The Lyric West, Vol. 4, No. 6 (March 1925)

The March 1925 issue of The Lyric West brings its writers together without asking them to sound alike. It contains 19 named pieces or sections, beginning with The Terrible Gift by Mary Caroline Davies, A Song to Spirit Thala, Who Is But Half by Roberta Holloway, and Two Poems by Frank Mitvalsky. 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.

Modernism enters this number through Inland by Joan Dareth Prosper. The poem organizes a speaking voice through sentence-length lines around “He used to talk of ships, and I remember”; shifts in syntax make inward argument audible without abandoning stanza, bringing Western landscape without the usual pastoral polish into the magazine’s field of subjects. Elsewhere, The Terrible Gift and A Song to Spirit Thala, Who Is But Half 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, The City of Destiny by Lilian Barrett changes the view; the closing stretch reaches The Swatted Spirit by Cecil E. C. Hodgson. 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 Mary Caroline Davies, Roberta Holloway, Frank Mitvalsky, Joan Dareth Prosper, Margaret Tod Ritter, Tonio, S. Bert Cooksley, and Sheila O’Neil, along with 11 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, and Urban life—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 The Terrible Gift by Mary Caroline Davies, turn next to The City of Destiny by Lilian Barrett, and finish with The Swatted Spirit by Cecil E. C. Hodgson. 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.