The Lyric West, Vol. 3, No. 1 (April 1923)

This April 1923 number of The Lyric West is best met through the writing itself. It contains 36 named pieces or sections, beginning with Hill Sunset by Margaret Widdemer, A Carol of the Way by Josephine van Dolzen Pease, and White Birches by Josephine van Dolzen Pease. 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.

Wheels and Wings by Jessica Nelson North marks the issue’s most conspicuous opening toward modernist practice. The poem compresses perception into short, image-bearing lines around “Four smoky windows in a smoky sky”; pause and white space become part of the measure, bringing ordinary experience as formally unsettled lyric material into the magazine’s field of subjects. Elsewhere, Hill Sunset and A Carol of the Way 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. The issue catches Los Angeles poetry culture in transition: polished song remains public currency, but modernist compression and contemporary speech have begun to alter what a lyric can hold.

The contents page also works like a small map. Early entries establish the issue’s first set of voices; around the middle, An Etching—From Memory by Margaret Tod Ritter changes the view; the closing stretch reaches “Laughter and Longing” by Nancy Buckley. 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 Margaret Widdemer, Josephine van Dolzen Pease, Katherine Pope, Wright Field, Virginia Taylor McCormick, Helene Mullins, Samuel Heller, and Rosamond Eddy, along with 21 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, California, and Love—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 Hill Sunset by Margaret Widdemer, turn next to An Etching—From Memory by Margaret Tod Ritter, and finish with “Laughter and Longing” by Nancy Buckley. The clean reading edition is designed for that kind of movement. Original scan: 36 PDF pages. Reader’s edition: 61 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.