Selected Poems of Edith M. Thomas by Edith M. Thomas, Jessie B. Rittenhouse
Brief Notices
BRIEF NOTICES
Edwin Arlington Robinson, by Ben Ray Redman. Robt.
M. McBride & Co.
Few poets have been honored during their lifetime with
such thorough and intelligent appraisal as is given to Mr.
Robinson in this critical study of Mr. Redman's. It
should do much to foster a more general appreciation of
this distinguished poet, whose volumes remain closed to
many people because they shirk the requirement of a
special reading technique-a requirement which such a
book as Mr. Redman's will help them painlessly to achieve.
Yet the book is by no means confined to such an elemen-
tary purpose; because it lacks superficiality and is generous
in detail, its brevity is an achievement, and its almost
journalistic legibility admirable.
Selected Poems of Edith M. Thomas. Edited with a Memoir
by Jessie B. Rittenhouse. Harper & Bros.
These lyrics, quaint as gilded acorns, won an unre-
membered but imposing celebrity during the 'eighties and
'nineties, when their author, a serious-eyed and genuinely
gifted young woman devitalized by the sentimental mis-
appropriation of a classical schooling, carried them in a
sheaf from Ohio to New York and took. the editorial
offices of Scribner's Monthly by anapaestic storm. The
enthusiasm of Miss Rittenhouse's prefatory memoir, and
her lady-like but envenomed parentheses deploring con-
temporary poetic developments, are quixotic and a little
in the eyes of close friends and kinsmen; but since these no
doubt are legion, the book has purpose and will probably
exhaust its edition. For others, it provides a readable
specimen of the sort of thing held to be the ultimate in
poetry in this country two or three decades ago. It would
be an excellent tonic for anyone whose faith in the signifi-
cance and vitality of the new movement is beginning to
languish.
Twenty Sonnets, by Gustav Davidson. Blue Faun Publi-
cations.
Mr. Davidson has prefaced this brief collection with a
rather pretentious quotation about art, which seems inap-
propriate because the poems themselves are obviously
those not of an artist but of an artisan. This poet has
talent for the mellifluously meticulous arrangement of
words, as well as feeling for the emotional value of a
phrase; but the material in which he works is not his own.
To be sure, even a poet of derivative inspiration may go
far if his rhythms are original. Mr. Davidson's are not;
he is addicted to inversions and archaisms which make his
poetry artificial, no matter how elegantly he employs
them, and no matter how genuine his feeling may be. But
it is because there is occasionally beautiful music and a
hint of glamour and eloquence in these misguided re-
conjurings of Lilith and Astarte, that one deplores them.
Structure
53 lines · 2 stanzas