Journal Issue
This April 1924 number of The Lyric West is best met through the writing itself. It contains 45 named pieces or sections, beginning with The Minor Poets by Mary Brent Whiteside, Four Songs for Two Young Lovers by Winifred Davidson, and A Blackbird Calling by Harry Noyes Pratt. 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 Wind Prints of a Dancer by Charmian von Wiegand. The poem organizes description through sentence-length lines around “In some far midnight”; emphasis shifts through image, enjambment, and changes in syntactic pace, bringing ordinary experience as formally unsettled lyric material into the magazine’s field of subjects. Hildegarde Flanner’s Sonnet answers it from another angle: it keeps the pressure of a fourteen-line argument around “The flowers of Apollo that will heal”; contemporary diction works inside the inherited sonnet frame. The explicit form named in Sonnet makes the issue’s negotiation visible: modern subject and diction are being worked through inherited measure, not simply set against it. 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, Wind Prints of a Dancer by Charmian von Wiegand changes the view; the closing stretch reaches Sonnet by Hildegarde Flanner. 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 Mary Brent Whiteside, Winifred Davidson, Harry Noyes Pratt, Ethel Romig Fuller, Ralph Parker Bishop, Medora C. Addison, Hazel Hall, and Herschelle Bek, along with 34 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 The Minor Poets by Mary Brent Whiteside, turn next to Wind Prints of a Dancer by Charmian von Wiegand, and finish with Sonnet by Hildegarde Flanner. The clean reading edition is designed for that kind of movement. Original scan: 36 PDF pages. Reader’s edition: 69 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
- Mary Brent Whiteside — Poet
- Winifred Davidson — Poet
- Harry Noyes Pratt — Poet
- Ethel Romig Fuller — Poet
- Ralph Parker Bishop — Poet
- Medora C. Addison — Poet
- Hazel Hall — Poet
- Herschelle Bek — Poet
- Belle Turnbull — Poet
- Lucia Clark Markham — Poet
- Winifred M. Heath — Poet
- Ruth Aughiltree — Poet
- Ellen Coit Elliott — Poet
- Elizabeth Colter — Poet
- Mary Carolyn Davies — Poet
- Power Dalton — Poet
- George Sterling — Poet
- Rolfe Humphries — Poet
- Gertrude Callaghan — Poet
- Edith D. Osborne — Poet
- Charmian von Wiegand — Poet
- William Ellwell Onions — Poet
- Saidee Gerard Ruthrauff — Poet
- Grace Clementine Howes — Poet
- Harriette G. Smith — Poet
- Loretta Roche — Poet
- Harvey D. Cheney — Poet
- Mildred Plew Merryman — Poet
- Ethel Marjorie Knapp — Poet
- Wheaton Hale Brewer — Poet
- Leslie-Leigh du Cros — Poet
- Grace Wallace — Poet
- A. Evelyn Newman — Poet
- Howard McKinley Corning — Poet
- M. Doris Hutchins — Poet
- Mary Louise Rankin — Poet
- Marion Ethel Hamilton — Poet
- Constance Lindsay Skinner — Poet
- Margaret Widdemer — Poet
- Dorothy Pinckney Pillsbury — Poet
- Nora B. Cunningham — Poet
- Hildegarde Flanner — Poet
Publication details
Full contents
- The Minor Poets — Mary Brent Whiteside [Poem, p. 3]
- Four Songs for Two Young Lovers — Winifred Davidson [Poem, p. 4]
- A Blackbird Calling — Harry Noyes Pratt [Poem, p. 5]
- Remembered Things — Ethel Romig Fuller [Poem, p. 5]
- Amaryllis — Ralph Parker Bishop [Poem, p. 6]
- The End — Medora C. Addison [Poem, p. 6]
- After — Medora C. Addison [Poem, p. 6]
- The Ravelling Tune — Hazel Hall [Poem, p. 6]
- Eternal Remembrance — Herschelle Bek [Poem, p. 7]
- Colorado Easter — Belle Turnbull [Poem, p. 8]
- Back to the Hills — Lucia Clark Markham [Poem, p. 8]
- On Going to Town — Winifred M. Heath [Poem, p. 9]
- Discovery — Ruth Aughiltree [Poem, p. 9]
- The Beggar — Ellen Coit Elliott [Poem, p. 10]
- Choice — Elizabeth Colter [Poem, p. 11]
- The Night Is Kind — Mary Carolyn Davies [Poem, p. 12]
- Finite — Power Dalton [Poem, p. 12]
- Circle — Power Dalton [Poem, p. 12]
- To Charles Warren Stoddard — George Sterling [Poem, p. 13]
- Whence Cometh My Help — Rolfe Humphries [Poem, p. 14]
- A Gift — Gertrude Callaghan [Poem, p. 14]
- A Pagan’s Rosary — Edith D. Osborne [Poem, p. 15]
- Wind Prints of a Dancer — Charmian von Wiegand [Poem, p. 16]
- The Harpist — William Ellwell Onions [Poem, p. 17]
- There’s a Sound of Singing — Saidee Gerard Ruthrauff [Poem, p. 17]
- An Old Man of the Trails — Grace Clementine Howes [Poem, p. 18]
- The Siren — Harriette G. Smith [Poem, p. 19]
- Moment — Loretta Roche [Poem, p. 19]
- The Sweet Smell of Lumber — Harvey D. Cheney [Poem, p. 19]
- On Windy Nights — Mildred Plew Merryman [Poem, p. 20]
- I Die a Hundred Deaths — Ethel Marjorie Knapp [Poem, p. 20]
- Sea-Thought — Wheaton Hale Brewer [Poem, p. 21]
- Homecoming — Leslie-Leigh du Cros [Poem, p. 22]
- Like Three Gold Temples — Grace Wallace [Poem, p. 22]
- Mountains Are Best for Heartbreak — A. Evelyn Newman [Poem, p. 23]
- Transformation — Howard McKinley Corning [Poem, p. 23]
- To the Soul of a Dancer — M. Doris Hutchins [Poem, p. 24]
- The Nun — Mary Louise Rankin [Poem, p. 24]
- The Alien — Marion Ethel Hamilton [Poem, p. 25]
- The Flight — George Sterling [Poem, p. 25]
- Song of the Long River — Constance Lindsay Skinner [Poem, p. 27]
- Hill Sunset — Margaret Widdemer [Poem, p. 28]
- Camp Fires — Dorothy Pinckney Pillsbury [Poem, p. 28]
- The Wind — Nora B. Cunningham [Poem, p. 29]
- Sonnet — Hildegarde Flanner [Poem, p. 30]
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. 3, no. 12, April 1924. Text/Tech Journals, reader’s edition.