Arthur Davison Ficke: Poetry – Quad Cities Writers: Early 20th Century

Ficke was especially known for his poetry: he developed some traditional forms, especially the sonnet, but also experimented with (and sometimes mocked) “freer” kinds of writing, for example in 1916’s Spectra

General Links

Collected Poems

The Happy Princess and Other Poems (Boston, 1907) [Google Books]
From the Isles: A Series of Songs out of Greece (Samurai Press, 1907) [Google Books]
The Earth Passion, Boundary, and Other Poems (1908)
Some Recent Poems of Note (1910)
Twelve Japanese Painters (Chicago, 1913) [Google Books]
Sonnets of a Portrait-Painter (New York and London, 1914) [Google Books]
The Man on the Hilltop and Other Poems (New York and London, 1915) [Google Books]
Spectra: A Book of Poetic Experiments by Anne Knish and Emanuel Morgan (New York, 1916) [Google Books]
- In this spoof of modernist poetry, Ficke wrote under the pseudonym of Anne Knish; Witter Bynner under that of Emanuel Morgan
An April Elegy (New York and London, 1917) [Google Books]
Out of Silence and Other Poems (1924)
Selected Poems: With a Preface on the Nature of Poetry (New York, 1926) [Google Books]
Christ in China (1927)
Mountain against Mountain (1929)
The Secret and Other Poems (1936)
Tumultuous Shore and Other Poems (1942)

Poems Printed Individually

“The Unresigned” in The Harvard Monthly 37-38 (1903) [Google Books]
“The Ancient Legend”; “The Last Refuge”; “Song” in Scribners (1905) [Google Books]
“The Meadow Wind” in Scribners (1907) [Google Books]
“Fathers and Sons”; “The Petrarchean Sonnet …” in The Poetry Journal 3 [Google Books]
“Portrait of a Woman, by Yeisho” in Contemporary Verse 3-4 (1917) [Google Books]
“At Kamakura: 1917” in Prairie Gold (Chicago, 1917) [Google Books]
Three Sonnets: “Perspective of Co-ordination”; “World Beyond World”; “Leaf-movement” AND Three Sonnets: “Old Wives’ Talk”; “Holy Writ”; “The Book of Lu T’ang Chu” in Poetry 18 (Apr.-Sept. 1921) [Google Books]
“Fiat Lux”; “November Moon”; “Peasant Before a Shrine”; “Portrait of a Lady”; “Two Poems of 1917” in The Grinnell Review 16 (1921) [Google Books]
“Her Hands”; “Portrait of a Stranger”; Marcia”; “Ruth” in The Measure 21 (Nov. 1922) [Google Books]
“Poet Accepting a Laurel Wreath” in The Conning Tower Book (New York, 1926) [Google Books]

Excerpts and Anthologies

Braithwaite (ed.), Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1914 and Yearbook of American Poetry (Cambridge, 1914) [Google Books]
Kreymborg (ed.), Others: An Anthology of the New Verse (New York, 1916) [Google Books]
Claire (ed.), Modern American Verse (London, 1918) [Google Books]
Stevenson (ed.), The Home Book of Verse: American and English 1580-1918, 3rd ed. (New York, 1918) [Google Books]
O’Brien (ed.), The Masque of Poets: A Collection of New Poems by Contemporary American Poets (New York, 1918) [Google Books]
Braithwaite (ed.), Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1923 and Yearbook of American Poetry (Boston, 1923) [Google Books]
Coblentz (ed.), Modern American Lyrics: An Anthology (New York, 1924) [Google Books]
Le Galliene (ed.), The Le Galliene Book of American Verse (New York, 1925) [Google Books]
Stevenson (ed.), The Home Book of Modern Verse (New York, 1925) [Google Books]
Untermeyer, Modern American Poetry: A Critical Anthology, 3rd rev. ed. (New York, 1925) [Google Books]
Benét (ed.), Poems for Youth: An American Anthology (New York, 1925) [Google Books]
French (ed.), Recent Poetry from America, England, Ireland and Canada (Boston etc., 1926) [Google Books]
Briggs (ed.), Great Poems of the English Language (New York, 1927) [Google Books]

Reviews by Ficke

“Translating the Untranslatable,” The Dial 76 (1924) [Google Books]

Reviews of Ficke

The Poetry Journal 3-4 [Google Books]; The Poetry Journal 4-5 [Google Books]
Welles, “Quiet Colors,” The Measure 21 (Nov. 1922) [Google Books]
Dell in Measure 25-36 (1923-24) [Google Books]
Untermeyer, American Poetry Since 1900 (New York, 1923) [Google Books]
Lewis Worthington Smith, “Arthur Davison Ficke,” Midland Schools 41, no. 4 (Dec. 1926) [Google Books]