The Lyric West, Vol. 5, No. 5 (February 1926)

The February 1926 issue of The Lyric West brings its writers together without asking them to sound alike. It contains 21 named pieces or sections, beginning with Silver Night by Jessica Powers, Two in a Seaside Garden by Beatrice Harmon, and The Song Unsung by Jamie Sexton Holme. 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 Montana Lake by Robert E. Wade, Jr. The poem organizes description through sentence-length lines around “The Japanese painters know”; emphasis shifts through image, enjambment, and changes in syntactic pace, bringing East Asian forms and translated perspectives into the magazine’s field of subjects. Justus Grun’s Variations and Fugue on a Well-Known Theme answers it from another angle: it builds by refrain and recurrence around “Dear sir, here is my merchandise”; repetition carries the poem’s turn rather than merely decorating it. 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, Swimmer by Geraldine Seelemire changes the view; the closing stretch reaches That Day by Elinor Fuller. 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 Jessica Powers, Beatrice Harmon, Jamie Sexton Holme, Verne Bright, Charles Wharton Stork, Robert E. Wade, Jr, Sydney King Russell, and Louis Ginsberg, along with 13 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 Silver Night by Jessica Powers, turn next to Swimmer by Geraldine Seelemire, and finish with That Day by Elinor Fuller. The clean reading edition is designed for that kind of movement. Original scan: 36 PDF pages. Reader’s edition: 49 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.