FragmentWhat is poetry? Is it a mosaicOf colored stones which curiously are wroughtInto a pattern? Rather glass that’s taughtBy patient labor any hue to takeAnd glowing with a sumptuous splendor, makeBeauty a thing of awe; where sunbeams caught,Transmuted fall in sheafs of rainbows fraughtWith storied meaning for religion’s sake.
Fragment
What is poetry? Is it a mosaicOf colored stones which curiously are wroughtInto a pattern? Rather glass that’s taughtBy patient labor any hue to takeAnd glowing with a sumptuous splendor, makeBeauty a thing of awe; where sunbeams caught,Transmuted fall in sheafs of rainbows fraughtWith storied meaning for religion’s sake.
9. In summing up Miss Lowell’s achievement, consider the different phases of it that appear in her volumes taken in chronological order, noting the successive influences under which she has come. In what qualities does she stand out strikingly from other contemporary poets? Do you expect different and more important work from her in the future?
Bibliography
Studies and Reviews
George Barr McCutcheon(1866)—novelist.
The creator of Graustark. For bibliography, seeWho’s Who in America.
Percy (Wallace) Mackaye—dramatist, poet.
Born in New York City, 1875, son of Steele Mackaye, dramatist and manager. A. B., Harvard, 1897. Traveled in Europe, 1898-1900, studying at the University of Leipzig, 1899-1900. Taught in private school in New York, 1900-04. Joined the colony at Cornish, New Hampshire, 1904. Since then has been engaged chiefly in dramatic work.
Bibliography
For full bibliography seeCambridge, III (IV), 770.
Studies and Reviews
(Charles) Edwin Markham—poet.
Born at Oregon City, Oregon, 1852. Went to California, 1857. Worked at farming, blacksmithing, and herding cattle and sheep during boyhood. Educated at San José Normal School and at Christian College, Santa Rosa. Principal and superintendent of schools in California until 1899. Made famous by the publication ofThe Man with the Hoe.
Bibliography
Studies and Reviews
Jeannette(Augustus)Marks—novelist, dramatist.
Born at Chattanooga, Tennessee, 1875. A. B., Wellesley, 1900; A. M., 1903. Studied in England. Associate professor of English literature at Mt. Holyoke, 1901-10, and lecturer since 1913, where she introduced Poetry Shop Talks by writers to students. Her most interesting work has been based upon Welsh material, which she obtained by walking several summers with a knapsack in Wales. In 1911, two of Miss Marks’s one-act Welsh plays (The Merry, Merry Cuckoo, andWelsh Honeymoon) were given first prize in the Welsh National Theatre competition, notwithstanding the fact that the prize was offered for a three-act play.
Bibliography
Studies and Reviews
Donald (Robert Perry) Marquis (Don Marquis)—humorist, “columnist,” poet.
Born at Walnut, Illinois, 1878. Newspaper man, conductor of the column called “The Sun Dial” in theNew York Evening Sun.
Bibliography
Studies and Reviews
Edward Sandford Martin—satirist, man of letters.
Born at Owasco, New York, 1856. A. B., Harvard, 1877. Honorary higher degrees. Admitted to the Rochester bar, 1884. Editorial writer forLifenearly thirty years, forHarper’s Weeklyabout fifteen years, and for other periodicals.
Bibliography
Studies and Reviews
George Madden Martin (Mrs. Attwood R. Martin)—story writer.
Born at Louisville, Kentucky, 1866. Educated in the Louisville public schools, finishing at home on account of ill health. Made her reputation by her study of a little Kentucky girl inEmmy Lou—Her Book and Heart, 1902. For complete bibliography, seeWho’s Who in America.
Studies and Reviews
Helen Reimensnyder Martin(Pennsylvania, 1868)—novelist.
Writes about the Pennsylvania Dutch. For bibliography, seeWho’s Who in America.
Edgar Lee Masters—poet.
Born at Garnett, Kansas, 1868, but brought up in Illinois. His schooling was desultory, but he read widely. Studied one year at Knox College; learned Greek, which influenced him strongly.
Studied law in his father’s office at Lewiston, and practiced there for a year. Then went to Chicago where he became a successful attorney and also took an active part in politics.
Mr. Masters’ fame was established by theSpoon River Anthology, which was suggested byThe Greek Anthology. With this Mr. Masters had become familiar as early as 1909, through Mr. William Marion Reedy.The Spoon River Anthologyfirst appeared inReedy’s Mirror, under the significant pseudonym, “Webster Ford.”
