author known how to come to a conclusion properly. Parts of this poem have more promise than anything in the whole batch of manuscript.” It is, obviously, better. But it isn’t a gem by any means; it belongs rather with those almost fine things that make you impatient because they didn’t turn out to be gems.

The Flower Smeller

L. R. Bonham

Bubbles, mist and visions colored shapes winging against the sky a sip from a brown Venetian glass.

Meseems gauze drops are pulled upwards and confetti flung into the past. A fairy queen in a crystal coach opens the door, she beckons, the painted crest looks familiar.

Six little men with sticks pass by, one taller than the rest laughs and points at a junkheap of keepsakes. Distant music in the park you and I at the bay window, gossiping neighbors, a cool breeze, old second hand furniture, ice cream and moonlight all painted as in one stroke.

Spirals of smoke, crushed tissue paper, colored ribbons and black masks, floor sweepings after a ball— I twirl a flower between thumb and index I feel golden dust on the tip of my nose— a futile occupation yet something has happened.

And this one, which was among Helen Hoyt’s choices, belongs also in the exasperatingly “somehow good” school.

November Afternoon

Marjorie Allen Seiffert

Upon our heads The oak-leaves fall Like silent benedictions Closing autumn’s gorgeous ritual, And we Upborne by warship Lift our eyes to the altar of distant hills.

Beloved How can I know What gods are yours, How can I guess the visions of your spirit, Or hear The silent prayers your heart has said—

Only by this I feel Your gods akin to mine, That when our lips have met On this last golden autumn afternoon They have confessed In silence Our kisses were less precious than our dreams.

To-day Our passion drowned in beauty We turn away our faces toward the hills Where purple haze, like incense, Spreads its veil.

Here, I think, are two very interesting ones, the first of which Dr. Williams considers worthy of special mention—“the image evoked is charmingly successful.” The authors are respectively Fritz Peters and his brother, Thomas Willing Peters.

The wind blows hard No bird is there And the smoke is drowning in the lake.

(_Dictated at the age of two years and ten months._)

When it rains it makes beautiful colors It makes red and blue and white And red and blue stripes on the water And the pier goes out to get the sky.

(_Dictated at the age of three years and eight months._)

The following four were not mentioned by any of the judges, but in my judgment they are better than many of the “honorable mentions.”

The Soldiers

Horace Holley

Whom I long since had known, Long since forgotten; Who cast their names behind them like a dream, Like stagnant water spitting Their tasteless souls away; These are the soldiers, The nameless, the changelings, Monstrous with slow tormenting Number, Pestilent with unremitting Machine.

Soldiers ... These are they whom I suspected, guilty and glorious, Crouching in my own thought’s background, Released by the whirlwind of fate To move as winds that scream about the Pole, As darkness of sea-depths, As meeting of ice and flame. Priests of the mystic sensual death, When shall they return? When shall they return, broken, from Hell?

The fuse of a thousand years has burned: _Lord, quicken the groping hands of to-morrow!_

The Assault

John Cournos

You come— black of wing, black of beak, flock on flock— ravenous, cawing.

Your cries—arrows— shrill, clamorous, strident, pierce the heart.

O wounded reverie on still water, white in faint mist, you spurt red drops.

O white swan, shape of magnificent sadness, spread out your wings, flutter white through the air, disperse the black—the raucous.

Girl of Jade and Ivory

Mitchell Dawson

Thru the dark arches of many nights Your voice has led me, Groping. Across the echoing pavements Of the nights that stretch before me And past the niches Where grotesque doubts Mock me for seeking, I shall follow The impalpable strands of your voice— Like thread fine-spun from melted pearls Drawn singing Thru the darkness, Until at last I shall find you In a deep hollow of that immeasurable rock From which all nights are hewn; And your eyes will bind me forever While your long white fingers caress me. I shall not heed the waiting days As they gutter and die out.

The South

Witter Bynner

O the true difference!— The sun at last Gilds me again And my face is no more a white stalk of celery But a golden mango And the foot-tracked mud of my heart Is sunk deep down In the blue waters and purified with a scouring Of coral.... Cranes carry peace to the east and the west And joy stands clear by the mangroves, A torch, A flamingo.

