POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
Book Review by Max Michelson 
1916

THE RADICALS
Others: an Anthology of the New Verse, edited by Alfred
Kreymborg. Alfred A. Knopf, New York.

One cannot review this collection without connecting it
with the magazine Others from which it is taken, so I may
as well say that for its editor I have nothing but praise, and
I believe that its most radical experiments-the works of
Mina Loy, Rodker, Sanborn, etc.,-should be published. I
assume that even Miss Monroe, whose editorial ideal evi
dently is for poems of more artistic permanence than many
in this volume are, will agree with me that every lover of
art, no matter what his own tastes are, should encourage
the more experimental work too. Besides we have here
many things for which we can only be grateful.
Pound's Shop-girl is lovely; the beginning is as good as
some of the Chinese masterpieces he has recreated for us. In
Another Man's Wife he has caught a delicate charm in the 
bloom; it is an expression of a rare and pure artistic refine
ment. 

Skipwith Cannell's preface of several pages is of some
interest, but the poetry that one expects after so long a
preface is not there. I may as well here express the start
ling opinion to which many poets will object, that repeating
the Nietzsche which one has picked up from Bernard Shaw
and newspaper gossip is not poetry. There was a real
Nietzsche, and he has written much better poetry, though in
prose form, than any of his "interpreters." The influence
of Gauguin I could not find-unless it is in the spacing. 

Taken as a whole, I think the volume interesting and stim
ulating. When one tries to realize clearly all the drudgery,
toil and self-sacrifice involved in such pioneer editing, one
must extend to Mr. Kreymborg hearty good wishes for success
in his venture. 

Max Michelson 

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Michelson was a childhood immigrant to America from Lithuania and settled in Chicago, working as a furrier. Later, in 1920 he moved to Seattle, 'soon after his arrival there, a mental hospital had to be his refuge' and there he was to stay until he died, in obscurity, in 1953.