The Lyric West, Vol. 2, No. 5 (September 1922)

Published in September 1922, no. 5 of The Lyric West gives readers several clear ways into the magazine. It contains 21 named pieces or sections, beginning with A Voice by Nora B. Cunningham, Biography by Gwendolyn Haste, and Naughty Nell by Charles Wharton Stork. 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.

In Biography, Gwendolyn Haste brings the issue’s modernist pressure into focus. The poem uses rhetorical punctuation to disturb an otherwise measured line around “Senator Joseph M. Cutler stares from page”; exclamation and question become rhythmic events, bringing ordinary experience as formally unsettled lyric material into the magazine’s field of subjects. Jack Hyatt, Jr’s Ching Loo Dreams answers it from another angle: it compresses perception into short, image-bearing lines around “Yellow feet slipping back and forth”; 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. 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, Ching Loo Dreams by Jack Hyatt, Jr changes the view; the closing stretch reaches Bourrico by Grace Wallace. 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 Nora B. Cunningham, Gwendolyn Haste, Charles Wharton Stork, G. William Fitzwilliam, Eda Lou Walton, Virginia Lyne Tunstall, Lillian Hartley, and John Russell McCarthy, 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, and Little magazines—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 A Voice by Nora B. Cunningham, turn next to Ching Loo Dreams by Jack Hyatt, Jr, and finish with Bourrico by Grace Wallace. The clean reading edition is designed for that kind of movement. Original scan: 36 PDF pages. Reader’s edition: 50 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.