Suggestions for Reading
1. Begin withThe Spoon River Anthology. (Cf. the preface toToward the Gulf.) How much does it owe to its model? to other literary sources? to the central Illinois environment in which the author grew up? What are its most conspicuous merits and defects? How do you explain each?
2. Test the sketches by your own experience of small town life. Which seem to you truest to individual character and most universal in type?
3. Compare similar sketches of personalities by Edwin Arlington Robinson, which Mr. Masters had not read until after his book was published.
4. Consider how far Mr. Masters has achieved his avowed purpose “to analyze society, to satirise society, to tell a story, to expose the machinery of life, to present a working model of the big world”; to create beauty, and to depict “our sorrows and hopes, our religious failures, successes and visions, our poor little lives, rounded by a sleep, in language and figures emotionally tuned to bring all of us closer together in understanding and affection.”
5. How do you explain the sudden popularity of theAnthology? What are its chances of becoming a classic?
6. Read one of Mr. Masters’ later volumes and compare it with theAnthologyas to merits and defects.
7. Mr. Masters has always been a great reader. Trace, as far as you can, the influence of the following authors: Homer; the Bible; Poe; Keats; Shelley; Swinburne; Browning.
8. Draw parallels between his work and the work of (1) Edwin Arlington Robinson,q. v., (2) of Robert Frost,q. v., (3) of Vachel Lindsay,q. v., and (4) of Carl Sandburg,q. v.
9. An interesting study might be made of the effects of Mr. Masters’ legal training upon his poetry.
10. CompareChildren of the Market Placewith theAnthologyorDomesday Book. Is Mr. Masters more successful as poet or as novelist?
Bibliography
Studies and Reviews
(James) Brander Matthews—critic, man of letters.
Born at New Orleans, 1852. A. B., Columbia, 1871, LL. B., 1873, A. M., 1874. Many honorary higher degrees. Admitted to the bar in 1873, but took up writing. Professor at Columbia since 1892.
Bibliography
For complete bibliography, cf.Who’s Who in AmericaandCambridge, III (IV), 771.
Studies and Reviews
H(enry) L(ouis) Mencken—critic, man of letters.
Born at Baltimore, Maryland, 1880, of German ancestry. Graduate of Baltimore Polytechnic, 1896. On the BaltimoreHerald, 1903-5, andBaltimore Sun, 1906-17. Became literary critic forThe Smart Set, 1908, and (with George Jean Nathan), editor, 1914—. War correspondent in Germany and Russia, 1917. Much interested in music.
Bibliography
Studies and Reviews
George Middleton—dramatist.
Born at Paterson, New Jersey, 1880. A. B., Columbia, 1902. Married Fola La Follette, 1911. Literary editor ofLa Follette’s Weekly, 1912—.
Bibliography
For bibliography of unpublished work, seeWho’s Who in America.
Studies and Reviews
Lloyd Mifflin—poet.
Born at Columbia, Pennsylvania, 1846. Son of an artist. Educated at Washington Classical Institute and by tutors. Studied art with his father and in Germany and Italy. Began as a painter, but later turned to poetry. Is best known for his sonnets, the form in which most of his poetry is written. These may be studied in hisCollected Sonnets, 1905 (revised edition, 1907), although several volumes have been published since then.
Studies and Reviews
Edna St. Vincent Millay—poet, dramatist.
Born at Rockland, Maine, 1892. A. B., Vassar, 1917. Connected with the Provincetown players both as dramatist and as actress.
Miss Millay’s first poem, “Renascence,” was published inThe Lyric Year, 1912.
Suggestions for Reading
1. The poems need to be read aloud to give the full effect of their passion and lyric beauty.
2. Compare Miss Millay’s naïveté with that of Blake. Do you find suggestions of philosophy behind it or sheer emotion?
3. Does Miss Millay’s later work show growth toward greatness or toward sophisticated cleverness?
Bibliography
Studies and Reviews
Enos A(bijah) Mills—Nature writer.
Born near Kansas City, Kansas, 1870. Self-educated. Worked on a ranch fourteen years. Foreman in a mine. Went to the Rocky Mountains early in life. Built a home on Long’s Peak, Colorado, 1886. Has explored the Rocky Mountains extensively, alone, on foot, and without firearms. Colorado “snow observer” for Government, 1907, 1908.
Mr. Mills has done valuable work for the protection of wild animals and flowers and for the establishment of national parks. His work belongs with that of Thoreau, Burroughs, and Muir (by whom he was influenced to continue it) for its freshly observed Nature content.