This last one may be printed as a sample of the rest of the contest, and speaks for itself. It came with a little note saying “I hope it may win one of the prizes in the contest, being original free verse and very patriotic.”

A Mother’s Sacrifice

The day has come, beloved son— When duty’s call resound, Your father fought, and laurels won He firmly held the ground. Now honor calls you to be true, To the dear flag, red-white-and blue Long may it wave o’er land and sea— Thou sweet land of liberty.

I thank the God who gave to me, So true, so brave a son— Who on the field prefers to be, Until the battle’s won. The God on high alone doth know, The torture and the nag— In sacrificing all I own, To help protect the flag.

Fare-well dear boy of loyalty, To country and to home— God will reward you royally, Wherever you may roam. And when the war is o’er—Oh joy, How proud I then shall be— To find my darling soldier boy, Come home unscathed to me.

Announcement

We are going to have a book store in connection with The Little Review.

This is not merely a plan to sell you books through a kind of mail order system, which we tried once before and which did not work out very well, but a regular book shop in the large front room of our office where you can sit by a fire and choose your books and perhaps even drink a cup of tea during your selection.

It will be a beautiful shop to look at and it will have all the books you will want; or if you are the kind of person who wants books nobody else wants we can guarantee to get them for you within half a day.

Also we can supply mail orders promptly to any of our subscribers. By handling this part of the business directly we will avoid all the confusion and delays inherent in our former arrangement.

We want to open our shop by May 1 if possible, and the next issue will contain the complete announcement.

We cannot take any orders until that date, but if you will deluge us with your patronage after that time we will be eternally grateful.

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“Surprise”!

The “surprise” I promised in the last issue is this:

Ezra Pound is to become Foreign Editor of “The Little Review.”

This means that he and T. S. Eliot will have an American organ (horrible phrase) in which they can appear regularly once a month, where James Joyce can appear when he likes, and where Wyndham Lewis can appear if he comes back from the war. Also it means two or three other names of the “young blood” who will contribute from time to time, and altogether the most stunning plan that any magazine has had the good fortune to announce for a long, long time.

It means that a great deal of the most creative work of modern London and Paris will be published in these pages. So that by getting “The Little Review” and “The Egoist” you will be in touch with the two most important radical organs of contemporary literature.

It all goes into effect with the May issue, and I can promise that it will not be “delayed on account of the war,” because the copy is already here ready for the printer.

Now will all you subscribers help to bring in as many new subscriptions as possible right away, and will all of you whose subscriptions are overdue renew quickly, and will any of you who are overburdened with money contribute a little toward our next issue? It is so terribly hard to get started in a new city, though everything will go so much better once we are fully started here. And though I have been looking for a printer who would do our work for nothing, or even for a small amount,—incredible as it may sound, I have not yet found him.

The Reader Critic

The March Issue

Harold Bauer, New York:

The only trouble with the last number of _The Little Review_ is that there is not enough Bauer in it. Why drag in Mary?

Note

H., Cleveland:

I believe you have largely proved your contention that you are producing a magazine which has an understanding of what Art is by the splendid recognition you award Mary Garden. Clarity, in comprehending her, has been too frightfully rare.

To “jh”

Louise Gebhard Cann, Seattle:

I must love any one who can write as you write!

Even, if I were a revengeful soul I should be quite disarmed by your full-skinned satin prose-ecstasy. It is as seductive as the rice-eating women of Nippon. Such beauty brings tears to my eyes and I bend over it insatiate as over a flower whose perfume tortures me with too much delight and eludes the tentacles of my analysis.

I could have written like that once; but the indifference of editors and publishers has taken the bloom off my expression. My enthusiasms have turned cosmic. I love life’s bitterness; I love my critics. I love the grotesqueness that I used to abhor; and nothing is hideous. The sensuous airs of the world I have passed by. They are there but in them I taste aloes and I hear cacophony. My zest is of clangors, the strident battles of the intellect and the spirit, juiceless acrid food whose sweetness comes only after long crushing. The implacable witch-forces of life have put a spell upon me! I live through my own superabundance of being, not through the abundance of others; amid my friends I am a strong hermit. And so your luscious “Mary Garden” is my yesterday. I love it as I love those sunny fruits of my past....

