INTRODUCTION

The modern idea seems to be that poetry has no relation to life. Life in the modern sense is action, progress, success. Poetry has been conceded special themes: it can deal with passion,—the strange and unnatural and unreal physical attraction of the sexes—with nature, with the symbols of mythology, and with the characteristic sentimental heroism of history and events. With reality, it must have nothing to do. It is supposed, by the modern world of Anglo-Saxon literalness, to create an atmosphere of illusion, which one must avoid to keep one’s emotions from going astray in a civilization that needs the hardest kind of common sense. It is paradoxical that the English-speaking people who have given the world the greatest poets, should take this false attitude while in possession of the greatest spiritual and imaginative legacy of life and experience, bequeathed them from one generation to another during the last four hundred years.

Escaping the illusion, this modern world has become the prisoner of delusion. For, if poetry deals with anything, it deals with reality. No matter how remote the setting, how subtle the communication, the one hard fact about true poetry, is its reality. The poet at the core and centre of life, surrounded with his dreams, his clairvoyant madness imbibed from the full draught of experience, his intensity of emotion, his childlike tenderness of sympathy, his quickening ecstasy of unashamed and unrestrained feeling, is considered the abnormal product of modern civilization; while in truth he is alone the one normal type of modern mankind, because he alone is in absolute harmony and understanding with the real and common impulse of human destiny.

The great secret of life is to discover by a process of related effects, this common reality of experience. Most of mankind grope blindly in the dark, and miss it, and by a kind of frenzied and pitiable ignorance acquire the abnormal character of conduct. The poet discovers, or at least puts his being wholly at the disposal of, these secrets, wins a serene and contemplative relationship to these effects, and lives a normal spiritual life. Harmony and rhythm are but two common terms that express and designate infinity. There was a man who was so absolutely sane that the scoffers of his day called him mad—this man was William Blake. Christ was a madman to the community of his day, even his closest friends and disciples were not without doubt at times as to his sanity. But these two men were never a hair’s breadth from the commonest reality of existence. They realized imaginative facts, and kept in absolute tune with the harmony and rhythm of life, not merely with what they saw with the actual eye, but with that more penetrative, more limitless sense, the seeing soul. They were poets, and the one insistent quality of their message, was the reality of mortal and immortal life.

It is hard to make a certain type of mind understand that all which is seen with the physical eye, and touched with the fleshly hand, is illusion. That kind of a mind does not understand symbols. It belongs to the so-called practical people of the world, who obey, but do not comprehend, laws; whose laws, indeed, are the conventions of minds similar to their own. They organize, but do not construct; they interpret, but do not create. They are the wheels, and not the motor-power, of the engine of civilization and humanity. These are the people who make up nine-tenths of the world’s population; without the other tenth, they would perish. Their reality in life is mathematical immediacy, the cloak of visibility in which they are wrapped to go about their daily tasks in the world. Now poetry sees in these people and their affairs only the symbols of what is real, looks upon their whole fantastic display of living as the illusion beneath which their real living is concealed; the crises of their joys and sorrows, their aspirations and passions, hidden in the reality of their consciousness where exists an infinite universe of being, and where every event of their lives is enacted before their shadow is thrown upon the stage of the world. The fact of life is there, hidden away in the solitary soul, determining the illusions of conductual existence. It is crowded with moods, emotions and feelings, experienced with such intensity that what breaks forth in actual deed and event is but a faint reflection of the real experience the soul has gone through. The ideal is the real, because it is what one has lived but cannot express in the related experience of human intercourse.

Poetry comes nearer finality in embodying the exact meaning and intensity of human feeling than any other art. Human feeling, being the root of all individual intelligence, is the most inexplicable quantity in life. Intuition is the primary significance of our existence. And it is the quality which gives to poetry its visionary and spiritual substance. In a nation it is the register of a people’s culture.

The study of poetry in the magazines which I began ten years ago, has grown into the convincing evidence of the following pages of this book. During this time we have passed through a number of phases in our national life; but through these changing aspects of national aspirations, there has run, like a widening and brightening strand of culture, the development of a new period of poetry, both in its productive and appreciative aspects. From 1900 to 1905, poetry had declined; and I think there has never been another period in our history when so unintelligent and indifferent an attitude existed toward the art. The scale since 1905 has been ascending, and the high pitch of achievement has not yet been reached. Whether fine poetry creates a general and popular recognition of the art, or the sympathetic appreciation of poetry for itself encourages excellent production, I cannot say. But this is apparent: that a period or epoch of the highest achievement has always been one of popular appreciation.