Among his best-known books are, perhaps,The Story of a Thousand Year Pine, 1914, andThe Story of Scotch, 1916 (dog story).
For complete bibliography, seeWho’s Who in America.
Studies and Reviews
Philip Moeller—dramatist.
Bibliography
Studies and Reviews
Harriet Monroe(Illinois)—critic, poet.
Editor ofPoetry, 1912—. Compiler ofThe New Poetry; an Anthology(with Alice Corbin,q. v.), 1917. For bibliography of her poems, cf.Who’s Who in America.
Marianne Moore—poet.
Her reputation was established by her poems inOthers, 1916, 1917, 1919, and in theDialandPoetry(passim). Her first volume,Poems, was published in 1921. Cf.Poetry, 20 (’22): 208.
Paul Elmer More—critic, man of letters.
Born at St. Louis, 1864. A. B., Washington University, 1887; A. M., 1892; Harvard, 1893. Honorary higher degrees. Taught Sanskrit at Harvard, 1894-5; Sanskrit and classical literature at Bryn Mawr, 1895-7. Literary editor ofThe Independent, 1901-3;New York Evening Post, 1903-9. Editor ofThe Nation, 1909-14.
Bibliography
Studies and Reviews
Christopher (Darlington) Morley—essayist, poet.
Born at Haverford, Pennsylvania, 1890. A. B., Haverford College, 1910. Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, 1910-13. Editorial staff Doubleday, Page and Company, 1913-17;Ladies Home Journal, 1917-18;Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger, 1918-20. In 1920, began his column, “The Bowling Green” in theNew York Evening Post.
Bibliography
Studies and Reviews
George Jean Nathan—critic, man of letters.
Born at Fort Wayne, Indiana, 1882. A. B., Cornell, 1904. On editorial staff of theNew York Herald, 1904-6. On the staffs of various magazines, includingHarper’s Weekly, theAssociated Sunday Magazine, and theSmart Set, usually as dramatic critic, 1906-14. With James Huneker (q. v.) dramatic critic forPuck, 1915-6. Dramatic critic for the National Syndicate of Newspapers since 1912. Editor since 1914 ofThe Smart Set(with H. L. Mencken,q. v.).
Bibliography
Studies and Reviews
Robert Nathan—novelist.
Cf.Book Review Digest, 1919, 1921.
John G(neisenau) Neihardt—poet.
Born at Sharpsburg, Illinois, 1881. Finished scientific course at Nebraska Normal College, 1897; Litt. D., University of Nebraska, 1917. Lived among the Omaha Indians, 1901-7, studying them and their folk lore. Has worked many years on an American epic cycle of pioneer life. Shared with Gladys Cromwell (q. v.) the prize of the Poetry Society of America, 1919.
Bibliography
Studies and Reviews
A(lfred) Edward Newton—essayist.
Born at Philadelphia, 1863. Educated in private schools. Business man. Collector of first editions of books, especially of the eighteenth century.
Bibliography
For reviews, seeBook Review Digest, 1921.
Meredith Nicholson—novelist, man of letters.
Born at Crawfordsville, Indiana, 1866. His reputation was founded upon the novel,The House of a Thousand Candles, 1905. He has published also several volumes of essays and studies, beginning withThe Hoosiers(National Studies in American Letters), 1900. Note among themThe Valley of Democracy, 1918, a characterization of the Middle West. For bibliography, cf.Who’s Who In America.
Charles Gilman Norris—novelist.
Brother of Frank Norris, the novelist. Married Kathleen Thompson (cf.Kathleen Norris).
Bibliography
Studies and Reviews
Kathleen Norris—novelist.
Born at San Francisco, 1880. Educated privately. Had experience as business woman. Married Charles Gilman Norris (q. v.), 1909.
Bibliography
Studies and Reviews
Grace Fallow Norton—poet.
Born at Northfield, Minnesota, 1876.
Bibliography
Studies and Reviews
Frederick O’Brien—travel writer.
Mr. O’Brien’s account of his experiences in the Marquesas Islands created a literary fashion for the South Sea Islands.
Bibliography
SeeBook Review Digest, 1919, 1921.
Eugene Gladstone O’Neill—dramatist.
