Thirty typewritten poems by the American poet Louis How, some with manuscript emendations, and all apparently unpublished.

Author: 
Louis How (1873-1947), American poet and translator, grandson and biographer of inventor James Buchanan Eads and brother of hobo activist James Eads How [St Louis, Missouri]
Publication details: 
Without place or date.
£600.00
SKU: 12977

Each of the thirty poems ends with the typed name 'Louis How'. The collection is in good condition, on lightly-aged paper, with each poem printed on one side of a 4to leaf. There is no record of any of the thirty being published. Six of the poems have minor manuscript emendations, and several include minor corrections in type. A prolific poet, in 1915 How was grouped with Amy Lowell and Ezra Pound in an article by Zoe Akins in Reedy's Mirror (published in his native St. Louis). The thirty poems, with their first lines, are: Another of the Heron ('Heron, your gait is smug and slow,'); Another of the Heron ('When my heron rises from the sedges,'); Assistance ('There is no Ghibelline or Guelf,'); Astraea Epiloguizes ('He long had longed to see her; and he set'); The Bad Angel ('The angels sinned their sin and fell -'); Beginning of a Pre-Raphaelite Song ('Give me three grains of corn, Mother,'); Burning Our Boat ('Save for the poplars, no leaf stirred.'); End of the War ('They brought the cool fresh water from the well,'); The Expedition (Atonic Consonances) ('There were horses in the pasture with the dew upon their pasterns.'); Hardened Memories ('I wandered in that garden'); The Heron ('O heron, when you spread broad wings and wing,'); The Heron Again ('Birds have no intelligence: our major,'); How to Recognise Angels ('How shall we know an angel? - By his wings. -'); Io, Bacche ('Come with a flashing like swords in the air.'); Kisses ('Kisses are counted.'); A Last Song ('For Mary Murphy one last song'); Lazarus ('Death is confuting and life confusing,'); Mary's Exuberance ('When Mary Murphy runs and leaps'); My Mermaid ('My mermaid is old-fashioned,'); A Mother's Duty ('Margie, go and wash your face.'); The Nonexistent ('The birds were up and flinging'); Our Joys ('We used to walk to the End of the Cape'); Pale Symphorosa ('When pale Symphorosa announces her art,'); She still feels young ('She had a lot of lovely curls'); The Scholiast upon Dante: Inf. V, 121-2 ('Perhaps the most depressing woe of all'); Tribute to H. H. ('You played on the pianoforte,'); Tribute to M.P. ('I looked at the clock, it was poised before six,'); To R. H. ('Bring a derrick'); Waiting an Answer ('O thou most sweet and comely'); Your Face ('Incipit this and finis,').