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jaws beginning to move faster. They have their own literary traditions, these shop-girls. They know about these college boys and their affairs. There will be plenty of kissing in the story, and, dollars to doughnuts, he will never marry the girl in the end. We are further promised such a treat a few sentences further, "the predicament in which Beverley found himself that was grave enough to make him play the villain."

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Then I read this, "One wonders at the resilience and durability of memory. Go to the punch bowl, if there is one, and with another drink of the sweet liquid, provided it is not wholly sweet, you can understand without pretending, etc." The author, apparently, is n't going to be satisfied with bidding for the interest of the gum-chewers. He is out for the sentimental old grads as well, trying to lull them into a mood of mellow recollections of youthful folly. Well done, this challenging of the interests of different types of readers, I admit to myself as I read with grudging admiration.

Then I strike this, "The Cinderella motif is the commonest basis of plot structure."

This author, apparently, has the daring of an O. Henry. He is deliberately, boldly, warning me what he is going to do. He is going to take the hardest-worked, driestmilked old motif in all literature and he is going to give it a new twist. It is as if he had felt my condescending recognition of his tricks and risen suddenly from the pages to challenge me. "Call yourself blasé, do you? Superior to the shop-girls and the old grads, eh! All right, don't read any further if you don't want to, but just in passing I don't

mind telling you that this plot is going to be a brand new variation of the Cinderella theme. You really ought to have a professional interest in that. However, you don't need to read it if you don't want to. It is up to you."

And a little shame-facedly I fall into line behind the shop-girls and the old grads. I finish the story, and, worse than that, I like it. Does n't this suggest to you something like a hazy sort of principle - I dare not call it a law for fear of the wrath of the inspirationists. Don't be frightened because you have never heard of it before in any textbook on short-story writing.

It is just this: you may safely assume that your story will not be the first piece of fiction that its readers have ever read. Of course, if it is any particular satisfaction to your vanity, you may ignore all the rest. If you do, maybe the editor will buy your story, maybe he won't. Or, if you choose, you may concede frankly that they have read and are reading other stories. You may play on their established tastes, even to the point of writing in a form and spirit which the editor of a certain magazine has found his readers like from week to week, month to month, year to year. You can make as many subtle improvements and novel variations as you wish. If you are not too lazy you can learn, by careful study, certain characteristics of that form and that spirit. You can be a revolutionist if you will, but everybody will be happier if you will be an evolutionary revolutionist, and it is interesting that the evolutionist started way back years and years ago, even before Cinderella.

Technical Poetry Critique

BY ROBERT HILLYER

HE two poems which I shall consider the climax of the idea, he is distracted by a

This month afford an interesting contrast, break in the form.

the first is packed with thought but fumbles the expression of it; the second, in which music is the sole aim, is almost devoid of meaning. If the two authors of these verses could be combined into one, retaining the thoughtfulness of the first and the feeling for melody of the second, we should have a wellrounded poet.

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The first line of the poem is clear and adequate, but the second is mere prose. The pedestrian quality of the second line becomes even more emphasized by the contrast with the two lines that follow. These employ suggestion or symbolism very markedly and introduce a metaphor which, were its application clearer and were it more in harmony with the preceding tone of the stanza, would be effective. Yet I am still in doubt about "our wilderness of snow." Does this figure refer to history? to time? to the wintry realism of the present? Here it would be well, I believe, to make a concession to the reader and specify the exact application of the symbol. Perhaps "time's wilderness of snow" would improve the line, though in suggesting this, I am aware that I lay myself open to the charge of being unimaginative.

The second stanza is specific enough, but again, in the abrupt drop from ornamented language to flat statement, breaks the tone of the poem. "Built of waste" is prosaic and awkward, and not quite accurate. Kitchenmiddens accumulated; they were not built. In the last two lines of this stanza, the contrast between "oyster shells" and "historic episodes" is effective, yet the phrase "to later taste" is unfortunate in connection with oys

On first reading, we notice at once that the author has failed to carry out his pattern. He establishes a four stress quatrain in the first stanza, holds to it in the second, and in the third suddenly shifts to ballad metre, shortening his tenth and twelfth lines. This change is particularly unfortunate, because when the reader's attention should be wholly focused on

ter shells; it suggests a sampling of these relics.

