A collection of poetry by a Philadelphia journalist turned novelist and poet.
I’m Jim McKeown, welcome to Likely Stories, a weekly review of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and biographies.
Whenever I travel, I love searching out used bookstores to ferret out what in my mind are hidden treasures for my library. Over Christmas, I visited the Old Tampa Book Store in Florida. I found several “treasures,” but the best find was a slim volume of poetry by Christopher Morley, Hide and Seek.
Christopher Morley wrote for the Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger in 1918. He turned to novels, and The Haunted Bookshop is my favorite. Actually, I had no idea he wrote poetry. The book I found in Tampa was not only inscribed, it included a note to David E. Smiley, editor of the Public Ledger. In addition, Morley corrected a typographical error in his own hand with the same ink as that in the inscription. As an inveterate Philadelphian, I doubled the pleasure in finding this book.
The poetry is light, but Morley had an ability turn a phrase. Here is one of my favorites, “A Wedded Valentine”: “Dear, may I be your Valentine? / Not just to-day, in weather fine; / Not just to-day, in lover’s mood, /But through life’s each vicissitude. // Not just when girlish eyes still shine, / Dear, may I be your Valentine, / But through all mortal whims and fits / While Time our human fibres (sic) knits. // And though, most sweet, my peevish earth / Is hardly such promotion worth, / Dear, May I be your Valentine / And learn to make your virtue mine? // Recalling by love’s old refrain / Our Double joy, divided pain, I write this pleading, smiling line-- / Dear, may I be your Valentine?” (27)
And another short poem, “The Intruder”: “As I sat, to sift my dreaming / To the meet and needed word, / Came a merry Interruption / With insistence to be heard. // Smiling stood a maid beside me, / half alluring and half shy; / Soft the white hint of her bosom-- / Escapade was in her eye. // ‘I must not be so invaded,’ / (In anger then I cried) -- / ‘Can’t you see that I am busy? / Tempting creature, stay outside! // “Pearly rascal, I am writing: / I am now composing verse-- / Fie on antic invitation: / Wanton, vanish – fly – disperse! // ‘Baggage, in my godlike moment / What have I to do with thee”’ / And she laughed as she departed -- / ‘I am poetry,’ said she” (47). I love these little poems that I can nibble at and enjoy in a moment.
Among a series of sonnets, he writes this paen to my hometown, “In Philadelphia”: “I have seen sunsets gild the pillared steam / Where Broad Street Station hoops with arches dark / The western fire; and seen the looming, stark / Crags of the Hall grow soft in morning gleam. / One drowsy eve I wandered far to mark / The neck, a land of opal color-scheme; / And know no fairer place to watch and dream / Than on a bench in old Penn Treaty Park. // And there are corners, glimpses, houses, streets, / With curious satisfaction in the view, / And unconfessed sweet moments when one meets / the destiny of human life anew. / A city rarely beautiful I know … / It is not men alone who make it so” (80).
Almost certainly out of print, Hide and Seek is a gem I will treasure to the end of my days. 5 stars
Likely Stories is a production of KWBU. I’m Jim McKeown. You can read my book blog at RabbitReader.blogspot.com. Join me again next time for Likely Stories, and happy reading!
