KATHERINE ANNE PORTER is as dedicated to artistic perfection as was A. E. Housman. Her output has, therefore, been limited: _Flowering Judas_ (1930, enlarged 1935); _Pale Horse, Pale Rider_ (1939), _The Leaning Tower_ (1944). Her stories penetrate psychology, especially the psychology of a Mexican hacienda, with rare finesse. Her small canvases sublimate the inner realities of men and women. She appeals only to cultivated taste, and to some tastes no other fiction writer in America today is her peer in subtlety. EUGENE MANLOVE RHODES died in 1934. Most of his novels--distinguished by intricate plots and bright dialogue--had appeared in the _Saturday Evening Post_. His finest story is "Paso Por Aqui," published in the volume entitled _Once in the Saddle_ (1927). Gene Rhodes, who has a canyon--on which he ranched--named for him in New Mexico, was an artist; at the same time, he was a man akin to his land and its men. He is the only writer of the range country who has been accorded a biography--_The Hired Man on Horseback_, by May D. Rhodes, his wife. See under "Range Life." CONRAD RICHTER'S _The Sea of Grass_ (1937) is a kind of prose poem, beautiful and tragic. Lutie, wife of the owner of the grass, is perhaps the most successful creation of a ranch woman that fiction has so far achieved. DOROTHY SCARBOROUGH'S _The Wind_ (1925) excited the wrath of chambers of commerce and other boosters in West Texas--a tribute to its realism. _The Grapes of Wrath_, by John Steinbeck (1939), made Okies a word in the American language. Although dated by the Great Depression, its humanity and realism are beyond date. It is among the few good novels produced by America in the first half of the twentieth century. JOHN W. THOMASON, after fighting as a marine in World War I, wrote _Fix Bayonets_ (1926), followed by _Jeb Stuart_ (1930). A native Texan, he followed the southern tradition rather than the western. _Lone Star Preacher_ (1941) is a strong and sympathetic characterization of Confederate fighting men woven into fictional form. In _High John the Conqueror_ (Macmillan, 1948) John W. Wilson conveys real feeling for the tragic life of Negro sharecroppers in the Brazos bottoms. He represents the critical awareness of life that has come to modern fiction of the Southwest, in contrast to the sterile action, without creation of character, in most older fiction of the region. 33. Poetry and Drama "KNOWLEDGE itself is power," Sir Francis Bacon wrote in classical Latin, and in abbreviated form the proverb became a familiar in households and universities alike. But knowledge of what? There is no power in knowledge of mediocre verse. I had rather flunk my Wasserman test Than read a poem by Edgar A. Guest.