In manner Mr. Sandburg is closer to Walt Whitman than almost any other of our contemporary poets. I do not call him an imitator, and certainly he is no plagiarist; but I like that part of his work which is farthest removed from the manner of the man of Camden. Walt Whitman was a genius; and whilst it is quite possible and at times desirable to imitate his freedom in composition, it is not possible to catch the secret of his power. It would be an ungracious task to quote Mr. Sandburg at his worst; we are all pretty bad at our worst, whether we are poets or not; I prefer to cite one of his poems which proves to me that he is not only an original writer, but that he possesses a perceptive power of beauty that transforms the commonplace into something of poignant charm, like the song of the nightingale: Desolate and lone All night long on the lake Where fog trails and mist creeps, The whistle of a boat Calls and cries unendingly, Like some lost child In tears and trouble Hunting the harbour's breast And the harbour's eyes. He has a notable gift for effective poetic figures of speech; in his _Nocturne in a Deserted Brickyard_, an old pond in the moonlight is a "wide dreaming pansy." This and other pieces show true power of poetic interpretation; which makes me believe that the author ought to and will greatly surpass the average excellence exhibited in _Chicago Poems_. John Curtis Underwood is not only a dynamic, but an insurgent poet and critic. He has published four volumes of poems, _The Iron Muse_ (1910), _Americans_ (1912), _Processionals_ (1915), and _War Flames_ (1917). The roar of city streets and the deafening pounding of machinery resound through his pages; yet he somehow or other makes a singing voice heard amid the din. In fact he uses the din as an accompaniment; he is a kind of vocal Tubal Cain. He writes about strap-hangers, chorus girls, moving pictures, convicts, hospitals, bridge-builders and construction gangs--a symphony of noise, where everybody plays some instrument. He is no pessimist and he is not sour; there are a good many "damns" and "hells" in his verse, because, whatever he lacks, he does not lack emphasis. His philosophy seems to be similar to that of the last two stanzas of _In Memoriam_, though Mr. Underwood expresses it somewhat more concretely. Leading the long procession through the midnight, Man that was ether, fire, sea, germ and ape, Out of the aeons blind of slime emerging, Out of the aeons black where ill went groping, Finding the fire, was fused to human shape. Heading the dreary marches through dark ages; Where the rest perished that the rest might be, Out of the aeons raw and red of bloodshed, Man that was caveman, found the stars. Forever Man to the stars goes marching from the sea. His poem _Central_, in which the telephone girl's work is interpreted, is as typical as any of Mr. Underwood's style; and no one, I think, can fail to see the merit in his method.