Here are brought together the more important of Mr. Neihardt's poems. For some years there have been those—and prominent critics, too—who have quite emphatically maintained that there is no greater American poet than Mr. Neihardt, that in him are found those essentials which make for true art—a feeling for words, a lyric power of the first quality, an understanding of rhythm. Here, for example, is the comment of the Boston Transcript on the book just preceding this, The Song of Hugh Glass: "In this poem Mr. Neihardt touches life, power, beauty, spirit; the tremendous and impressive forces of nature.… The genius of American poetry is finding itself in such a poem as this.… The poem is powerfully poetic.… It is a big, sweeping thing, blazing a pathway across the frontiers of our national life."
California is now to have its part in the poetry revival. Robinson Jeffers is a new poet, a man whose name is as yet unknown but whose work is of such outstanding character that once it is read he is sure of acceptance by those who have admired the writings of such men as John G. Neihardt, Edgar Lee Masters, Edwin Arlington Robinson and Thomas Walsh. Virtually all of the poems in this first collection have their setting in California, most of them in the Monterey peninsula, and they realize the scenery of the great State with vividness and richness of detail. The author's main source of inspiration has been the varying aspects of nature.
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
