It would not take one more than an hour to read aloud all the poetry of the Southwest that could stand rereading. At the top of all I should place Fay Yauger's "Planter's Charm," published in a volume of the same title. With it belongs "The Hired Man on Horseback," by Eugene Manlove Rhodes, a long poem of passionate fidelity to his own decent kind of men, with power to ennoble the reader, and with the form necessary to all beautiful composition. This is the sole and solitary piece of poetry to be found in all the myriads of rhymes classed as "cowboy poetry." I'd want Stanley Vestal's "Fandango," in a volume of the same title. Margaret Bell Houston's "Song from the Traffic," which takes one to the feathered mesquites and the bluebonnets, might come next. Begging pardon of the perpetually palpitating New Mexico lyricists, I would skip most of them, except for bits of Mary Austin, Witter Bynner, Haniel Long, and maybe somebody I don't know, and go to George Sterling's "Father Coyote"--in California. Probably I would come back to gallant Phil LeNoir's "Finger of Billy the Kid," written while he was dying of tuberculosis in New Mexico. I wouldn't leave without the swift, brilliantly economical stanzas that open the ballad of "Sam Bass," and a single line, "He came of a solitary race," in the ballad of "Jesse James." Several other poets have, of course, achieved something for mortals to enjoy and be lifted by. Their work has been sifted into various anthologies. The best one is_ Signature of the Sun: Southwest Verse, 1900-1950_, selected and edited by Mabel Major and T. M. Pearce, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1950. Two other anthologies are _Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp_, by John A. Lomax, 1919, reprinted in 1950 by Duell, Sloan and Pearce, New York; _The Road to Texas_, by Whitney Montgomery, Kaleidograph, Dallas, 1940. Montgomery's Kaleidograph Press has published many volumes by southwestern poets. Somebody who has read them all and has read all the poets represented, without enough of distillation, in _Signature of the Sun_ could no doubt be juster on the subject than I am. Like historical fiction, drama of the Southwest has been less dramatic than actuality and less realistic than real characters. Lynn Riggs of Oklahoma, author of _Green Grow the Lilacs_, has so far been the most successful dramatist. 34. Miscellaneous Interpreters and Institutions ARTISTS ART MAY BE SUBSTANTIVE, but more than being its own excuse for being, it lights up the land it depicts, shows people what is significant, cherishable in their own lives and environments. Thus Peter Hurd of New Mexico has revealed windmills, Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri has elevated mules. Nature may not literally follow art, but human eyes follow art and literature in recognizing nature.