Selected Works of Elinor Wylie

Evelyn Helmick Hively

• Publisher: The Kent State University Press
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781612774305
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Collections
• Index: Literature

A sampling of Elinor Wylie's most representative work

In the 1920s Elinor Wylie's poetry and novels were critically acclaimed and enjoyed popularity in both the United States and England. Her poems were published in the New Yorker, the Century, the New Republic, and the Saturday Review of Literature, and she was described by contemporaries as an icon of the age. Much of the charm of Wylie's work is in her humor as well as in her understanding and mastery of so many poetic forms. Her magazine stories and articles from Vanity Fair, the New Yorker, and other leading periodicals of the twenties demonstrate her virtuosity and are illustrative of the era.

Selected Works of Elinor Wylie contains 113 of the 161 poems Wylie chose for the volumes published in her lifetime and 100 more that appeared in Collected Poems and in Last Poems. Also included are the first chapters of each of her novels, Jennifer Lorn, The Venetian Glass Nephew, The Orphan Angel, and Mr. Hodge and Mr. Hazard. Editor and scholar Evelyn Hively chose short stories, essays, reviews, and articles to further define Wylie's rich and broad repertoire and her place on the 1920s literary scene.

Scholars and researchers of this modern woman writer and her contemporaries will find this a welcome addition to women's literary studies.

CHAPTER ONE

From Incidental Numbers

London: William Clowes and Sons, 1912

THE KNIGHT FALLEN ON EVIL DAYS

Saturday Review of Literature, April 1927

God send the Devil is a gentleman

Else had I none amongst mine enemies!

O what uncouth and cruel times are these

In which the unlettered Boor and Artisan,

The snarling Priest and smirking Lawyer can

Spit filthy enmity at whom they please—

At one, returned from spilling overseas

The Princely blood of foes Olympian.

Apothecaries curse me, who of late

Was cursed by Kings for slaughtering French lords!

Friendless and loverless is my estate,

Yet God be praised that Hell at least affords

An adversary worthy of my hate,

With whom the Angels deigned to measure swords!

PEGASUS LOST

Untermeyer, Modern American Poetry

And there I found a gray and ancient ass,

With dull glazed stare, and stubborn wrinkled smile,

Sardonic, mocking my wide-eyed amaze,

A clumsy hulking form in that white place

At odds with the small stable, cleanly, Greek,

The marble manger and the golden oats.

With loathing hands I felt the ass’s side,

Solidly real and hairy to the touch.

Then knew I that I dreamed not, but saw truth;

And knowing, wished I still might hope I dreamed.

The door stood wide, I went into the air.

The day was blue and filled with rushing wind,

A day to ride high in the heavens and taste

The glory of the gods who tread the stars.

Up in the mighty purity I saw

A flashing shape that gladly sprang aloft—

My little Pegasus, like a far white bird

Seeking sun-regions, never to return.

Silently then I turned my steps about,

Entered the stable, saddled the slow ass;

Then on its back I journeyed dustily

Between sun-wilted hedgerows into town.

“LES LAURIERS SONT COUPÉS”

Contemporary Verse, May 1920

Ah, love, within the shadow of the wood

The laurels are cut down; some other brows

May bear the classic wreath which Fame allows

And find the burden honorable and good.

Have we not passed the laurels as they stood—

Soft in the veil with which the Spring endows

The wintry glitter of their woven boughs—

Nor stopped to break the branches while we could?

Ah, love, for other brows they are cut down.

Thornless and scentless are their stems and flowers,

And cold as death their twisted coronal.

Sweeter to us the sharpness of this crown;

Sweeter the wildest roses which are ours;

Sweeter the petals, even when they fall.

CHAPTER TWO

From Nets to Catch the Wind

New York: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1921
London: Alfred A. Knopf, 1928
Collected Poems of Elinor Wylie. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1932

BEAUTY

New York Evening Post, October 1920

Say not of Beauty she is good,

Or aught but beautiful,

Or sleek to doves’ wings of the wood

Her wild wings of a gull.

Call her not wicked; that word’s touch

Consumes her like a curse;

But love her not too much, too much,

For that is even worse.

O, she is neither good nor bad,

But innocent and wild!

Enshrine her and she dies, who had

The hard heart of a child.

THE EAGLE AND THE MOLE

New Republic, January 1921
Bookman, April 1921

Avoid ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1 From Incidental Numbers
• 2 From Nets to Catch the Wind
• 3 From Black Armour
• 4 From Trivial Breath
• 5 From Angels and Earthly Creatures
• 6 From Collected Poems of Elinor Wylie: Hitherto Uncollected Poems
• 7 From Last Poems of Elinor Wylie
• 8 Poems Only in Periodicals
• 9 From Jennifer Lorn: Book One
• 10 From The Venetian Glass Nephew: Book One
• 11 From The Orphan Angel
• 12 From Mr. Hodge and Mr. Hazard
• 13 Short Stories
• 14 Articles and Reviews
• Index of First Lines