|
The Little Book of Modern Verse
A Selection from the work of contemporaneous American poets
Edited by Jessie B. Rittenhouse
[Selections made in 1913.]
Foreword
"The Little Book of Modern Verse", as its name implies,
is not a formal anthology. The pageant of American poetry
has been so often presented that no necessity exists
for another exhaustive review of the art. Nearly all anthologies, however,
stop short of the present group of poets, or represent them so inadequately
that only those in close touch with the trend of American literature
know what the poet of to-day is contributing to it.
It is strictly, then, as a reflection of our own period,
to show what is being done by the successors of our earlier poets,
what new interpretation they are giving to life, what new beauty
they have apprehended, what new art they have evolved,
that this little book has taken form. A few of the poets included
have been writing for a quarter of a century, and were, therefore,
among the immediate successors of the New England group,
but many have done their work within the past decade and the volume as a whole
represents the twentieth-century spirit.
From the scheme of the book, that of a small, intimate collection,
representative rather than exhaustive, it has been impossible
to include all of the poets who would naturally be included
in a more ambitious anthology. In certain instances, also,
matters of copyright have deterred me from including those
whom I had originally intended to represent, but with isolated exceptions
the little book covers the work of our later poets and gives a hint
of what they are doing.
I have attempted, as far as possible, to unify the collection by arranging
the poems so that each should set the keynote to the next, or at least
bear some relation to it in mood or theme. While it is impossible,
with so varied a mass of material, that such a sequence should be exact,
and in one or two instances the arrangement has been disturbed
by the late addition or elimination of poems, the idea has been
to differentiate the little volume from the typical anthology
by giving it a unity impossible to a larger collection.
Jessie B. Rittenhouse.
Contents
Across the Fields to Anne. [Richard Burton]
After a Dolmetsch Concert. [Arthur Upson]
Agamede's Song. [Arthur Upson]
As I came down from Lebanon. [Clinton Scollard]
As in the Midst of Battle there is Room. [George Santayana]
The Ashes in the Sea. [George Sterling]
At Gibraltar. [George Edward Woodberry]
At the End of the Day. [Richard Hovey]
The Automobile. [Percy MacKaye]
Azrael. [Robert Gilbert Welsh]
Bacchus. [Frank Dempster Sherman]
Bag-Pipes at Sea. [Clinton Scollard]
Ballade of my Lady's Beauty. [Joyce Kilmer]
Be still. The Hanging Gardens were a dream. [Trumbull Stickney]
Black Sheep. [Richard Burton]
The Black Vulture. [George Sterling]
Da Boy from Rome. [Thomas Augustine Daly]
The Buried City. [George Sylvester Viereck]
Calverly's. [Edwin Arlington Robinson]
The Candle and the Flame. [George Sylvester Viereck]
Candlemas. [Alice Brown]
A Caravan from China comes. [Richard Le Gallienne]
Chavez. [Mildred McNeal Sweeney]
The Cloud. [Josephine Preston Peabody]
Comrades. [Richard Hovey]
Comrades. [George Edward Woodberry]
The Daguerreotype. [William Vaughn Moody]
Departure. [Hermann Hagedorn]
The Dreamer. [Nicholas Vachel Lindsay]
The Dust Dethroned. [George Sterling]
The Eagle that is forgotten. [Nicholas Vachel Lindsay]
Euchenor Chorus. [Arthur Upson]
Evensong. [Ridgely Torrence]
Ex Libris. [Arthur Upson]
Exordium. [George Cabot Lodge]
A Faun in Wall Street. [John Myers O'Hara]
Fiat Lux. [Lloyd Mifflin]
The Flight. [Lloyd Mifflin]
Four Winds. [Sara Teasdale]
"Frost To-Night". [Edith M. Thomas]
The Frozen Grail. [Elsa Barker]
The Fugitives. [Florence Wilkinson]
Gloucester Moors. [William Vaughn Moody]
|
|
