Journal Issue
War enters this issue before the poems have had time to settle. Fay Strawn Campbell’s “No Tears to Swell the River” moves through drums, blood, bamboo, and a ghostly sampan; Eleanor Jordan’s “Bride in Barcelona” answers from a bombed city, where a willow and a lark sharpen rather than soften a mother’s loss. Between them, the number tests inherited forms against pressures that feel distinctly modern: sonnets by Dorothy Countryman Dorr, Marietta Thompson Sprague, and Grant S. Housh tighten argument and image, while Jessica Lewis’s “The Cocoon” and Emily Porter St. John’s “Owl” loosen the line into anxious, listening free verse. Urban estrangement drives Margaret J. E. Brown’s “Prayer in Babylon” and Nuvart Esther Safarjian’s “Freedom”; comic relief arrives in Flora Schrack’s last-line complaint against crooners and Lillian J. Zellhoefer’s ragman imagining his own infernal promotion. The issue keeps lyric tradition in view, but its strongest poems let war, machinery, disability, migration, and civic modernity disturb the old measures.
Contributors
Publication details
Full contents
- No Tears to Swell the River — Fay Strawn Campbell [Poem, p. 5]
- The Target — Grover I. Jacoby, Jr. [Poem, p. 6]
- Miss Fifilie, Our Cat — Cecil E. C. Hodgson [Poem, p. 6]
- Rhyme of the Ragman — Lillian J. Zellhoefer [Poem, p. 7]
- To a Bird Singing at Midnight — Dorothy Countryman Dorr [Poem, p. 8]
- The Petals of Peace — Louisa Sprenger Ames [Poem, p. 9]
- Why? — Flora Schrack [Poem, p. 9]
- Prayer in Babylon — Margaret J. E. Brown [Poem, p. 10]
- Hybrid — Neeta Marquis [Poem, p. 11]
- Content to Rest — Marietta Thompson Sprague [Poem, p. 11]
- Sea-Maid — Irene Stanley [Poem, p. 12]
- The Cocoon — Jessica Lewis [Poem, p. 13]
- Bride in Barcelona — Eleanor Jordan [Poem, p. 14]
- Lost Shadow — Nina Willis Walter [Poem, p. 15]
- Wastrel — Snow Longley Housh [Poem, p. 15]
- To a Seeing-Eye Dog — Rose Parker [Poem, p. 16]
- The Flower Show — Constance Praeger Fox [Poem, p. 17]
- The Taj Mahal — Mabel W. Phillips [Poem, p. 17]
- From What High Garden — Lucille Evans [Poem, p. 18]
- Life Is a Lover — Vera B. Thomson [Poem, p. 19]
- Freedom — Nuvart Esther Safarjian [Poem, p. 20]
- The Flood — I. D. Perry [Poem, p. 21]
- Regeneration — Grant S. Housh [Poem, p. 22]
- Owl — Emily Porter St. John [Poem, p. 23]
Rights and citation
The issue bears the notice “Copyright 1938, Poetry Society of Southern California.” Copyright may remain with the respective authors, publisher, or successors.
Copyright Status Unresolved
The issue bears a 1938 copyright notice; rights in the individual contributions and the periodical compilation have not been fully resolved.
*The Poetry Society Quarterly*, vol. 1, no. 3, June 1938. Text/Tech Journals, reader’s edition.