THE POETRY REVIEW

London, England

May / June 1923

(page 179)

ON RECENT ANTHOLOGIES

Larkspur: A Lyric Garland [Victor B. Neuburg] (Vine Press, 6s.) is a delightful collection, quaintly and curiously decorated with fantastic woodcuts which are characteristic of its contents. In its small way Larkspur fulfils perfectly the requirements of the ideal anthology—and here we cannot refrain from stopping to quote a passage which sums up what we take these requirements to be:—

"When we take up the Ideal Anthology we want to lay all secondary considerations by and to commune deliciously with the spirit of poetry in its finest essences. History, the cycles of the seasons, the longer and shorter revolutions of the wheel of time, are all irrelevant, the subject, the author, do not immediately concern us. Our pleasure is to flit from flower to flower, savouring each more delicately because of the transmitted and accumulated joys of all, and so at one and the same time skimming and penetrating, sensitive to the most delicate vibrations of atmosphere, lifted by that very sensitiveness to perfect enjoyment of a world in which substance and atmosphere are one.—Times Literary Supplement, February 1st, 1923.

Usually the modern anthologist is influenced by very different considerations. In some cases he believes that he has two almost irreconcilable functions to perform—that he must not only remain true to himself, and give "a record of personal tastes and convictions," but must make a selection which is fully representative of the aims and tendencies of the period he has chosen. In striving to achieve two ends so dissimilar he unnecessarily complicates an already difficult task. An anthology is not expected to be a small treatise on the history and development of poetry, or a reflection of the spirit of some particular age: though indirectly it may be both. What we ask is that it shall be a book which is a friend: a book not left idle in the shelves, and only resorted to for reference, but one to keep in the pocket or at the bedside: one into which we delight to dip in stray moments, reading in it at random, with no aim save that of pure enjoyment. Like Larkspur, the late Mr. Robertson's Golden Book of English Sonnets (Harrap), which has just been reprinted with a few additions, is a refreshing example of this kind of anthology.