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Hilda Conkling

A shy, bur normal little girl, twleve years old now, nine when her first volume of verses appeared, Hilda Conkling is not so much the infant prodigy as a clear proof that the child mind, before the precious spark is destroyed, possesses both vision and the ability to express it in natural and beautiful rhythm. Grace Hazard Conkling, herself a poet, is Hilda's mother. They live in Northampton, Massachusetts, in the academic atmosphere of Smith College where those who know the little girl say that she enjoys sliding down a cellar stairway quite as much as she does talking of elves and gnomes. She was born in New York State, so that she is distinctly of the East. The rhythm which she uses to express her ideas is the result both of her own moods, which are often crystal-clear in their delicate imagery, and of the fact that from the time when she was first able to listen, her mother read aloud to her. In fact, her first poems were made before she herself could write them down. The speculation as to what she will do when she grows to womanhood is a common one. Is it important? A childhood filled with beauty is something to have achieved.

Lonely Song

Edwin Markham

There are many settings in which one might remember Edwin Markham, born in 1852, yet with a vigor in the poise of his white head, and a firmness of carriage that many younger poets might do well to emulate. One might remember him reading his verses from the pulpit of St. Mark's in the Bouwerie, or seated calmly amid the argumentative stress of a meeting of "The Poetry Society of America," of which he is the Honorary President. I like best, however, to think of him as he stood recently talking to the children of "The Poetry Society of Greater New York." It had undoubtedly been an effort for him to come to them at all. Yet the author of "The Man with the Hoe" was there; gentle always, wise, with a personality so magnetic that one forgets the perhaps more popular than lasting quality of his work, in the picturesque majesty of the man. I should like to have seen him at the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. He, together with Abraham Lincoln's son, Robert, would have made an interesting study. There is something of the simplicity of the Age of Lincoln in him, expressed in his own lines: 

Wrenching the rafters from their ancient rest,
He held the ridge-poles up, and spiked again
The rafters of the Home.  He held his place --
Held on through blame and faltered not at praise.
And when he fell in whirlwind, he went down
As when a lordly cedar, green with boughs,
Goes down with a great shout upon the hills,
And leaves a lonesome place against the sky.

A Song to a Tree

Milton Raison

One day not long ago, there walked into the office a dark-haired boy with large, grey eyes. He appeared twenty years of age. He proved to be only eighteen. He put down a sheaf of poems and said, "I've just come back from a trip at sea as a mess boy. I hope that you'll like these poems. If I don't find something else to do, I'll have to go to sea again." The poems were unusual in their directness, simplicity and frank treatment of a boy's life at sea. Several magazines have already published examples of them, and Raison's first book has now been issued. Born in Russia, educated in the New York City public schools, having followed the sea from the years of sixteen to eighteen, he is perhaps wiser in the ways of sea-ports than in the technique of his art. Yet there is a curious maturity and finish about some of his verses that challenges attention. Irony is not usual in one so young. As a writer on the New York Sunday World, he is at present exploring the city, as he formerly explored the manner of ships. In his spare time, he tells me, he is writing a novel; but boys of eighteen do not spend all their spare time writing novels, and if some day we wake to find this young poet has fled the roar and rattle of New York for the quiet of the ocean, we shall not be surprised.

Baffled

Sara Teasdale

This quiet, red-haired lady from the Middle West, born in St. Louis in 1884, has written some of the best-known love lyrics of the past decade. There is little in her gentle and genial manner and penetrating wit to betray the warmth and rich beauty of her verse. Married not so long ago to Ernest B. Filsinger, a business man with an appreciation for art, who himself writes on economic subjects, she lives in a large and quiet apartment overlooking one of the leafier of New York's squares, sees a few friends, reads well-selected books, and writes with a good deal of slowness and care. She is a normal, well-bread woman who draws her inspiration from the rich heritage of that normality, with a dexterity that lifts many of her lyrics to distinction, and an occasional flash of deeper understanding that lifts others to real power.

