Journal Issue
The September 1921 issue of The Lyric West brings its writers together without asking them to sound alike. It contains 24 named pieces or sections, beginning with Song of David Before Saul by Constance Lindsay Skinner, September Dusk in the Arroyo by Alice Whitcraft Forsyth, and Duette by Georgia Rowles. That opening offers a direct path through the issue, but it is not the only one. A reader can follow the printed order, pause over a familiar contributor, or start with a title that catches the eye. No special background is needed. The magazine explains itself gradually through the choices it makes and through the company each piece keeps.
The number’s sharpest formal turn belongs to Rolfe Humphries’s On the Overland. The poem builds by refrain and recurrence around “A queer compound of hollows, edges, bumps”; repetition carries the poem’s turn rather than merely decorating it, bringing machines and accelerated travel into the magazine’s field of subjects. Weare Holbrook’s Risus Eram Positis answers it from another angle: it organizes a speaking voice through sentence-length lines around “the party that you gave last night”; shifts in syntax make inward argument audible without abandoning stanza. Short lyrics, longer sequences, and unevenly unfolding free verse share the same contents list, making formal difference part of the issue’s reading rhythm. In this Los Angeles setting, modernism appears less as a manifesto than as a widening of permissible rhythm, image, and subject within a magazine still hospitable to rhyme.
The contents page also works like a small map. Early entries establish the issue’s first set of voices; around the middle, Ergo Tam Doctae by Weare Holbrook changes the view; the closing stretch reaches My Art Looks Up by Florence Parker Bornholdt. The works differ in length, subject, and manner, yet their placement creates connections that a simple list of names cannot show. The pleasure comes from those changes. A short piece can clear the air after a longer one, a new voice can redirect the mood, and an unexpected title can make an earlier page look different when the reader thinks back to it.
The contributor list includes Constance Lindsay Skinner, Alice Whitcraft Forsyth, Georgia Rowles, Dorothy Page, Ethel Brooks Stillwell, Ellen Morrill Mills, Ernest Dexter, and Charles Goodman, along with 12 additional contributors. Some readers will arrive looking for a particular name; others will meet these contributors here for the first time. Either approach works. The publication details add useful context: the issue was edited by Roy Towner Thompson, published by The Lyric West, and issued from Los Angeles, California. A journal is also a made object, assembled by people deciding what to print, how to order it, and which voices should share a number. Reading from beginning to end lets those choices appear naturally.
The catalog subjects—Los Angeles literary culture, American poetry, and Little magazines—are useful starting points, especially for searching, but they do not set limits on what a reader may find. For a first visit, begin with Song of David Before Saul by Constance Lindsay Skinner, turn next to Ergo Tam Doctae by Weare Holbrook, and finish with My Art Looks Up by Florence Parker Bornholdt. The clean reading edition is designed for that kind of movement. Original scan: 36 PDF pages. Reader’s edition: 44 PDF pages. It keeps the contents in a stable, legible form and makes names and titles easier to find. A source facsimile remains part of the project’s private editorial record, but it is not included in the public upload. What appears here is the reading copy: a practical way to spend time with the issue and discover which pieces invite a return.
Contributors
- Constance Lindsay Skinner — Poet
- Alice Whitcraft Forsyth — Poet
- Georgia Rowles — Poet
- Dorothy Page — Poet
- Ethel Brooks Stillwell — Poet
- Ellen Morrill Mills — Poet
- Ernest Dexter — Poet
- Charles Goodman — Poet
- Estelle Heartt-Dreyfus — Poet
- Rolfe Humphries — Poet
- Weare Holbrook — Poet
- W. H. Bainbridge — Poet
- Hazel Farkasch — Poet
- Helen Howat — Poet
- Eleanor Hammond — Poet
- Oliver Manning — Poet
- Helen Thurston — Poet
- Robin Romany — Poet
- Harold Vinal — Poet
- Florence Parker Bornholdt — Poet
Publication details
Full contents
- Song of David Before Saul — Constance Lindsay Skinner [Poem, p. 3]
- September Dusk in the Arroyo — Alice Whitcraft Forsyth [Poem, p. 6]
- Duette — Georgia Rowles [Poem, p. 7]
- Autumn — Dorothy Page [Poem, p. 8]
- The Call — Ethel Brooks Stillwell [Poem, p. 8]
- The Little Road — Ellen Morrill Mills [Poem, p. 9]
- Waved a Blade — Ernest Dexter [Poem, p. 9]
- Autumn Rain — Charles Goodman [Poem, p. 10]
- Forget-Me-Nots — Charles Goodman [Poem, p. 11]
- Sketches — Estelle Heartt-Dreyfus [Poem, p. 11]
- On the Overland — Rolfe Humphries [Poem, p. 12]
- Risus Eram Positis — Weare Holbrook [Poem, p. 13]
- Ergo Tam Doctae — Weare Holbrook [Poem, p. 13]
- The “Siller” on the Plate — W. H. Bainbridge [Poem, p. 14]
- September Nights — Hazel Farkasch [Poem, p. 15]
- CHALLENGE! — Helen Howat [Poem, p. 16]
- An Old Italian Aria — Eleanor Hammond [Poem, p. 17]
- The “Snowy Peaks” Unveiled — Oliver Manning [Poem, p. 18]
- Thistledown — Helen Thurston [Poem, p. 19]
- Butterflies — Helen Thurston [Poem, p. 19]
- Cob-Webs — Helen Thurston [Poem, p. 19]
- A Longing — Robin Romany [Poem, p. 20]
- A Song for April — Harold Vinal [Poem, p. 20]
- My Art Looks Up — Florence Parker Bornholdt [Poem, p. 21]
Rights and citation
Copyright remains with the respective authors, artists, publisher, or successors.
Copyright Status Unresolved
Rights in the individual contributions and the periodical compilation have not been fully resolved.
*The Lyric West*, vol. 1, no. 5, September 1921. Text/Tech Journals, reader’s edition.