The Lyric West, Vol. 5, No. 6 (March 1926)

Open this March 1926 issue of The Lyric West and the contents begin making their own introductions. It contains 23 named pieces or sections, beginning with Who Cannot Hear by Ruth Aughiltree, Purple Mists by Noel Stearn, and Winter by Anne Hendrickson. 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 Geraldine Seelemire’s Bitter Creek. The poem organizes description through sentence-length lines around “Like a querulous old red cow”; emphasis shifts through image, enjambment, and changes in syntactic pace, bringing machines and accelerated travel into the magazine’s field of subjects. Elsewhere, Who Cannot Hear and Purple Mists keep the experimental turn in contact with the issue’s broader lyric range. 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 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, Ere Twilight Comes by A. M. Stephen changes the view; the closing stretch reaches Episode by Julia Birk. 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 Ruth Aughiltree, Noel Stearn, Anne Hendrickson, Floy Bernice Palmer, Grace E. Bush, Ruth Clay Price, Mable Holmes Parsons, and Adrian Huffman, along with 15 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, Desert, and Sea and coast—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 Who Cannot Hear by Ruth Aughiltree, turn next to Ere Twilight Comes by A. M. Stephen, and finish with Episode by Julia Birk. 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.