APPENDIX

I

MARKET FOR VERSE

There is no market nowadays for the long poem except from writers of established reputation. As a rule the shorter the verse the better its chance of acceptance. Verse humorous is easier to dispose of than verse serious because there is a wider field. Puck, Judge, Life, Smart Set, Ainslee’s, Harper’s, Century, and an army of others are always willing to buy really amusing verse.

Serious verse is sold in lesser quantities, but the price is better—when the production is bought by a high-class publication. The Atlantic Monthly is always on the lookout for new writers and other magazines are prompt to recognize what pleases them even in the work of a newcomer. Perhaps the most standard popular forms of serious verse are the sonnet and the short love lyric.

Many editors are glad to buy quatrains and even couplets to fill out a page when a longer form would be rejected. The well-written triolet is also sure of a hearing for this same reason.

Newspapers pay little or nothing for verse except when a special writer is put on the staff to supply a column of verse a day. Occasionally some topical stanza which agrees with the editorial policy will be accepted from an outsider. It may be pointed out here that very often the humor or appropriateness of a production will overbalance faults in the rhyme and meter. In serious verse an exception of this sort will rarely be found and a thing must stand or fall on its real merits.

There is no sure way to determine the market except by personal investigation. Read the magazines till you find out where the editor’s preference lies and then try him with something of your own, written not in imitation but on the same general lines. Do not send out your verse in a hit-or-miss fashion. Separate the limericks and the love songs and send them each to their appointed editor.

In spite of the protestations of interested publishers the reading public does not interest itself in the volume of “collected poems.” A book of this sort is rarely looked at unless it runs very much out of the ordinary or comes as the product of some well-known author.

II

SUGGESTIONS FOR READING

This is not intended in any way to be an exhaustive list. It merely suggests the field which each student is bound to explore for himself.

Technique of Verse.

The Rhymester—Tom Hood. Concise; with rhyming dictionary appendix.

Science of Verse—Sidney Lanier. Worth while for the advanced student.

—The Poetic Principle,

—Philosophy of Compensation,

—Rationale of Verse. Essays by Edgar Allan Poe; to be found in his collected works. Very interesting as showing the methods and viewpoint of a great poet.

Collections of Poetry.

Ward’s English Poets. Four volumes ranging from Chaucer to Tennyson.

Oxford Book of English Verse. One large volume containing the work of many of the living writers as well as selections from all the standard poets.

—Victorian Anthology.

—American Anthology. Both compiled by Edmund Clarence Stedman. Valuable because they contain examples of the best work of to-day’s verse makers.

The Sonnet.

Examples of the sonnet are to be found in almost any collection of verse. The older magazines, especially the Atlantic Monthly, use the form continually. The best known sonnet series are:

Astrophel and Stella—Sir Philip Sidney.

Sonnets of Shakespeare.

House of Life—Rossetti.

Sonnets from the Portuguese—Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

French Forms.

Examples are to be found in the collected poems of Austin Dobson, Andrew Lang, W. E. Henley and H. C. Bunner, to mention only the more prominent. The Ballade Book, edited by Gleeson White, Ex Libris Series, contains examples of all the forms and is probably the most convenient collection to be had.

The Song.

In this connection see Burns, Moore, Tennyson, together with Scotch collections and the work of W. B. Yeats and other modern Irish writers. For rhythm and a different sort of “song” see Kipling. The Vagabondia Series by Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey are worth buying. Occasional poems, falling under this head, are to be found in almost any volume of the poets.

Vers de SociÉtÉ.

About the best single book is a volume in the Leisure Hour Series entitled “Vers de SociÉtÉ.” It gives an excellent idea of the field covered. Among the strongest writers of this style of verse are Austin Dobson, C. S. Calverley, Andrew Lang, W. M. Praed and H. C. Bunner. Perhaps the best known English writer of to-day is Owen Seaman, whose work appears weekly in Punch.

Nonsense Verse.

Mother Goose.

The Burgess Nonsense Book—Gelett Burgess.

A Nonsense Anthology—Carolyn Wells.

A Parody Anthology—Carolyn Wells.

Humorous Ballads.

Bab Ballads—W. S. Gilbert.

Grimm Tales Made Gay—Guy Wetmore Carryl.

Nautical Ballads of a Landsman—Wallace Irwin.

Translations.

It is difficult to quote any translator in particular who is worth while. Most translators are not poets and most poets have not been translators. The book of solid translation is generally very mediocre and tiresome. Translations of the greatest foreign poets are to be found in any fair-sized public library. Longfellow, Swinburne, Rossetti, Dobson, Lang and a few others have left occasional translations which are models of the best of this work.