[1] _A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce. New York: B. W. Huebsch._ The Vers Libre Contest At last after many months the prize contest has been decided. I know very little about prize contests, but I imagine that there has never been one in the history of poetry which could boast so many really bad poems. Personally I think there are not more than four or five with any suggestion of poetry in them: the rest are either involuntarily humorous, like the one printed at the end, or pompously anachronistic like the one which asks: “Shall I with frantic hands unloose the cord that binds me to this life?” The judges were Eunice Tietjens, Helen Hoyt, and William Carlos Williams. They came to no unanimous decision as to which two poems were the best, and the only two they voted for mutually are those printed below. _Sea Poppies_ turned out to be by H. D., and _Images of Friendship_ by Maxwell Bodenheim. (The former had not yet been published in H. D.’s book). Sea Poppies H. D. Amber husk fluted with gold, fruit on the sand marked with a rich grain, treasure spilled near the shrub-pines to bleach on the boulders: your stalk has caught root among wet pebbles and drift flung by the sea and grated shells, and slit conch-shells. Beautiful, wide-spread, fire upon leaf, what meadow yields so fragrant a leaf as your bright leaf? Images of Friendship Maxwell Bodenheim Grey drooping-shouldered bushes scrape the edges Of bending swirls of yellow-white flowers. So do my thoughts meet the wind-scattered color of you. The green shadowed trance of the water Is splintered to little white-tasseled awakenings By the beat of long black oars. So do your words cut the massed smoothness of thoughts of you. Split, brown-blue clouds press into each-other Over hills dressed in mute, clinging haze. So do my thoughts slowly form over the draped mystery of you. The two prizes of $25 each go therefore to H. D. and Mr. Bodenheim. But it may be interesting to print some of the others. For instance, not a single judge mentioned the following: Stream Richard Aldington I. Pebbles, that gleam dully, white, faint ochre, drab green: mosaic under pale sliding water. II. Foam; mobile crests leaping, sinking: thin fingers grasping round cold rocks. III. Pines, white ash-trees, black-thorns, winter grass, mirrored trembling in you, O vagrant, bending away from you and towards you: hesitating, importunate lovers. IV.