Journal Issue
Modernism enters this number through Impotency by Mollie Prager. The poem compresses perception into short, image-bearing lines around “I love the rain”; pause and white space become part of the measure, bringing ordinary experience as formally unsettled lyric material into the magazine’s field of subjects. May Williams Ward’s I See a Star answers it from another angle: it builds by refrain and recurrence around “Not lightly do I say”; repetition carries the poem’s turn rather than merely decorating it. 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.
Contributors
Publication details
Full contents
- For the Chinook — Horatio Warren [Poem, p. 61]
- Envy Not Granite — John Russell McCarthy [Poem, p. 62]
- This Mountain — Ethel Romig Fuller [Poem, p. 63]
- Cynthia — Ethel Romig Fuller [Poem, p. 64]
- Imitation — Snow Longley [Poem, p. 65]
- Libraries — Snow Longley [Poem, p. 65]
- Purgation — Helene Magaret [Poem, p. 66]
- Tapers of the Heart — Anne Zuker [Poem, p. 66]
- As It Ever Shall Be — Ruby Weyburn Tobias [Poem, p. 67]
- The Cripple — Reeves Axtell [Poem, p. 67]
- Impotency — Mollie Prager [Poem, p. 68]
- Grey Days — Frances Wierman [Poem, p. 69]
- Infinity — Harold Wesley Melvin [Poem, p. 70]
- I See a Star — May Williams Ward [Poem, p. 70]
- Pessimist — Lilian White Spencer [Poem, p. 71]
- Smoke — Helen P. Smith [Poem, p. 72]
- Blue — Amy Campbell [Poem, p. 72]
- Revelation — Josephine van Dolzen Pease [Poem, p. 73]
- Portrait of an Old Lady — Charlotte Newton [Poem, p. 73]
- Prayer — Julia Birk [Poem, p. 74]
- Presence — Earl Mathis [Poem, p. 74]
- Dim Prayer — Richard Clifton Howell [Poem, p. 75]
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. 7, no. 3, December 1927. Text/Tech Journals, reader’s edition.