A factor that should be taken into consideration, and which affects poetry and its audience, is the attitude of the book reviews in our most influential literary journals. A characteristic example is the New York Nation, which has been in the habit of grouping in a few articles during the year with indiscriminate selection, the volumes of poetry which it receives. In these reviews there is a supercilious and academic attitude which dismisses really important work with opinions which have every suggestion of preconceived judgment. One has only to turn back his files to the review of Masefield’s “Everlasting Mercy” and “The Widow in the Bye Street,” to see the type of poetry reviewing that is more common than uncommon in American periodicals and newspapers. I do not mean to make The Nation an exception, but an illustration of the kind of stewardship with which reviewers in some of our most authoritative publications perform the duties of a serious and distinguished branch of American authorship.

To show that there is a quality of poetry in our national production worthy of pride and support, it has been my privilege for a number of years to emphasize in an annual review the distinction of the verse in the magazines. Out of these reviews has grown a demand for a more permanent preservation of the best work, resulting in this annual “Anthology of Magazine Verse,” to which are added records, references, and criticisms, which constitute a “Year-Book of American Poetry.” While all the other arts have had this service performed in their interests, poetry, the one art that most needed such a special reinforcement of its achievement, has been permitted to drift along throughout our entire critical history without this sort of attention.

The poetry in the magazines this year has been of an excellence in the longer pieces beyond the standard of any year in which I have made these estimates. The selections in this volume give evidence of a serious, even anxious, probing of human life. The lyric, represented by some lovely work, has not been practiced with the same irresponsible emotional delight as in past years. Perhaps, there has never been a year when the American poets have shown the independence of their own efforts, when comparatively new work has been so free from English influences. What influences there are, seem to come from French sources. Vers libre has been taken out of the hands of weak and pompous innovators, and made a distinctive medium by a few earnest and powerful singers. The most notable distinction in this respect is to be found in the work of James Oppenheim, whose book, “Songs for the New Age,” is a milestone in our poetic progress. So is Vachel Lindsay’s new work. He has mastered a new form of poetic expression in his volume “The Congo and Other Poems.” Miss Amy Lowell, in the better parts of “Sword Blades and Poppy Seed,” is working toward a new elasticity in rhythm, which is beginning to produce effective and beautiful results. On the other hand Mr. Arthur Stringer in “Open Water” utterly fails to embody in actual performance the principles expounded in the introduction to that volume, though this introduction is as important a piece of critical writing in English upon the subject as I know. No matter how revolutionary they attempt to be in expression, there is still in these writers a traditional note imbuing the substance which makes up the significant part of their creativeness.

The selections in this volume are chosen from all kinds and methods of poetic expression, and the reader’s attention is invited to their differences in many aspects—though the aspect of quality is, I think, of equal attainment in all—of such poems as Bliss Carman’s Phi Beta Kappa Poem, Percy MacKaye’s “Fight,” Vachel Lindsay’s “The Firemen’s Ball,” Eloise Briton’s “The Two Flames,” Conrad Aiken’s “Romance,” Olive Tilford Dargan’s “Old Fairingdown” and “Path Flower,” Joyce Kilmer’s “Twelve-Forty-Five,” and Don Marquis’s “The God-Maker, Man.” Of the shorter pieces, I think the standard is decidedly above last year’s quality. Mahlon Leonard Fisher has again followed the success of previous years with his sonnet “Afterwards,” which sustains his position as one of the foremost sonnet-writers this country has yet produced. This poet has the unusual distinction of a fine reputation without having published a book, but his definite contribution to American poetry will soon take place with the publication of his first volume, “An Old Mercer, and Other Poems.” A poem likely to create a profound impression is Don Marquis’s “The God-Maker, Man,”—a fine achievement, not only for its flashing images, but for spiritual substance shaped with compelling conviction.

The selections in this volume reflect the extraordinary richness of the published volumes this year. I do not recall any year of the past decade when the quantity and quality alike have been so notable. The autumn season’s publication of verse usually shows a preponderance in quality of books by English poets, who seem to meet with more favorable consideration from the best established publishers. There have been this year a number of notable volumes by English poets brought out in this country, but the balance of distinction, both in standard and numbers of books, belongs this year most emphatically to the American poets. Thirty-five volumes of distinguished poetry stand to our credit, and these are only a selection from a larger number of books which merit appreciation. Books by Louis V. Ledoux, George Edward Woodberry, Louis Untermeyer, Walter Conrad Arensberg, William Rose Benét, Vachel Lindsay, George Sterling, Olive Tilford Dargan, Corinne Roosevelt Robinson, Conrad Aiken, James Oppenheim, Harry Kemp, Amelia Josephine Burr, Joyce Kilmer, Amy Lowell, Percy MacKaye, Arthur Davison Ficke, Edwin Markham, Agnes Lee, and Bliss Carman, are among those which have advanced the significance of the year’s output.

