Journal Issue
The May 1927 issue of The Lyric West brings its writers together without asking them to sound alike. It contains 26 named pieces or sections, beginning with Birds of Thought by Howard McKinley Corning, The Sea Gulls by Ruth Harwood, and Great Salt Lake by Lori Petri. 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.
Moon-Storm by Dana Burnet marks the issue’s most conspicuous opening toward modernist practice. The poem organizes a speaking voice through sentence-length lines around “The dead planet has made a patch of light upon my”; shifts in syntax make inward argument audible without abandoning stanza, bringing fractured perception and inward life into the magazine’s field of subjects. N. Bryllion Fagin’s Legerdemain answers it from another angle: it compresses perception into short, image-bearing lines; pause and white space become part of the measure. The presence of a named form such as Sonnet makes the contrast especially legible: innovation occurs beside inherited measure, not after its disappearance. In Los Angeles, modernism does not erase regional or traditional verse; it puts new pressure on both, asking poets to treat rhythm and perception as unsettled problems.
The contents page also works like a small map. Early entries establish the issue’s first set of voices; around the middle, Betrayed by Jasper Barnett Cowdin changes the view; the closing stretch reaches The Wife by Edwin M. Kelly. 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 Howard McKinley Corning, Ruth Harwood, Lori Petri, Mary Carolyn Davies, Harold Wesley Melvin, Sydney King Russell, Winifred Gray Stewart, and Dana Burnet, along with 18 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, Sea and coast, 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 Birds of Thought by Howard McKinley Corning, turn next to Betrayed by Jasper Barnett Cowdin, and finish with The Wife by Edwin M. Kelly. The clean reading edition is designed for that kind of movement. Original scan: 36 PDF pages. Reader’s edition: 57 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.
Contributors
- Howard McKinley Corning — Poet
- Ruth Harwood — Poet
- Lori Petri — Poet
- Mary Carolyn Davies — Poet
- Harold Wesley Melvin — Poet
- Sydney King Russell — Poet
- Winifred Gray Stewart — Poet
- Dana Burnet — Poet
- Mirza French Mackay — Poet
- Florence Wilkinson — Poet
- Elizabeth Henke Thomas — Poet
- Agnes Kendrick Gray — Poet
- Norma Miller — Poet
- Jasper Barnett Cowdin — Poet
- N. Bryllion Fagin — Poet
- Joan Ramsay — Poet
- Bessie Pryor Palmer — Poet
- Reeves Axtell — Poet
- Ethel Romig Fuller — Poet
- James Rorty — Poet
- Noel Stearn — Poet
- Frances Wierman — Poet
- B. S. Ivey — Poet
- Anne Kelledy Gilbert — Poet
- Dorothy Drake — Poet
- Edwin M. Kelly — Poet
Publication details
Full contents
- Birds of Thought — Howard McKinley Corning [Poem, p. 211]
- The Sea Gulls — Ruth Harwood [Poem, p. 212]
- Great Salt Lake — Lori Petri [Poem, p. 215]
- Moss Agate — Mary Carolyn Davies [Poem, p. 216]
- Not Out of Sunrise — Harold Wesley Melvin [Poem, p. 217]
- Sonnet — Sydney King Russell [Poem, p. 217]
- Shopping Tour — Winifred Gray Stewart [Poem, p. 218]
- Moon-Storm — Dana Burnet [Poem, p. 220]
- Tea — Mirza French Mackay [Poem, p. 221]
- Flowers of Portugal — Florence Wilkinson [Poem, p. 222]
- Yellow Violets — Elizabeth Henke Thomas [Poem, p. 223]
- The Sage Thrasher — Agnes Kendrick Gray [Poem, p. 224]
- Sabbath — Norma Miller [Poem, p. 224]
- Betrayed — Jasper Barnett Cowdin [Poem, p. 225]
- Legerdemain — N. Bryllion Fagin [Poem, p. 225]
- Arthurian — Joan Ramsay [Poem, p. 226]
- Maid of Almesbury — Bessie Pryor Palmer [Poem, p. 227]
- The Pirate — Reeves Axtell [Poem, p. 228]
- The New Bridge — Ethel Romig Fuller [Poem, p. 228]
- At Any Bench — James Rorty [Poem, p. 229]
- Perversity — Noel Stearn [Poem, p. 229]
- Budding — Frances Wierman [Poem, p. 229]
- The City of Fountains — B. S. Ivey [Poem, p. 230]
- Touring with Anne — Anne Kelledy Gilbert [Poem, p. 230]
- On the Road to Abley Hill — Dorothy Drake [Poem, p. 231]
- The Wife — Edwin M. Kelly [Poem, p. 231]
Rights and citation
Copyright remains with the respective authors, artists, publisher, or successors.
Copyright Status Unresolved
Rights in the individual contributions and the periodical compilation have not been fully resolved.
*The Lyric West*, vol. 6, no. 8, May 1927. Text/Tech Journals, reader’s edition.