A Poem for a Thursday #212

Vincent Starrett (1889-1974) was a Canadian-born American newspaperman and writer. He wrote mystery and supernatural fiction for pulp magazines in the 1920s and 1930s. His most famous work, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes was published in 1933. Starrett wrote a weekly column, Books Alive, that ran in the Chicago Tribune for twenty-five years.

Starrett wrote some poetry too though the critics were cool in their response. Here is an excerpt from an anonymous review of a poetry collection entitled Ebony Flame. The review appeared in Poetry magazine.

Vincent Starrett has a pleasant minor talent that sings its way along the well-oiled grooves which other men have fashioned. His poems are echoes, but they are often gracefully turned and sometimes haunting…And when you have read the poems you like the man, which is more than can be said of many a more authentic poet.

A “pleasant minor talent” and a likable man? You had best believe I will be reading more of him. I would especially like to read Books Alive: In Which Vincent Starrett Relates Intimate Anectodotes of Books and Authors. I am assuming it is a collection of his newspaper columns. He also wrote Best Loved Books of the 20th Century which is a collection of 52 essays.

Here dwell together still two men of note
Who never lived and so can never die:
How very near they seem, yet how remote
That age before the world went all awry.
But still the game's afoot for those with ears
Attuned to catch the distant view-halloo:
England is England yet, for all our fears —
Only those things the heart believes are true.

A yellow fog swirls past the window-pane
As night descends upon this fabled street:
A lonely hansom splashes through the rain,
The ghostly gas lamps fail at twenty feet.
Here, though the world explodes, these two survive,
And it is always eighteen ninety-five.

221B
(for Edgar W. Smith)
Vincent Starrett