Bibliography of American Poetry Told Through the Pulitzer Prize: 1920s

Bibliography of American Poetry Told Through the Pulitzer Prize
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1930	Selected Poems PS 3501 I5 A6	Conrad Aiken	Excerpt from "Goya": Stenchflowed out of the second's tick./and Goya swam with it through Space,/Sweating the fetor from his limbs, land stared upon he unfettered face. Includes a preface from the poet as to why he chose the poems he chose.
1931	Collected Poems PS 3511 R94 1942	Robert Frost	Frost's preface to the 1939 edition is an essay called "The Figure A Poem Makes. " He says: "The object in wilting poetry is to make all poems sound as different as possible from each other, and the resources for that of vowels, consonants, punctuation, syntax, words, sentences, meter are not enough; we need the help of context-- meaning--subject matter." The preface is signed "Boston, January 11, 1939. " Wins the Pulitzer for Collected Poems and he's only got 30 years of good stuff left.
1932	The Flowering Stone PS 3507 I585 F6 1931	George Dillon	Read the book from the University of Chicago's Harriet Monroe Collection, signed by the author. A whole book built on the idea that you can mix up verb clauses and noun clauses. From "This Dream is Strange": "This dream is strange that has not flown". One of the acknowledgements is to The Dial, the great magazine. I was first turned on to Dial Magazine when I was studying poetry at the University of Illinois at Chicago under poet Michael Annania.
1933	Conquistador PS 3525 A27 C6 1927	Archibald MacLeish	Book must have sold pretty good because I read the "Fourth Impression, Feb. 1933. " That's a lot of printings. MacLeish was a rabble-rouser who also wrote verse plays like "J.B. ", a modem story of the Biblical Job. Later got a job with the government.
1934	Collected Verse PS 3515 I69 C7	Robert Hillyer	Conversational. Interesting rhyme schemes break things up. No big deal. Bunch of sonnets in it, too. Real Uplifting. Dedicated to dear old mom and dad. I read the fourth printing, 1934. In 1917 he was in an anthology book called "Eight Harvard Poets" with some serious powerhouses, including "E. Estlin Cummings", which is the first time I ever saw his middle name or the use of capital letters. e.e. cummings once wrote a book called "No Thanks". It wasn't called that until he tried to get it published and wimp publishers kept returning it to him, saying, "No, Thanks".
1935	Bright Ambush PS 3545 U7 B7 1934	Audrey Wurdemann	Great title, but this ended up being an inconsequential first book of poems from a forgettable poet. Yock-a pi- tooey. Find a good book in this year.
1936	Strange Holiness PS 3505 0234 S7	Robert P. Tristam Coffin	Ponderous, religious poems about the Coffin inner self. Dedicated to his sister Annie, "Who went to the country church l with me and saw l the strange holiness." Nice title. Meanwhile, in Europe, Jesse Owens wins big in the Olympics.
1937	A Further Range PS 3511 R9458 1936	Robert Frost	Nature verses from Frost. Plenty of woodchucks, spiders, and birds. In the dedication to his wife, he wants to "range beyond range even into the realm of government and religion." Finds the truth of the human spirit and organization by observing other animal life. Big on thinking abut the ownership of land vs. the unownable universal beauty of nature.
1938	Cold Morning Sky PS 3549 A 77 C6 1937	Marya Zaturenska	Sing-song pretty kind of poems with an edge. Got the first edition from the shelf at the Harold Washington Library Center. Courageously lacking in rhyme for the most part. Thanks Robert Hillyer (1934) in the Acknowledgements, proving that it doesn't hurt to know a previous winner.
1939	Selected Poems	John Gould Fletcher	Could not get my hands on this book. I will endeavor to and I'll get back to you if you send me an email. Apparently he was interested in Buddhism.