arid soil; instead of one placid stream, there are a dozen rushing currents, a score of impetuous freshets. SUMMARY It is a happy circumstance that this volume should begin with Emily Dickinson. For here is a forerunner of the new spirit-free in expression, unhampered in choice of subject, penetrative in psychology-to which a countryful of writers has responded. Most of the poets represented in these pages have found a fresh and vigorous material in a world of honest and often harsh reality. They respond to the spirit of their times. They have learned to distinguish beauty from mere prettiness; to wring loveliness out of squalor; to search for hidden truths even in the dark caves of the unconscious. And with the use of the material of everyday life, there has come a further simplification: the use of the language of everyday speech. The stilted and mouth-filling phrases have been practically discarded in favor of words that are part of our daily vocabulary. It would be hard at present to find a representative poet employing such awkward and outworn contractions as 'twixt, 'mongst, ope'; such evidences of poor padding as adown, did go, doth smile; such dull rubber-stamps (clichés is the French term) as heavenly blue, roseate glow, golden hope, girlish grace, gentle breeze, etc. The peradventures, forsooths and mayhaps have disappeared. As the speech of the modern poet has grown less elaborate, so have the patterns that embody it. Not necessarily discarding rhyme, regular rhythm or any of the musical assets of the older poets, the forms have grown simpler; the intricate versification has given way to lines that reflect and suggest the tones of animated and even exalted speech. The result of this has been a great gain both in sincerity and intensity; the present-day poet can dwell with richer detail on the matter instead of the manner. One could go into minute particulars concerning the growth of an American spirit in our literature and point out how many of the latter-day poets have responded to native forces larger than their backgrounds. Such a course would be endless and unprofitable. It is pertinent, however, to observe that, young as this nation is, it is already being supplied with the stuff of legends, ballads and even epics. The modern singer has turned to celebrate his own locality, his indigenous folk-tales. It is particularly interesting to observe how the figure of Lincoln has been treated by the best of our living poets. I have accordingly included seven Lincoln poems by seven writers, each differing in manner, technique and point of view. For the rest, I leave the casual reader, as well as the student, to discover the awakened vigor and energy in this, one of the few great poetic periods in American literature. With the realization that this gathering is not so much a summary as an introduction, it is hoped that, in spite of its limitations, this collection will draw the reader on to a closer consideration of the poets here included-even to those omitted. The purpose of such an anthology must always be to stimulate an interest rather than to satisfy a curiosity. Such, at least, is the hope and aim of one editor. June, 1925. L. U. Emily Dickinson Emily Dickinson, one of the most original intelligences and possibly the greatest woman poet of modern times, was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, December 10, 1830. She was a physical as well as a spiritual hermit, actually spending most of her life without setting foot beyond her doorstep. She wrote her short, introspective verses without thought of publication, and it was not until 1890, four years after her death, that the first volume of her posthumous poetry appeared with an introduction by Thomas Wentworth Higginson. "She habitually concealed her mind, like her person, from all but a very few friends," writes Higginson, "and it was with great difficulty that she was persuaded to print, during her lifetime, three or four poems." Yet she wrote almost five hundred of these direct and spontaneous illuminations, sending many of them in letters to friends, or (written on chance slips of paper and delivered without further comment) to her sister Sue. Slowly the peculiar Blake-like quality of her thought won a small circle of readers; Poems (1890) was followed by Poems-Second Series (1892) and Poems-Third Series (1896), the contents being collected and edited by her two friends, Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd. Several years later, a further generous volume was assembled by her niece, Martha Dickinson Bianchi, entitled The Single Hound (1914)—all of the new poems (to which Mrs. Bianchi wrote a preface of great personal value) being a record of Emily Dickinson's romantic friendship for her sister. Although her chief poems were published in the 'Nineties and although the recent revival of interest in poetry drew attention to the peculiar individuality of Emily Dickinson's expression, her readers remained few. An occasional article appeared, showing her "lack of control" or, beneath a cover of condescension, ridiculing her "hit-or-miss grammar, sterile rhythms, and appalling rhymes." A devotee here and there defended the quaint charm of her use of assonance and half-rhyming vowels. Her audience grew but gradually. Suddenly, without warning, she leaped into 31 international prominence. Almost forty years after her death, her name became a poetic shibboleth. The year 1924 saw the publication of Martha Dickinson Bianchi's important volume, The Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson, the first collected Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (published by Little, Brown and Company) and the first English compilation, Selected Poems of Emily Dickinson, edited with a splendid prefatory essay by Conrad Aiken. The enthusiasm attending the triple appearance was unbounded. Martin Armstrong, the English poet, said in a review, "Mr. Aiken calls Emily Dickinson's poetry 'perhaps the finest by a woman in the English language.' I quarrel only with his 'perhaps.'" Nor were the other plaudits less vociferous. "A feminine Blake," "an epigrammatic Walt Whitman," "A New England mystic," were a few of the characterizations fastened upon her. Other appraisals sought to "interpret" her involved but seldom obscure verses in the light of the "mystery" of her life. It is no secret that Emily Dickinson fell in love with a man already married, that she renounced her love, and withdrew from the world. (The poem entitled "The Soul Selects" is an evidently autobiographical commentary.) But "The Amherst Nun" would have repudiated the amateur psychoanalysts as vigorously as she, whose verses and letters brim with mischievous fancy, would have laughed at the grandiloquent epithets. That her work will last longer than the work of the majority of her-or our-generation is, I think, indubitable. That it is sometimes erratic, half-done and, thrown off with no thought of publication, in need of the finisher's file is also, I believe, self-evident. But, in the greater number of the poems, the leap of thought is so daring, the gaps so thrilling, that moments which, in a lesser spirit, would have turned to pretty or audacious conceits become startling snatches of revelation. Is it a flippancy or an anguished cry when, robbed by Life, she stands "a beggar before the door of God," and confronts Him with "Burglar, banker, father!" Is it anything less than Olympian satire when, asking God to accept “the supreme iniquity," she declares: We apologize to Thee For Thine own duplicity. Her gnomic imagery is tremendous in implication and the range is far greater than a first reading reveals. Although the poet often |