The European war has had a more immediate effect upon literature than almost anything else. All books of a non-military character published just before the war, with the exception of poetry, have been thrown into relatively ineffective significance. Poetry endures because it is integrally woven with the warp of man’s real existence, and not of that illusory substance, of which other kinds of imaginative literature are fashioned, and which has been so easily wiped away by this war’s primal brutality. And poetry has aspired to sustain the nobler part of man’s nature during the confusion into which civilization has been plunged since the war began. The English people, who have been in the world’s vanguard practising democratic ideals, have, in their poets to-day, shattered the idol of war and are glorifying the ideals of peace.

The best poems in English directly inspired by the war have been produced by American poets. Of these I have gathered a representative group in this volume. The work achieved by Percy MacKaye on different phases of the European war has made more secure than ever his position as a poet. It is no exaggeration to say that the two groups of sonnets which originally appeared in the Boston Transcript in August and September, and which are now included in his volume, “The Present Hour,” are comparable as a whole to William Watson’s “The Purple East,” and in such individual pieces as “Kruppism,” and “The Real Germany,” he has done work finer and more impressive than is to be found in any of the older writer’s sonnets. Moreover, such pieces as “If!” and “The Other Army,” by Bartholomew F. Griffin; “Prelude,” by Edmond McKenna; “He Went for a Soldier,” by Ruth Comfort Mitchell, and “To a Necrophile,” by Walter Conrad Arensberg, are striking and spontaneous poetry of a high order. In E. Sutton, a poet is presented, who has produced martial poetry in “The Bugle,” “The Drum,” and the stirring “Pipes of the North,” which, for swinging rhythm and profound reflection upon the pomp and futility of military glory, has not been equalled by any contemporary poet.

A notable feature of the poetry year is the Kennerley edition of Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass.” The works of Whitman have been transferred from publisher to publisher so often, that there has been little opportunity for their circulation among the people for whom he wrote. This edition contains the text and arrangement preferred by the poet himself, and is the only perfect and complete issue, comprising one hundred and six additional poems not included in any other edition. There are suitable editions to meet the demand of all classes of Whitman enthusiasts and students: an India paper edition bound in leather, a library edition bound in cloth, and two issues of a Popular edition, bound in cloth and in paper respectively. To these are added the “Complete Prose” in a Library and Popular edition in cloth. None of the leading American poets of the past generation have been so unfortunate in publication; and many who believe Whitman to be America’s greatest poet will be glad to know, that now, by the authorization of his executors, all his works are gathered in uniform editions under one imprint.

Other important new editions of poetry are the cheap reissue by the Oxford University Press of John Sampson’s final and authoritative text of William Blake’s complete poems, and the new reprint in Bohn’s Popular Library issued by The Macmillan Company of Henry Vaughan’s Complete Poems.

As in former years in my annual summary in the Boston Transcript, I have examined the contents of the leading American magazines. To the seven magazines which I examined last year,—namely, Harper’s, Scribner’s, The Century, The Forum, Lippincott’s, The Smart Set, and The Bellman,—I have added this year three monthlies, The Trend, The International, and The Masses; and one quarterly, The Yale Review. The Bellman still maintains its high poetic distinction, by virtue of which it prints more good poetry than any other American weekly, and most American monthlies. As last year, I have winnowed from other magazines distinctive poems for classification and notice:—one each from The Metropolitan, The Craftsman, The Poetry Journal, the Southern Woman’s Magazine, Puck, and The Infantry Journal; and two each from Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, The Nation, The Atlantic Monthly, and the Outlook; while from three newspapers I have selected fourteen poems:—eleven from the Boston Evening Transcript, two from the Boston News Bureau, and one from the New York Evening Sun. In quoting from the Boston Transcript, I wish to testify to the ready recognition and encouragement this daily paper has offered to poets and poetry. It is one of the paper’s finest traditions.

The poems published during the year in the eleven representative magazines I have submitted to an impartial critical test, choosing from the total number what I consider the “distinctive” poems of the year. From the distinctive pieces are selected fifty-two poems, to which are added thirty from other magazines and from newspapers not represented in the list of eleven, making a total of eighty-two, which are intended to represent what I call an “Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1914.”

Quoting from what I have written in previous years, to emphasize the methods which guided my selections, the reader will see how impartial are the tests by which the distinctive and best poems are chosen: “I have not allowed any special sympathy with the subject to influence my choice. I have taken the poet’s point of view, and accepted his value of the theme he dealt with. The question was: How vital and compelling did he make it? The first test was the sense of pleasure the poem communicated; then to discover the secret or the meaning of the pleasure felt; and in doing so to realize how much richer one became in a knowledge of the purpose of life by reason of the poem’s message.”