Born in New York City, 1888. Son of the actor, James O’Neill. Studied at Princeton, 1906-7. Much of the material used in his plays seems to be drawn from or based upon his adventurous experiences between 1907 and 1914. Actor and newspaper reporter. Spent two years at sea. In 1909, is said to have gone on a gold-prospecting expedition in Spanish Honduras (cf.Gold). Lived in the Argentine. Threatened tuberculosis gave him his first leisure (cf.The Straw). In 1914-5, he studied dramatization at Harvard. In 1918, when he married, he went to live in a deserted life-saving station near Provincetown. Associated with the Provincetown Players. In 1920, hisBeyond the Horizonwas given the Pulitzer Prize.
Suggestions for Reading
1. What effect has Mr. O’Neill’s life experience had upon the quality of his plays?
2. What evidence of originality do you find in his (1) themes, (2) background, and (3) technique?
3. Consider the influence of Joseph Conrad (cf. Manly and Rickert,Contemporary British Literature) upon O’Neill. Read especiallyThe Nigger of the “Narcissus.”
4. How has Mr. O’Neill been influenced by the plays of John Millington Synge?
5. What do you make of the fact that Mr. O’Neill has struck out in various directions instead of working a particular vein?
6. What reasons do you find for the common opinion that he is our most promising dramatist? What limitations or weaknesses do you think may interfere with his development? Do you think he will become a great dramatist?
Bibliography
Studies and Reviews
James Oppenheim—novelist, short-story writer, poet.
Born at St. Paul, Minnesota, 1882. Two years later his family moved to New York, where he has lived ever since. Special student at Columbia, 1901-3. Has done settlement work, as assistant head worker of the Hudson Guild Settlement. Superintendent of the Hebrew Technical School for Girls, 1904-7. In 1916-7 edited the magazine,The Seven Arts(cf.Poetry, 9 [’16-’17]: 214).
Suggestions for Reading
1. The following influences have entered largely into Oppenheim’s work: Whitman, the Bible, and the theories of psycho-analysis developed by Freud and Jung. Without considering these, no fair estimate of the value of his work can be reached.
2. In what respects does his poetry reflect the Oriental temperament?
3. What strength do you find in his work? what weakness?
Bibliography
Studies and Reviews
Vincent O’Sullivan—novelist.
Of American birth, but has lived many years in England. His work published in the time of theYellow Bookwas especially admired by the English critic, Edward Garnett, who maintained that Mr. O’Sullivan should rank high among our writers. American editions ofThe Good GirlandSentimentwere published in 1917.
Bibliography
SeeBook Review Digest, 1917.
Thomas Nelson Page—novelist, short-story writer.
Born on a Virginia plantation, 1853. Studied a short time at Washington and Lee University. Many higher honorary degrees. Practiced law in Richmond, Virginia, 1875-93. Ambassador to Italy, 1913-9.
Mr. Page is one of the pioneer writers in negro dialects. His first collection of short stories,In Ole Virginia, 1887, is his best-known work.
For bibliography, seeCambridge, III (IV), 668. For biography and criticism, see Halsey, Harkins, Pattee, Toulmin, and theBook Review Digest, especially for 1906, 1909, 1913.
Josephine Preston Peabody (Mrs. L. S. Marks)—poet, dramatist.
Born in New York City. Educated at Girls’ Latin School, Boston, and at Radcliffe, 1894-6. Instructor in English atWellesley College, 1901-3. Her playThe Piperobtained the Stratford-on-Avon prize in 1910. Died in 1922.
Bibliography
Studies and Reviews
Bliss Perry—critic.
Born at Williamstown, Massachusetts, 1860. A. B., Williams, 1881; A. M., 1883. Studied at the universities of Berlin and Strassburg. Honorary higher degrees. Professor of English at Williams College, 1886-93; at Princeton, 1893-1900. Editor of theAtlantic Monthly, 1899-1909. Professor of English literature at Harvard, 1907—. Harvard lecturer at University of Paris, 1909-10.
Bibliography
Studies and Reviews
William Lyon Phelps—critic.
Born at New Haven, Connecticut, 1865. A. B., Yale, 1887; Ph. D. 1891; A. M., Harvard, 1891. Instructor in English literature at Yale, 1892-6, assistant professor of the English language and literature, 1896-1901; Lampson professor since 1901. Deacon in the Baptist Church.
Bibliography
Studies and Reviews
David Pinski—dramatist.
Born in Russia, 1873. Educated at the University of Berlin, 1897-9. Came to the United States, 1899. Studied at Columbia, 1903-4. President of Pinski-Massel Press. President of Jewish National Workers’ Alliance. Socialist-Zionist.
