The Lyric West, Vol. 2, No. 10 (February 1923)

Published in February 1923, no. 10 of The Lyric West gives readers several clear ways into the magazine. It contains 20 named pieces or sections, beginning with Paean by George Brandon Saul, A Woman Watches the Sea by George Brandon Saul, and “There Is No Quiet . . .” by Bernice Lesbia Kenyon. 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.

In Tsi Ouan Wishes to Believe in Resurrection, Paul Eldridge brings the issue’s modernist pressure into focus. The poem compresses perception into short, image-bearing lines around “The leaves of the lotus flower”; pause and white space become part of the measure, bringing Western landscape without the usual pastoral polish into the magazine’s field of subjects. Elsewhere, Paean and A Woman Watches the Sea keep the experimental turn in contact with the issue’s broader lyric range. 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, Wind From Sea by Beulah May changes the view; the closing stretch reaches At My Window by Mary Graham Lund. 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 George Brandon Saul, Bernice Lesbia Kenyon, George Sterling, Ellen Coit Elliott, Portia Martin, Annice Calland, Frank Ernest Hill, and Gladys Wilmot Graham, along with 6 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, Little magazines, Desert, and Sea and coast—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 Paean by George Brandon Saul, turn next to Wind From Sea by Beulah May, and finish with At My Window by Mary Graham Lund. The clean reading edition is designed for that kind of movement. Original scan: 32 PDF pages. Reader’s edition: 45 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.