Places

Effigy of a Nun

(Sixteenth Century)

Amy Lowell

With the inheritance of the Massachusetts Lawrences and Lowells, the undubitable traditions of New England, Amy Lowell has yet been a vigorous and brilliant experimenter in verse technuque, and one of the strongest influences in molding the work of the younger poets of America. Whether she is writing a book on John Keats, a critique of modern poetry, a racing poetical legend of Indian or New Englander, or a delicate translation from the Chinese, she is whole-hearted about it. A startling person is Miss Lowell. I have heard her speak many times, yet she never fails to interest and often electrify her audiences. As a conversationalist, seated in her own rooms, among a small group, she will talk and listen half or all of the night, and her talk reminds one that the art of conversation is not entirely lost in America. The cause of poetry as she sees it means more to her, I believe, than any one other thing, and though ill health often makes traveling difficult for her, she moves constantly from one end of the country to another, interesting audiences in new tendencies and old in modern poetry. I can think of no other single figure among contemporary American writers so vivid in manner, so clear in purpose and so consistent in achievement.

Purple Grackles

Florence Ayscough, who made the translations for "The Lonely Wife," and the rest of the poems in the volume, "Fir-Flower Tablets," is Mrs. Francis Ayscough and lives in Shanghai. She is one of the eight honorary members of the Royal Asiatic Society, and the only woman who has ever been accorded such an honor.

The Lonely Wife

Translated from the Chinese of Li T'ai-po by Florence Ayscough. English Version by Amy Lowell

George O'Neil

A young man from St.Louis, George O'Neil has recently spent much of his time in Europe. It is unusual for a poet from the Middle West to rely so much on formal rhymes and rhythms, one is led to expect the the subtle cadences of a Sandburg or the pounding dissonances of a Lindsay. In young O'Neil, however, we find easy, flowing lines of beauty which, if at times conventional, at others exhibits a rare quality of tender color and phrase. O'Neil is a youth who appears well in a dinner jacket and is fond of dancing. He dresses not at all like a poet; in face, none of these young men who write have long hair or collars open at the throat. This may not be so much a matter of taste as of self-protection. However, George O'Neil has rare Gaelic features and the eyes of a dreamer. If it were not for his obvious social graces he would look more the poet than most of them.

The Bather

Jeanette Marks

Head of the department of English literature at Mount Holyoke College, a student of literature, the author of many books for children, of short stories, novels, essays, one act plays, and, lately, of a volume of lyrics, Jeannette Marks has an unusual breadth of interest for a teacher. Her work, too, is far from academic in form or content; nor are her varied pursuits limited by literature. On a committee of the American Public Health Association she worked vigorously to combat the sale and use of habit-forming drugs, and her essays on "Drugs and Genius" are a result. Her enthusiasms for the out-of-doors have led her to numerous tramping excursions in Wales. She is an active and resourceful woman, a southerner by birth, yet to me, somehow typical of a certain energetic variety of New England culture and expression.

Cobwebs

John Dos Passos

The young man whose novel, "Three Soldiers," caused so violent a discussion when it appeared, was born in 1896 in Chicago. The place of his birth will come as a surprise to those who have associated him, through his father who was a well-known corporation lawyer, with New York City. John Dos Passos was graduated from Harvard and immediately enlisted as an ambulance driver in the Morgan-Harjes unit. He served in France and Italy, then later, as a member of the U.S. Medical Corps. Long before he wrote his sensational war novel he had been known as one of the young Harvard poets. His verses were rich in color and dramatic effect. Now, his studio on Washington Square is covered with his own half-finished paintings on which he works as relaxation from his writing, and they display the same love of deep tone and violent contrast. He is a restless artist; for since I have known him, which is little more than a year, he has travelled widely in Europe and the East. He does not care for the ordinary literary social life; but prefers to work quietly on his novels and verses, varying the writing with painting and with satisfying his wide taste in reading.

Quai de la Tourelle

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