"Collected Poems"

"Collected Poems"

Vachel Lindsay's Are Weapons of a Spiritual War

The Contents. In An Autobiographical Foreword* the poet (whose personality is probably better known to a larger number of more diverse audiences than that of any other living American bard) devotes 28 pages to reminiscences of his youth, answering with kindly humor the thousand-and-one foolish questions any writer of prominence is always asked about himself and his work, and attacking the popular newspaper legend that pictures him as a noisy apostle of poetical jazz. He explains his love for Egypt; his admiration for Poe; his forbears; his reason for going on the road, a new beggar-troubadour, trading his rhymes for bread: "I was told by the Babbits on every hand I must quit being an artist or beg. So I said: 'I will beg!' ... It was an act of spiritual war.'

The weapons of that spiritual war fill the rest of the volume--nine armories of selections--the collected best of his work. A collected edition is often apt to prove either an unfortunately top-heavy monument or a comfortable wheel-chair for a dying reputation. This is neither. Doubtless the work is uneven -- some of the branches on the tree are dead and others stunted -- of what collected works could that not be said ? But, on the whole, the volume displays a force and beauty truly of our own blood and earth, no longer merely in promise, but in achievement.

Here is General Booth, The Congo, The Booker T. Washington Trilogy, Daniel--that inspires even professional audiences to give vent to as leonine roars of approbation as possible. Here Bryan, Bryan, Bryan, Bryan, ("The Campaign of Eighteen Ninety-Six as Viewed at the Time by a Sixteen Year Old") with the most magnificent compliment ever paid to a Presidential candidate, " The one American poet who could sing outdoors." Here is The Chinese Nightingale (Mr. Lindsay's own favorite among his longer poems), and The Litany of the Heroes which he describes as a " rhymed Outline of History, still in process of development," and John L. Sullivan, the Strong Boy of Boston, with its gorgeous analysis of "simple sheltered 1889" and its sledgehammer refrain concerning how

"John L. Sullivan,

The Strong Boy

Of Boston,

Broke every single rib of Jake Kilrain."

Then there are the Moon Poems --all of them--and some of the Verses of an Especially Inscriptional Character, where Mr. Lindsay's very much unappreciated lyric gift is seen at its best. And My Fathers Came from Kentucky--and others--many others--kettledrum, piccolo, flute and birchbark moose-call--in fact, almost every instrument. Really, the only thing to do with a book like this is to read it.

The Significance. Though a sincere admirer of the classics and the beauty and strength of the past, Mr. Lindsay has endeavored through his career to get away from the conventional pseudo-Victorian style of poetry that devotes itself entirely to imitating Gems of English Literature and to write about American subjects in an American way. He is neither a hyperintellectual nor a blood-and-Kiplingite, nor a mere experimenter with unusual rhythms. He is a poet, and a true poet, and a great deal of his work will probably last much longer than some of our elaborately sophisticated cognoscenti believe.

The Critics. Throughout the career Mr. Lindsay has been praised and attacked with the utmost heartiness by critics of high grade and low. However, it is generally admitted by any with a modicum of intelligence that he is one of the most individual and interesting poets of present-day America.

The Author. Vachel Lindsay (the Vachel rhymes with Rachel), poet, lecturer, artist, 43-year-old native of Springfield, Ill., has been known to an increasingly larger audience for the last ten years. Besides his various volumes of verse, he has published The Art of the Moving Picture, The Golden Book of Springfield, Adventures While Preaching the Gospel of Beauty Going to the Sun (the description of a tramp through the Rockies with Stephen Graham).

*COLLECTED POEMS--Vachel Lindsay-- Macmillan ($3.50).

"Fan-Mail"

How Does a Popular Author Spend His Time?

"Dear Mr. Tarkington: My little Isaac acts a lot like your dear Penrod--could you tell me? . . . "

"Dear Mrs. Atherton: I am thirty-nine--blonde--my friends think me beautiful ..."

With the increase of comparative literacy, cheap postage, the typewriter and so on, the supposedly retiring tribe of authors share with cinema folk in the deluge of unsolicited advice, enquiries, compliments, brickbats, heart-histories. Share ? The most prominent are fairly drowned with "fan-mail." They are driven to printed forms of reply, to private secretaries who do nothing but " answer."

Letters of praise and blame are easy enough to understand. If a reader enjoys a book immensely, he has, in almost every case, no way whatsoever of thanking the author for the pleasure he has given him except by letter -- and such letters form by far the pleasantest part of any author's mail, no matter how much said author may lie about it. If the reader doesn't like a book, is shocked, offended or proudly discovers some technical mistake--his injured feelings and his professional criticism must, too, be expressed at long distance. And let him have no fear of going unheeded--such letters are always read--and with painful attention. And then there are the letters, usually accompanied by manuscripts, lengthy manuscripts, from aspirants of from seven years to seventy who want to "break into the writing game." And here let it be said to the credit of most authors of any reputation--such letters very seldom go unanswered. (One of the most prominent women writers of America ever since she first made her reputation, has read, and carefully, every manuscript submitted to her for advice--and the manuscripts for years have averaged something like two a day.)

