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VARIETY—R chard Connell—Mint on, Balch ($2.00). In the columns of every U. S. newspaper, occupying the odd inch at the root of a divorce, or a box, maybe, between finance and mayhem, are items about nameless people who have become news because some extravagance in the comedy of their lives has made them pathetic or some vagary in their afflictions has made them funny. Richard Connell, with one snip of the shears, two strokes of the fountain pen, can transform such items into tales that delight the readers of The Saturday Evening Post, and may afterwards be collected in such a book as this. Other nameless ones who have never had the misfortune to furnish grist for a news item will chortle with glee at Big Lord Fauntleroy (a comic story), Sssssssssshhhh (a satiric story), Spring Flow'rets or Womanhood Eternal (a sex story), will marvel at the ingenious craftsmanship, vociferate their appreciation of the smarty wit of this Punchinello, Connell. If, sometimes, they prickle in amazement to discover that they themselves have on the pantaloons, that Connell is the gentleman who laughs, why should they mind?
Tired
XLI POEMS—E. E. Cummings—Dial-Press ($2.50). Upon the pages of a far haughtier, a far less circulated magazine* than that for which Author Connell writes, lines of fiery poetry are often encountered, drooping through their allotted space a syllable at a time, like the languid descending streamers of bored rockets. They are the lines of Poet Cummings. Words, he realizes, have four dimensions—contour, connotation, color, sound. In ordinary poetry, the dray work of supporting the context and of conforming to the conventionalities of a pattern maim these values, render words absurd as a medium of meticulous art. Therefore, he arranges them in bizarre groups, droops them across a page, lets their meaning depend largely upon their effect as psychological images. That words can ever be used thus fastidiously is a doubtful hypothesis. Poet Cummings, in his wilder moments, imitates the young French decadents. Tired of this, he reacts against them, against himself, adopting in his sonnets a lyricism that has come down to him, thinned and sweetened, from the lutes of the 17th Century cavaliers. Thus a very old and a very new spirit speak out of his mouth in clear alternate voices.
Journalèse Majesté