Meadow Brook

By GLENN WARD DRESBACH

Sway of the young corn, growing, growing, Smell of the wind from the pastures blowing, Then willows listening to a song

Of a meadow brook between them flowing!
I shall not stay to listen long

For fear I get the wistful air
Of willows listening, and care

Too much for what the brook is saying
Down through water lilies playing
Like fairies dangling pearly toes
While the water comes and goes.
I shall turn and look on grasses
Swaying in the wind, and trees,
Stones and grains - for soon with these,
While the water sings and passes,

I shall always have to stay

No matter what the brook would say!
Why do I still linger, waiting,
Touching fingers with the brook,
Looking as the willows look-
While the water through my fingers
Gleams and slips away?

Two Poems

BY MARY KATHERINE REELY

THE TRAIN PASSES

The field of flax is like a blue lake.

The wind ripples the bending blossoms into blue and

silver waves.

The train passes.

Was it a blue lake?

Or was it a field of flax flowing under the prairie wind?

RESURGENCE

My love for you has become as the mist that trails at morning over the lake.

My love has become as the clear, white dawn that lifts over the edge of the prairie's rim.

My love for you has become as the wind that ripples the poplars at still of noon.

My old, old love that had died—that is dead, Is arisen again in all the wistful and tremulous beauty that plays on the face of the world.

Editorials

A significant venture in American publishing was hopefully inaugurated by the appearance in March of the first number of The Measure, A Journal of Poetry, edited at 449 West Twenty-second Street, New York City. The nine editors are Maxwell Anderson, Padraic Colum, Agnes Kendrick Gray, Carolyn Hall, Frank Ernest Hill, David Morton, Louise Townsend Nicholl, George O'Neil, and Genevieve Taggard; several of these have contributed to THE MIDLAND. From the nine an acting editor and an assistant are elected quarterly. We quote from the interesting and provocative editorial, "Thunder in the Index", by Maxwell Anderson, the acting editor for the first quarter:

"But why a magazine of verse at this inauspicious time? We can't rest satisfied because there has been good verse in the past and will be more in the future. If this is a day of minor verse we shall e'en write minor verse, for verse we must write. Hunger of the spirit is not appeased by the satisfaction of our elders or youngers - and betters. The lean years must be lived through somehow or there would be nobody to function later on, and no tradition, no thread of creative thought. Certain generations have to content themselves with slow, painful, groping work in darkness."

The first number of The Measure contains a number of excellent poems. The format is pleasing and is well suited to the purpose of the magazine. The

Measure would be well worth reading if it published only the work of the nine poets who are its editors. Its usefulness will be greater, however, if it gives much of its space to the poems of others, as the intention seems to be. The Measure seems destined to a career of distinguished service in the field of American poetry. It has THE MIDLAND's heartiest good wishes.

Middle western literature is in danger of becoming fashionable in the metropolis itself. Surely Vanity Fair is a dependable index of the interests of sophisticated New York; and Vanity Fair has officially recognized the existence, literarily speaking, of a region west of Jersey. Of course the recognition comes in a characteristic way. It began in the February number, in Stephen Leacock's diverting and far from pointless piece of foolery entitled "Literary Sensations of 1921":

"It will come as good news to confirmed book addicts that 47 novels, dealing with small town life in the Middle West, are announced by one publisher alone. We are informed that the heroes of all the novels in question are unsuccessful in business, poor in spirit, doomed to meet only the dreariest types of people in the dreariest towns listed in the postal guide. They will wear alpaca dusters in all love scenes, and sleeve supporters. So numerous are the crea

tions of this sort which the publishers are announcing, that they have already given rise to a new school of realism, a school which has been referred to by an eminent critic as 'The Sears Roebuck' school of fiction."

But the March issue of Vanity Fair bears as the astonishing title of its leading article "Why There Must Be a Mid-Western Literature." The writer is Sherwood Anderson, presumably a member of the Sears Roebuck school of fiction. Anderson's article defies quotation; but it is a pleasant piece of work. The editor recommends its perusal.

Contributors to this Issue

HELEN SANTMYER is a native of Ohio and a graduate of Wellesley. She is at present employed by Charles Scribner's Sons, New York City.

EDWIN FORD PIPER is a teacher of English at the State University of Iowa. He was born in Nebraska. Mr. Piper is the author of Barbed Wire and Other Poems, a volume published by The Midland Press in 1917, and has been an associate editor of THE MIDLAND from the beginning. His work has appeared in Poetry and other magazines.

RUTH SUCKOW, a resident of Earlville, Iowa, was a contributor to the February issue of the current volume of THE MIDLAND.

WALTER J. MUILENBURG, a contributor of short stories to earlier volumes of THE MIDLAND, was born at Orange City, Iowa, and attended the State University of Iowa. He is at present a resident of Michigan.

CLIFFORD FRANKLIN GESSLER contributed to a recent issue of THE MIDLAND.

GLENN WARD DRESBACH has been a frequent contributor to THE MIDLAND. He was born in Illinois and is at present employed at El Paso, Texas. He is the author of several books of verse, the most recent being Morning, Noon, and Night, just published by the Four Seas Company of Boston.

MARY KATHERINE REELY is a middle-westerner, now engaged in editorial work in New York City.