But there is a third class--the writers who tell their troubles. Perhaps because the author seems to them a sort of impersonal, veiled prophet, they pour out to him or her the most intimate sort of confessions. They don't get on with their spouses, their children go wrong, the roof leaks, they are in trouble, sick, despairing, what to do ? Rather pitifully, they assume that the author can help them, tell them why and how, set life on its feet again. Strange.

Fan-mail. Nothing but fan-mail. And the whole human comedy -- -- tragedy -- farce -- exultation -- despair--coming in every morning to the breakfast-tables of a score or fifty not-so-very-extraordinary citizens of these states, done up in all sorts of envelopes, postmarked with the names of places of which in many cases the recipients have never even heard.

Joseph Anthony

The Greatest Sin--" Giant" Hardy-- The Doll Business

Recently returned from a year in London is Joseph Anthony, a young American writer whose two novels are not so well known as they should be. Anthony is a quiet man, with slow speech, slow dreams; but they are profound. He has, too, a profound artistic creed which was manifest in the care shown in the writing of his novels. The Gang, a picture of boy life and street life in Manhattan, was received with unusual praise in England as well as in the United States. Of his new novel, he has already destroyed one draft. He says that to him the greatest of America's literary sins is that a novelist seems to be expected to publish at least one book a year. He tried in The Gang to present a faithful picture of the folkways of New York City--extraordinary, colorful folkways, as native as the customs of gypsies, or of South African tribes, or of the dwellers in Thomas Hardy's Wessex.

As a matter of fact, Anthony was filled with enthusiasm over an afternoon spent with the great English novelist and poet. He found him, he says, a wise and tolerant man, viewing, with clarity and profound wisdom, life and literature as he now sees them about him. This giant of the Nineteenth Century finds himself faithful to his gods; but interested in the facts of life as they are changing before him. He is not querulous; but of an absorbed old age which is akin to an eager youth. Among English writers, he advises both Walter de la Mare and John Galsworthy. These, he thinks, are the giants of today's literary England, if giants there be.

" What," asked Anthony, " is a young novelist who wants to write books that measure up to his own standards to do ? "

What, indeed! Here is one of the few professions in which, if a man does his best work, he is likely to starve. However, there are compromises to be made. A young novelist brought his manuscript to me last week. He was a boy I had met at a meeting of some down town settlement club. " What am I to do?" he asked. " I'm in the doll business. There's no excitement in that and no one to whom I can talk! " What a gift it is to the world to find the sort of person to whom one can talk, who suddenly impresses one as being all-wise and trustworthy, whose eyes have looked on life and have not been terrified by its secrets. Such, to the young novelist, is Thomas Hardy, the veteran. J. F.

Good Books

The following estimates of books much in the public eye were made after careful consideration of the trend of critical opinion:

DOCTOR JOHNSON (A Play)--A. Edward Newton--Atlantic Monthly Press ($3.50). Mr. Newton, well known Philadelphian, book collector and essayist, here presents, with the assistance of numerous immortal shades, four scenes from the life of that burly Doctor, hater of oatmeal, Scotchmen, professional politicians and cant, who is one of the few among the dead celebrities of English literature whom, via Boswell's life, we can know as if we had met him on the street or suffered his thunderous rebuke in person. In this play Mr. Newton's task has been, avowedly, to string certain gems of Johnsonian talk and incident together on a thin thread of drama and he has accomplished his end with unobtrusive canniness. Dr. Johnson's curious menage at Gough Street--a party at the Thrales'--Mrs. Thrale's decision to marry Piozzi--Dr. Johnson's death--so run the four acts and among the actors are all the Johnsonian company, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Fanny Burney, Burke, Goldsmith, Boswell, Peg Woffington, down to Mr. Levett and even Bet Flint. An experiment comprising much diverting and edifying matter worthy the studious attention of all Johnsonians.

ON THE MARGIN--Aldous Huxley --Doran ($1.75). Seventeen brief notes and essays by the most brilliant young literary man in England. Pleasant, intelligent, rather entertaining little papers. The astonishing thing about them is that they are so mild. So very mild. The book might have been written by almost any bright young gentleman who chose to model his style on that of E. V. Lucas. Did you ever think you were about to degust a genuine pre-War cocktail and then discover as you swallowed that the beverage was strictly W. C. T. U.?

MR. PODD--Freeman Tilden--Macmillan ($2.00). Mr. Podd was Nozzle King of America--a bewildered millionaire. Like most nozzle kings, he had his own individual plans for a Utopian International Commonwealth. So he chartered a ship and set out around the world. The ship's crew took to communism, seized the vessel, marooned the Podd party on a desert island--whence, after many semi-humorous misadventures, they returned to civilization, after discovering that the simple life is not so simple as it sounds. The book is mildly satiric and not unamusing. It could have been much funnier.