The Lyric West, Vol. 5, No. 8 (June 1926)

Published in June 1926, no. 8 of The Lyric West gives readers several clear ways into the magazine. It contains 24 named pieces or sections, beginning with Risus Solis by Noel Stearn, To Omar Khayyam by Clark Ashton Smith, and Songs of Time, Space, and Values by Isabel Fiske Conant. 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.

Here the break with genteel lyric convention begins in Grace Stone Coates’s Diathesis. The poem builds by refrain and recurrence around “I was no mummer”; repetition carries the poem’s turn rather than merely decorating it, bringing fractured perception and inward life into the magazine’s field of subjects. Sarah Foss Wolverton’s Some Mothers to Some Daughters answers it from another angle: it organizes a speaking voice through sentence-length lines around “Yes, I heard you when you said it first”; shifts in syntax make inward argument audible without abandoning stanza. 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, L’Alouette by Mirza French Mackay changes the view; the closing stretch reaches Echoes by Nadine Booe. 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 Noel Stearn, Clark Ashton Smith, Isabel Fiske Conant, Snow Longley, May Williams Ward, Agnes Kendrick Gray, Louise Stedman Bostick, and Elizabeth Chabot Forrest, along with 16 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, California, 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 Risus Solis by Noel Stearn, turn next to L’Alouette by Mirza French Mackay, and finish with Echoes by Nadine Booe. The clean reading edition is designed for that kind of movement. Original scan: 36 PDF pages. Reader’s edition: 56 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.