Journal Issue
The August 1922 issue of The Lyric West brings its writers together without asking them to sound alike. It contains 45 named pieces or sections, beginning with There Is No Word by Helen Frazee-Bower, Sea Gulls by Helen Frazee-Bower, and Sea Lover by Helen Frazee-Bower. 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.
The number’s sharpest formal turn belongs to Rolfe Humphries’s Evening on Tahoe. The poem organizes a speaking voice through sentence-length lines around “There’s been a forest fire somewhere to-day”; shifts in syntax make inward argument audible without abandoning stanza, bringing machines and accelerated travel into the magazine’s field of subjects. Virgil Geddes’s Summer Movement answers it from another angle: it compresses perception into short, image-bearing lines around “Heat on a summer afternoon”; pause and white space become part of the measure. Short lyrics, longer sequences, and unevenly unfolding free verse share the same contents list, making formal difference part of the issue’s reading rhythm. In this Los Angeles setting, modernism appears less as a manifesto than as a widening of permissible rhythm, image, and subject within a magazine still hospitable to rhyme.
The contents page also works like a small map. Early entries establish the issue’s first set of voices; around the middle, Boy in the Surf by Roy T. Thompson changes the view; the closing stretch reaches Gardens by Carrie Woodward Stryker. 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 Helen Frazee-Bower, Mildred Plew Merryman, Mary Sinton Leitch, Dorothy S. Collins, Constance Lindsay Skinner, William Ellwell Onions, Henrietta C. Barr, and Gordon Malherbe Hillman, along with 31 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 War—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 There Is No Word by Helen Frazee-Bower, turn next to Boy in the Surf by Roy T. Thompson, and finish with Gardens by Carrie Woodward Stryker. The clean reading edition is designed for that kind of movement. Original scan: 45 PDF pages. Reader’s edition: 70 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
- Helen Frazee-Bower — Poet
- Mildred Plew Merryman — Poet
- Mary Sinton Leitch — Poet
- Dorothy S. Collins — Poet
- Constance Lindsay Skinner — Poet
- William Ellwell Onions — Poet
- Henrietta C. Barr — Poet
- Gordon Malherbe Hillman — Poet
- Norma Miller — Poet
- Josephine van Dolzen Pease — Poet
- Esther Yarnell — Poet
- Neeta Marquis — Poet
- Agnes Louise Dean — Poet
- Eleanor Preston Watkins — Poet
- Harry Noyes Pratt — Poet
- Harold Vinal — Poet
- Cavan Lyttyl — Poet
- Ethel D. Turner — Poet
- Yetta Kay Stoddard — Poet
- Roy T. Thompson — Poet
- Rolfe Humphries — Poet
- Ellen Morrill Mills — Poet
- Frances Wetmore Gross — Poet
- Anna Porter — Poet
- Dorothy Pinckney Pillsbury — Poet
- Robert Whitaker — Poet
- Mynhart J. Boissevain — Poet
- Grace Clementine Howes — Poet
- Neal Gallatin — Poet
- Nora B. Cunningham — Poet
- M. P. C — Poet
- Mabel Guinan Orr — Poet
- Virgil Geddes — Poet
- Grace Atherton Dennen — Poet
- William Stanley Braithwaite — Poet
- Wright Field — Poet
- Dorothy Haddox — Poet
- M. Doris Hutchins — Poet
- Carrie Woodward Stryker — Poet
Publication details
Full contents
- There Is No Word — Helen Frazee-Bower [Poem, p. 3]
- Sea Gulls — Helen Frazee-Bower [Poem, p. 3]
- Sea Lover — Helen Frazee-Bower [Poem, p. 4]
- Thoughts of a Bookkeeper — Mildred Plew Merryman [Poem, p. 4]
- Moods — Mary Sinton Leitch [Poem, p. 5]
- The Old Men — Mary Sinton Leitch [Poem, p. 5]
- Night Song — Dorothy S. Collins [Poem, p. 5]
- Sea Cliff — Constance Lindsay Skinner [Poem, p. 6]
- Thwarted — William Ellwell Onions [Poem, p. 7]
- Immortality — Henrietta C. Barr [Poem, p. 8]
- Sea Winds — Gordon Malherbe Hillman [Poem, p. 8]
- The Sea Is Like a Nun — Norma Miller [Poem, p. 8]
- Sunsets — Josephine van Dolzen Pease [Poem, p. 9]
- “I Have Climbed the Dark Hills” — Esther Yarnell [Poem, p. 10]
- An Old Garden by the Sea — Neeta Marquis [Poem, p. 10]
- Long Nook — Agnes Louise Dean [Poem, p. 11]
- North Wind — Eleanor Preston Watkins [Poem, p. 12]
- The Embarcadero — Harry Noyes Pratt [Poem, p. 13]
- Distances — Harold Vinal [Poem, p. 13]
- Farewell at Twilight to San — Cavan Lyttyl [Poem, p. 14]
- Boats in the Mist — Ethel D. Turner [Poem, p. 15]
- Point Loma Breezes — Yetta Kay Stoddard [Poem, p. 16]
- Boy in the Surf — Roy T. Thompson [Poem, p. 16]
- Evening on Tahoe — Rolfe Humphries [Poem, p. 17]
- A Sad Little Lyric for Vacation — Rolfe Humphries [Poem, p. 17]
- Sea Shells — Ellen Morrill Mills [Poem, p. 18]
- Bits of Sand — Frances Wetmore Gross [Poem, p. 18]
- On the Dunes — Anna Porter [Poem, p. 19]
- Voices — Dorothy Pinckney Pillsbury [Poem, p. 19]
- The Soul’s Summer — Robert Whitaker [Poem, p. 20]
- Adagio — Mynhart J. Boissevain [Poem, p. 20]
- The Stairway — Grace Clementine Howes [Poem, p. 21]
- Pipes o’ Sky — Neal Gallatin [Poem, p. 22]
- Surely I May Come Back — Nora B. Cunningham [Poem, p. 22]
- Through the Cajon Pass — M. P. C [Poem, p. 23]
- The Heavens Declare His Glory — Mabel Guinan Orr [Poem, p. 24]
- Summer Movement — Virgil Geddes [Poem, p. 24]
- The Riding of Peaceful Henry — Grace Atherton Dennen [Poem, p. 25]
- Eyes — William Stanley Braithwaite [Poem, p. 28]
- The Hanging House — William Stanley Braithwaite [Poem, p. 28]
- Lilac-Time — Wright Field [Poem, p. 29]
- The Maple Sings — Wright Field [Poem, p. 29]
- Wistaria — Dorothy Haddox [Poem, p. 29]
- The Yucca — M. Doris Hutchins [Poem, p. 30]
- Gardens — Carrie Woodward Stryker [Poem, p. 31]
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. 2, no. 4, August 1922. Text/Tech Journals, reader’s edition.