His reputation is based principally upon his five volumes of plays and two of stories in Yiddish, but he has also written in English.
Bibliography(of works in English)
Studies and Reviews
Edwin Ford Piper(Nebraska, 1871)—poet.
Mr. Piper’s volume, (Barbed Wire and Other Poems, 1917) reflects the prairies of the Middle West.
Studies and Reviews
Ernest Poole—novelist.
Born at Chicago, 1880. A. B., Princeton, 1902. Lived in University Settlement, New York, 1902-5, studying social conditions, especially in connection with child labor, and in the movement to fight tuberculosis. He helped Upton Sinclair (q. v.) gather stockyards material forThe Jungle. War correspondent in Germany and France, 1914-5. As a socialist, Mr. Poole also worked for a time in Russia with the revolutionaries.
The familiarity with dockyards and dockmen, which is such a striking feature ofThe Harbor, dates back to Mr. Poole’s boyhood.
Bibliography
Studies and Reviews
Ezra (Loomis) Pound—poet, critic.
Born at Hailey, Idaho, 1885. Of English descent; on his mother’s side distantly related to Longfellow. Ph. B., Hamilton College. Fellow of the University of Pennsylvania. Traveled in Spain, in Italy, in Provence, 1906-7; lived in Venice, and finally made his home in England. London editor ofThe Little Review, 1917-9, and foreign correspondent ofPoetry, 1912-9.
Suggestions for Reading
1. Mr. Pound is an experimenter in verse, who has come under many influences and belonged to many schools. His work should be studied chronologically to discover these changes in interest and relationship. To be noted among the influences are: (1) the mediæval poetry of Provence; (2) the Greek poets; (3) the Latin poets of the Empire; (4)among modern French poets, Laurent Tailhade; (5) the poets of China and Japan, whom he learned to know through the manuscript notes of Ernest Fenollosa; (6) the work of the English Imagists (cf. especially the poems of T. E. Hulme, published in Mr. Pound’s volume calledRipostes); (7) the work of the Vorticist school of poets and artists (cf.Blast, edited by Wyndham Lewis), and the more accessible periodical,The Egoist, of which Richard Aldington (cf. Manly and Rickert,Contemporary British Literature) is assistant editor.
2. Consider also this from his own theory of poetry: “Poetry is a sort of inspired mathematics, which gives us equations, not for abstract figures, triangles, spheres and the like, but equations for the human emotions. If one have a mind which inclines to magic rather than science, one will prefer to speak of these equations as spells or incantations; it sounds more arcane, mysterious, recondite.”
Can this be related to the qualities of Mr. Pound’s poetry?
3. After reading Mr. Pound’s output, discuss the adequacy of the following: “When content has become for an artist merely something to inflate and display form with, then the petty serves as well as the great, the ignoble equally with the lofty, the unlovely like the beautiful, the sordid as the clean.... Real feeling consequently becomes rarer, and the artist descends to trivialities of observation, vagaries of assertion, or merebravadoof standards and expression—pure tilting at convention.”
Bibliography
Cf. also Ezra Pound, his Metric and Poetry. 1917. (Bibliography, p. 29.)
Studies and Reviews
(John) Herbert Quick(Iowa, 1861)—novelist.
Farmer, lawyer, editor ofFarm and Fireside, 1909-16. Author ofThe Fairview Idea, 1919; and ofVandemark’s Folly1922, which introduces fresh material (canalboat life) into fiction, and also contributes to the literature that deals with the opening up of the middle west.
SeeBook Review Digest, 1919.
Lizette Woodworth Reese—poet.
Born at Baltimore, in 1856. Educated in private and public schools. Teacher in Baltimore high school.
Her poems, always conventional in form and limited in ideas, are admired for their simplicity, intensity of emotion, and perfection of technique.
Bibliography
Studies and Reviews
Agnes Repplier—essayist.
Born at Philadelphia, 1858, of French extraction. Educated at the Sacred Heart Convent, Torresdale, Pennsylvania. Litt. D., University of Pennsylvania, 1902. Has traveled much in Europe. Roman Catholic.
Bibliography
STUDIES AND REVIEWS
Alice (Caldwell) Hegan Rice (Mrs. Cale Young Rice)—novelist.
Born at Shelbyville, Kentucky, 1870. Educated in private schools. One of the founders of the Cabbage Patch Settlement House, Louisville. Uses her own experience in charity work in her books.
Bibliography
Studies and Reviews
Cale Young Rice(Kentucky, 1872)—poet, dramatist.