In one hundred and forty-seven numbers of these eleven magazines I find there were published during 1914 a total of 647 poems, of which 157 were poems of distinction. The total number of poems printed in each magazine, and the number of the distinctive poems are: Century, total 71, 19 of distinction; Harper’s, total 39, 10 of distinction; Scribner’s, total 49, 18 of distinction; Forum, total 33, 13 of distinction; Lippincott’s, total 56, 8 of distinction; The Smart Set (excluding November and December), total 148, 18 of distinction; The Bellman (until November 7th), total 42, 23 of distinction; The Yale Review, total 19, 10 of distinction; The Trend (April, and June to November), total 51, 16 of distinction; The Masses (excluding December), total 53, 13 of distinction; The International (excluding November and December), total 86, 9 of distinction.

Following the text of the poems making the anthology in this volume, I have given the titles and authors of all the poems classified as distinctive, published in the magazines of the year; in addition I give a list of all the poems and their authors in the one hundred and forty-seven numbers of the magazines examined, as a record which readers and students of poetry will find useful.

I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness and thanks to the editors of Scribner’s Magazine, Harper’s Magazine, The Forum, The Century Magazine, The Outlook, Lippincott’s Magazine, The Bellman, The Smart Set, The Yale Review, Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, The Poetry Journal, The International, The Masses, The Metropolitan, Harper’s Weekly, The Craftsman, The Nation, The Southern Woman’s Magazine, Puck, The Infantry Journal, The Boston News Bureau, The New York Evening Sun, and the Boston Evening Transcript, and to the publishers of these magazines and newspapers, for kind permission to reprint in this volume the poems making up the “Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1914.” To the authors of these poems I am equally indebted and grateful for their willingness to have me reprint their work in this form. Since their appearance in the magazines and before the close of the year when the contents of this volume was made up, twenty-eight poems herein included have appeared in volumes of original poetry by their authors. For the use of “Yankee Doodle” and “The Firemen’s Ball” by Vachel Lindsay, included in his volume “The Congo, and Other Poems”; of “Fight,” “France,” and “Six Sonnets (August, 1914)” by Percy MacKaye, included in his volume “The Present Hour”; and for “Romance” by Conrad Aiken, included in his volume “Earth Triumphant,” I have also to thank The Macmillan Company, under whose imprint these volumes appear. Similar acknowledgment is due to the George H. Doran Company for permission to reprint “The Twelve-Forty-Five” by Joyce Kilmer, included in his volume, “Trees and Other Poems”; and to print “In the Roman Forum” and “A Lynmouth Widow” by Amelia Josephine Burr, included in her volume “In Deep Places.” I am grateful to Charles Scribner’s Sons for two poems by Olive Tilford Dargan, “Old Fairingdown” and “Path Flower,” included in her volume “Path Flower”; and for two poems by Corinne Roosevelt Robinson, “From a Motor in May,” and “If You Should Cease to Love Me,” included in her volume “One Woman to Another.” I am indebted to Mr. Mitchell Kennerley for kind permission to reprint Sonnets XXIX, XXX, and XXXVII from “Sonnets of a Portrait-Painter”; and to Mr. A. M. Robertson for two poems by George Sterling, “Ballad of Two Seas” and “The Hunting of Dian,” included in his volume “Beyond the Breakers, and Other Poems.” Finally, The Century Company have been kind enough to permit me to republish “Landscapes” and “Summons” by Louis Untermeyer, from his volume entitled “Challenge”; and “Patterns,” “A Handful of Dust,” and “We Dead” by James Oppenheim, from his volume entitled “Songs for a New Age.” If I have omitted any acknowledgments, it is quite unintentional, and I trust that any such omission will be regarded leniently. I wish it to be understood that the privilege extended to me so courteously, by the authors, magazine editors and publishers, and book publishers, to print the poems in this volume, does not in any sense restrict the authors in their rights to print the poems in volumes of their own or in any other place. I wish to thank the Boston Transcript for the privilege of reprinting material in this book which originally appeared in the columns of that paper.

A new feature this year is the series of critical summaries of new volumes of verse, which are significant, and which have been appraised in accordance with the same principles as the poems in the “Anthology of Magazine Verse.” It is believed that by adding this feature, the book will more nearly approximate to being an actual Year-Book of American Poetry, and it is in this belief that a subtitle has been added to this volume. I believe that not only libraries, but private individuals will welcome the selected lists of the best volumes for library purchase, graded according to the requirements of a large or a small purse. A list is also subjoined of the best books about poetry, and if there seems to be a demand for this innovation, it is planned next year to include in the book critical summaries of these volumes, as well as of the volumes of original verse.

I shall be grateful for suggestions as to improvements of this year-book in future years, and as to valuable extensions of its scope. To all friends who have assisted this volume by their personal efforts, and to the readers of past years who have made this annual publication possible by promoting it through their interest in poetry, I tender my grateful thanks. They are too many to name here, but my gratitude for their efforts is none the less sincere.

W. S. B.

Cambridge, Massachusetts. November, 1914.