The Lost Year by Margaret McGovern

Iron Crown

lack some of the lovely lyric quality of the Ballads of

the Singing Bowl, she has gained in a wider outlook and

firmness of design. Lola Ridge

BRIEF NOTICES

The Lost Year, by Margaret McGovern. Coward-McCann.

These poems by a young woman who, the introduction

says, had no schooling beyond the eighth grade, except

for her love of reading, show the charm and failings of

such a preparation. In these simple verses about life in

the Reformatory and on the city streets the reader finds

sympathy for suffering and love of beauty. A rather

stilted and "literary" style shows the author's dependence

on reading rather than such study of verse as an associa-

tion with other writers gives. Some of the poems are

seriously marred by this quality, but the best ones have

a touching simplicity.

Upper Pasture, by Charles Malam. Farrar & Rinehart.

Here is a book of what one might call old-fashioned

poems, gentle musings on the changing loveliness of

nature, the squirrel, the deserted farm, wild geese, deer,

butterflies, stars; one or two whimsical verses about the

brook or the steam-shovel, a section of Neighbors. Most

of these poems have touches of mild philosophy; all of

them show the author's love of man and of beauty; few

convince the reader of originality or real creative powers

in the author.