In the third stanza, we find an attempt to link together all the general observations in the first two stanzas, and apply them to the life of the present. The idea is good: since even the smallest remains of the past are of significance, perhaps these apparently futile pursuits of life will hold some meaning for later ages. But the expression collapses. The first two lines do not make sense. The author intended to say: O life compounded of so much, and of so little that has any worth. What he has said is: O life compounded. . . of so little worth. The last two lines, which should be the finest in the whole poem, are weak. The rhetorical behold, the inappropriate verb clutch (to rhyme with much, I fear), the rather vague word wreckage, and the departure from the established pattern, mar this stanza beyond redemption in its present form.

To sum up: we have here an epigrammatic poem (influenced, I believe, by Emily Dickinson) which is not so terse and neat as an epigrammatic poem must be. The idea is excellent, the general arrangement of it is effective, but in the details of composition the verse is too faulty for successful expression. It needs to be rewritten; every word scrutinized with critical attention.

Now for the second poem:

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Although these verses, because of great infelicity of diction, seem very inferior to the others, yet they possess certain virtues which the others lack. In the first place, the tone is more evenly sustained. The stanzas are consistent, and the three-part music, though awkward in spots, is, on the whole, managed with some skill. Lines 7, 8, and 12 are conspicuously bad; the first stanza, line 5 and line 9 are fairly successful. But when we examine the poem more carefully, alas for the first two lines! The author is so entranced with his music that he pays too little heed to what he is saying. The fields to the westward immediately give us a picture of a flat land, yet we are told in the next verse that "the sunset is dead on the hill." Now the sunset can be only in the west; what has happened to our fields stretching to the horizon? The introduction of the day and night birds is all very well; it impresses us neither one way nor the other. However, since the melody is smooth, we are still tempted to read on. Lonely feet treading the edge of a wood are effective enough as a sketch of something to be amplified later. But they are amplified only in the writer's mind, and suddenly we are confronted with a smile on his face. Who is he? Is his name Lonely Feet? Furthermore, the vague word ecstacy annoys us, and the insertion of the archaic form stealeth. By the end of the second stanza, we are almost convinced that this author is wasting our time. He has had two chances; his first words have attracted our attention in both cases, yet each time he has wandered off into verbiage. "The stars to the zenith, the bird to his nest," though in no way remarkable, bids us read on, and for the third time we are disappointed. We know so little of Lonely Feet that we do not care where he goes or why; it is natural that he should go toward home and toward rest, for he has done just that in every poem he has ever inhabited. As for the whippoorwill, he is welcome to reign over all; such a vague kingdom as that is not going to make anyone envious.

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Well, Harcourt & Brace,

I shall laugh in your face

Like a popular Maltby or Braxton.

O have you seen my manuscript?
It came back with a slip;

It came back with a letter

On the fifty-second trip.

I half forget whereall it's been:
To Methuen, to Bobbs,

To Dutton, Murray, Boni, Ginn;

To literary snobs;

To Century and Constable,

To Harrap, Low, and Dent's, Brentano's, Appleton, and Bell; To old establishments

Renowned for readers airing spats,
Philosophy, and fizz,

And drummers all in bowler hats,
Accumulating biz.

FOURTH CHORUS:

Then Blankus & Co.,
When my book is a go,

Then Borzoi and Macy & Massius, Do you think you can say

In your garrulous way

That the matter is giddy or gaseous?

O have you seen my manuscript?
It's looking rather raw;

It needs a blurb and jacket

And a cover made of straw.

It wants a bit of typing
And a new page twenty-nine;
A general replacing

Of (say) every other line.

Too long afield at Bodley Head,
At Mills & Boon, and such,
Ill-crumpled, rumpled, sampled, spread,
It does n't come to much.

FIFTH CHORUS:

At Selwyn and Blount

It went down for the count,

And was hooted by Holden & Hardingham,

So I shake a lean fist

At the publishers' list

And imprecate freely regarding 'em.

O have you seen my manuscript?

It was here on the shelf;

I saw it in the table drawer:
I put it there myself.

I had it in a cubby-hole,

I hid it under lock;

I stuffed it in the rubber plant,
And down behind the clock.
I patched it up with onion-skin,
I mended it with glue,
I added marginalia

In purple ink and blue.

I doctored it so one will think
The thing is rather new.
SIXTH CHORUS:

So, Secker and Stokes,

I am tired of your jokes,

I am weary, Smith, Elder, and Heffer; Hodges, Figgis, I say,

We've arrived at the day

When it's now, Sirs: it's now, Sirs, or never!

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