I want to say, too, how much I enjoyed Amy Lowell’s poem in this number and how glad I am that you give us Richard Aldington. The more I read of Amy Lowell the more she conquers me. She does not give me ecstasy; she stabs me with wonder. She transfixes me with her polished swords, gem-hilted, cold, glittering. I stare amazed as at a comet. Aldington lifts me to the torment of too much bliss. I fear the spell he puts upon me; I approach each new piece of his with reluctance, trying to avert a devastating possession of my being. Then bravely I read and my head swims. His aftermood is a long delicious intoxication, a deep rich dream of a Hellas that never was.

Isadora Duncan

New York subscriber:

How we have looked forward to seeing Isadora Duncan dance! I was glad to see you advertise her in that first splendid New York edition of yours. I went to see her, of course. But——! It’s because I wonder if any people felt the way I did the night of March 6 at the Metropolitan that I am writing you....

I was grateful, of course, for the César-Franck—what human movements will express this, I wondered. A dark blue empty stage. I have seen darkness attempted on the stage before,—but the shadow thrown by the orchestra light made this floor a blacker black—and a light lit up a crouching figure. Redemption, a fragment from a César-Franck symphony. This was only the first—I was willing to wait. Then Ave Maria and the figure was standing with a too-brilliant glare accentuating something that was not beautiful. The music goes on; the figure assumes some rather striking statuesque poses: arms uplifted, one arm uplifted, head thrown back—that too-glaring light again. She turns, the line of her thigh and leg heavy—the modern sculptors have taught us to believe it good. Then a Giotto figure she seemed; a minute later Mrs. Flyn coming up from her wash-tub in the basement; a chord from the orchestra and the Statue of Liberty is before us. Encore; and Botticelli’s nymph hastens to Venus: she bows and a wilted Easter Lily bud which never knew full blossom is before us.

Tschaikowsky _Pathetique_: adagio, to an empty stage; scherzo, and—!! I wonder how many yards of cloth in that drop, are there two, or is it the lights that changed the color? This woman’s thigh is atrocious! Those must be real flowers she is using to scatter about; good pose there as the curtains fall,—nice line from ankle to shoulder; but that costume! Encore, and flowers. She trips in like a soubrette, the one whose place in the chorus is assured forever because she knows the manager. Second encore,—posing for the public with an uplifted white rose—this the great dancer!

But, with the strains of the _Marseillaise_ she appeared from the rear, right, in scarlet. And that part of the audience who claims France by birthright rose, as also did the other part, by the assumed insolence of pretense which says each man has two countries: the states and France! Well, the audience rose and Isadora (we’re feeling chummy by this time) pointed! At the finish of the air—which surmounted all despite the figure on the stage—she disclosed what we suspected was there: an American flag! And the orchestra played _Star Spangled Banner_ and she kissed the flag, and the audience sang; and after “Bravos” she “danced” the _Marseillaise_ again and the audience shrieked; and the orchestra played _America_ off key and swung to _Star Spangled Banner_ again and she unwound the flag from off her and danced the thing they were playing,—in that costume of dark red she had worn when she danced the Call to Battle and the Lamentations Following Triumph of the _Pathetique_; and trampling on the red which was France, waving the flag which was the U. S. A., in the costume representing Poland—she pointed! And because she had _pointed_ skyward earthward and battleward, all in the course of one evening, we left, saying: “Well, we have seen Isadora Duncan dance!”

_The Novelist of the Insects_

J. HENRI FABRE

_Author of “The Life of the Fly”, “The Life of the Caterpillar_”.

The Latest Translation from Fabre’s Works by Teixeira is now out

THE LIFE OF THE GRASSHOPPER

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Joseph Pennell’s Pictures of War Work in England

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