All of the poems selected for this anthology have appeared in The Bookman during the last eighteen months. They are, therefore, current. They represent an effort to paint a faithful picture of contemporary versifying, without the exercise of prejudice in selecting the elements of composition.
While the majority of the poets represented are American, The work of several notable Engishmen is included; enough, at least, to offer a basis for comparison. The name of some of the Americans will strike you as being Anglo-Saxon, but there is that strong race infusion which is already beginning to give a new color and strength to American writing: the Jew in Louis Untermeyer, the Scandinavian in Carl Sandburg, the Russion in the boy Milton Raison, the Portuguese in Dos Passos, the Italian day labourer in Pascal D'Angelo. It is a rare inheritence, this of ours, and a full measure from which is pouring the mixed passions of our national genius. Though a half-dozen of these poets are exceedingly young, young both in years and in mood, the majority range from middle age to several who, having started their work in the '80s, are still carrying on.
Where most anthologies of poetry are collected for the purpose of giving pleasure by means of the verses themselves, I have tried here to give you something of the joy to be found in securing manuscripts, in attempting to understand current poetry by a broadening of taste to match broadening literary tendencies; and, perhaps most important of all, to present you to the poets themselves as I know them by actual meeting or correspondence.
There are many striking omissions. I should like to have been able to include something by Robert Frost, whose ability to portray mountain character is one of the finest gifts of American men of letters, and whose farmhouse in the Vermont hills proves a quiet oasis to many city-weary travelers, as it did to me in the midst of a blinding winter snowstorm. Masters and Lindsay are not here, nor are many of the extreme radicals, whose verses I sometimes admire but do not often understand. For the most part, the so-called popular poets are omitted, and it may be that the background of any picture of this sort that attempts to be complete is not filled in without a touch of Eddie Guest, whose Ford car, presented to him by the great manufacturer himself, is as typical of a certain part of America as are his over-sentimental and indubitably appealing ballads. I should have been proud to include a poem by John Masefield, whose noble head and quiet voice make one of the serenest memories of life. I should like to have borrowed Thomas Hardy's masterful "An Ancient to Ancient" from "The Century" or a Yeats lyric from "The Dial"; but in spite of these omissions, some of which are because of failure to secure, and others of which must be traced to a still narrower taste -- in spite of the fact that the individual poems do not always represent their author's finest work, I hope that you will find here, at least, a personal portrait of the makers of modern verse. I hope that after you have read the book once, you will read your individual favorites again and yet again; but for the first time, quite humbly, I pray you, gentlemen, leaf it through. The arrangement is informal. I have tried to give you surprises of contrast in age and manner. I wonder, then, whether or not you will agree with me that we are living in one of the most interesting poetical ages the world has ever known, and that the next ten years are filled with as incalculable promise as the last ten have been with real achievement.
J.F.
New York City,
September, 1922.