The P.S.A.—Columbia Prizes

The second award of the annual (let us hope it is an an-

nual!) prize of five hundred dollars offered by the Poetry

Society of America and Columbia University for the best

book of verse published in the United States during the last

calendar year (in this case the year 1918) was announced

in New York June 6th.

The prize is split in two: Carl Sandburg receives half of

it for Cornhuskers, and Margaret Widdemer half for The

Old Road to Paradise. Henry Holt & Co. score also, as

they published both books.

The result is evidently a compromise, and all lovers of the

art may thank the kind fates that Carl Sandburg got even

a "look-in" at any prize for which William Lyon Phelps and

Richard Burton formed two-thirds of the jury of award.

The third member was Sara Teasdale, the prize-winner of

last year, who is as competent in criticism as she is in the

art itself, and who has long been an ardent admirer of Carl

Sandburg's work.

The result emphasizes the point so often insisted on by

Poetry, that all such juries of award should consist entirely

of professionals-that is, of poets. For years architects,

painters, and sculptors have been fighting to establish this

rule in all competitions, to a great extent with success. Poets

should follow their example. This rule would have relieved

the committee of Mr. Phelps, whose recent book, The Ad-

vance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century, proves

him an incompetent. It is to laugh that he should have had

a place on such a jury. Mr. Burton, though hardly a leader

in the art, is at least a poet.

Porrry may be permitted to smile in remembering the

clamor of journalistic guffaws which greeted its award of the

initial Levinson Prize to Carl Sandburg's first PoETRY entry,

Chicago Poems-his first appearance anywhere as a poet.

This prize was awarded in November, 1914.

CORRESPONDENCE