Leslie Nelson Jennings was born in 1891 at Ware, Massachusetts. When he was five years old, he moved to California, where he has lived ever since. For a short term, he worked on a newspaper but ill health forced him to discontinue this work and drove him to the hills. Jennings's work is still in a formative stage. His lyrics, while personal in theme, are full of the manner and music of several of his contemporaries. His sonnets, like those of David Morton, show Jennings at his best; they are quiet but never dull reflections of loveliness. FRUSTRATE1 How futile are these scales in which we weigh Words and the veins of desperate peoples bleed! Uncaptured in our silences? And must And if I say, "I love you," can you know, What witness can you bear that we have tried 1From The Sonnet. Copyright, 1918, by Mahlon Leonard Fisher. Maxwell Bodenheim was born at Natchez, Mississippi, May 26, 1892. His education, with the exception of grammar school training, was achieved under the guidance of the U. S. Army, in which Bodenheim served a full enlistment of three years, beginning in 1910. For a while he studied law and art in Chicago, but his mind, fascinated by the new poetry, turned to literature. He wrote steadily for five years without having a single poem accepted. In 1918, his first volume appeared and even those who were puzzled or repelled by Bodenheim's complex idiom were forced to recognize its intense individuality. Minna and Myself (1918) reveals, first of all, this poet's extreme sensitivity to words. Words, under his hands, have unexpected growths; placid nouns and sober adjectives bear fantastic fruit. Sometimes he packs his metaphors so close that they become inextricably mixed. Sometimes he spins his fantasies so thin that the cord of coherence snaps and the poem frays into ragged and unpatterned ravellings. But, at his best, Bodenheim is as clear-headed as he is colorful. In Advice (1920), Bodenheim's manner-and his mannerisms -are intensified. There is scarcely a phrase that is not tricked out with more ornaments and associations than it can bear; whole poems sink beneath the weight of their profuse decorations. Yet, in spite of his verbal exaggerations, this poetry achieves a keen if too ornate delicacy. In the realm of the whimsical-grotesque, Bodenheim walks with a light and nimble footstep. POET TO HIS LOVE An old silver church in a forest Is my love for you. The trees around it Are words that I have stolen from your heart. An old silver bell, the last smile you gave, It rings only when you come through the forest And then, it has no need for ringing, For your voice takes its place. OLD AGE In me is a little painted square Bordered by old shops with gaudy awnings. And before the shops sit smoking, open-bloused old men, Drinking sunlight. The old men are my thoughts; And I come to them each evening, in a creaking cart, And quietly unload supplies. We fill slim pipes and chat And inhale scents from pale flowers in the centre of the Strong men, tinkling women, and dripping, squealing children Stroll past us, or into the shops. They greet the shopkeepers and touch their hats or fore Some evening I shall not return to my people. DEATH I shall walk down the road; I shall turn and feel upon my feet The kisses of Death, like scented rain. For Death is a black slave with little silver birds Dropped into a satin bag, How he has tip-toed after me down the road, His heart made a dark whirlpool with longing for me. Then he will graze me with his hands, And I shall be one of the sleeping, silver birds Between the cold waves of his hair, as he tip-toes on. Edwin Curran Edwin Curran was born at Zanesville, Ohio, May 10, 1892, and was educated at St. Thomas' School in the city of his birth. After working as an unskilled laborer in various trades, he learned telegraphy in 1914 and has been employed ever since as an operator for the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. In 1917 he printed a little paper-bound pamphlet of thirty pages (First Poems) with this naïve note: "Price of this book is 35 cents postpaid. Author is 25, unmarried, a beginner and needs publisher. If this volume meets expenses, another, possibly better, will be issued." Expecting to find poetry of an absurd simplicity, one is startled to find striking images, strange pictures and (in such poems as 'Soldier's Epitaph" and Sailing of Columbus ") lines like: We climbed the slippery alleys of the sea and many a lyric flash like: The stars, like bells, flash down the silver sky Along the marble ground. Second Poems (1920) has a similar beauty mixed with banality. Both booklets are a jumble of passion, platitude, bad grammar and exaltation. Curran has absolutely no critical perceptions; he has little control over his music. For better or for worse, his mood controls him. AUTUMN The music of the autumn winds sings low, But I can find no melancholy here To see the naked rocks and thinning trees; I love the earth who goes to battle now, THE PAINTED HILLS OF ARIZONA The rainbows all lie crumpled on these hills, |