Compiled by Verse Writers’ Club of Southern California
The Verse Writers’ Club’s first anthology proceeds as a relay among members rather than as a manifesto. Belle Cooper opens with fate, vintage, flight, travel, and cemetery memory; Estella Williamson answers with brief seasonal lyrics, and the collection then widens through legend, wartime elegy, city weariness, longing, and domestic song. Grace Atherton Dennen’s substantial group is formally varied—workshop observation, knitting song, dawn lyric, ghost-city meditation, patriotic narrative, and memorial—while Sarah Pulver McLean places New England weather beside the San Gabriel Valley, yucca, cinema, and mariposa lilies.
Most poems use rhyme, regular stanzas, song measures, or sonnet-like compression, but the shared forms carry markedly different voices. Ernest McGaffey’s dramatic animal poems, Snow Longley’s philosophical and romantic lyrics, Ben Field’s compact nature pieces, and Florence Parker Bornholdt’s mythic narratives broaden the register. Virginia Burton Bradley closes the largest group with Chinatown, aviation, dialect performances, field songs, and seasonal symphonies before “California Bluejay” and “My Thoughts of Thee” bring the volume to a quieter end. References to the First World War sit beside local gardens and club life, showing public history entering an intimate literary network. The book’s variety records the club’s actual practice: critique, recitation, periodical publication, and collective preservation across differing levels of experience.
Digital Reading Edition, Revised · Public PDF
Contents
A reading-edition note, the club’s dedication, and its original acknowledgment precede seventy-two poems arranged in source sequence. The contents move through member groups and include regional landscape, war, work, love, public memory, dialect, mythic narrative, and domestic lyric.
| Title | Creator | Genre / type | Reader PDF page |
|---|---|---|---|
| A Note on This Reading Edition | Brian Kim Stefans | editorial introduction and edition note | reader PDF p. 2 |
| Original Dedication | Verse Writers’ Club of Southern California | dedication | reader PDF p. 3 |
| Original Acknowledgment | Verse Writers’ Club of Southern California | acknowledgment | reader PDF p. 4 |
| Fate | Belle Cooper | poem | reader PDF p. 8 |
| The Vintage | Belle Cooper | poem | reader PDF p. 8 |
| If I Had Wings | Belle Cooper | poem | reader PDF p. 9 |
| In Warwickshire | Belle Cooper | poem | reader PDF p. 9 |
| Capri | Belle Cooper | poem | reader PDF p. 10 |
| At Four O’Clock | Belle Cooper | poem | reader PDF p. 11 |
| From Père la Chaise | Belle Cooper | poem | reader PDF p. 11 |
| Daffodils and Springtime | Estella Williamson | poem | reader PDF p. 12 |
| Spring | Estella Williamson | poem | reader PDF p. 12 |
| Bubbles | Estella Williamson | poem | reader PDF p. 13 |
| My Inspiration | Jay Dwiggins | poem | reader PDF p. 14 |
| A Legend of the Snow | Sara Earl | poem | reader PDF p. 14 |
| Christmas, 1917 | Sydney Sprague | poem | reader PDF p. 15 |
| The Wooden Cross | Esther Yarnell | poem | reader PDF p. 17 |
| Unsung | Esther Yarnell | poem | reader PDF p. 18 |
| City Bound | Esther Yarnell | poem | reader PDF p. 18 |
| Longing | Joy Bennett | poem | reader PDF p. 19 |
| Gone | Jessie Yarnell Kimball | poem | reader PDF p. 19 |
| Maidenhair Fern | Jessie Yarnell Kimball | poem | reader PDF p. 20 |
| Wind of Dawn | Grace Atherton Dennen | poem | reader PDF p. 21 |
| From a Workshop Window | Grace Atherton Dennen | poem | reader PDF p. 22 |
| A Knitting Song | Grace Atherton Dennen | poem | reader PDF p. 22 |
| The Coming of Dawn | Grace Atherton Dennen | poem | reader PDF p. 23 |
| Enchantment | Grace Atherton Dennen | poem | reader PDF p. 23 |
| On the Hill | Grace Atherton Dennen | poem | reader PDF p. 24 |
| Ghost Cities | Grace Atherton Dennen | poem | reader PDF p. 25 |
| Lexington | Grace Atherton Dennen | poem | reader PDF p. 26 |
| I Hope That I Remember | Grace Atherton Dennen | poem | reader PDF p. 27 |
| In Memoriam | Grace Atherton Dennen | poem | reader PDF p. 28 |
| October in New England | Sarah Pulver McLean | poem | reader PDF p. 28 |
| San Gabriel Valley in Winter | Sarah Pulver McLean | poem | reader PDF p. 29 |
| I Wonder | Sarah Pulver McLean | poem | reader PDF p. 30 |
| The Yucca | Sarah Pulver McLean | poem | reader PDF p. 30 |
| Te Deum Laudamus | Sarah Pulver McLean | poem | reader PDF p. 31 |
| Cinema Shadows | Sarah Pulver McLean | poem | reader PDF p. 32 |
| Mariposa Lilies | Sarah Pulver McLean | poem | reader PDF p. 32 |
| The Rattlesnake | Ernest McGaffey | poem | reader PDF p. 33 |
| Mavourneen Asthore | Ernest McGaffey | poem | reader PDF p. 34 |
| A Spectator | Snow Longley | poem | reader PDF p. 35 |
| A Moon Fantasy | Snow Longley | poem | reader PDF p. 36 |
| The Worker | Snow Longley | poem | reader PDF p. 37 |
| Disenchantment | Snow Longley | poem | reader PDF p. 38 |
| Philosophy | Snow Longley | poem | reader PDF p. 38 |
| Late Love | Snow Longley | poem | reader PDF p. 39 |
| The Vagrant | Snow Longley | poem | reader PDF p. 40 |
| Hail and Farewell | Sarah Pulver McLean | poem | reader PDF p. 41 |
| Mars | Blanche E. Greenough | poem | reader PDF p. 41 |
| The Goblet | Grace Wallace | poem | reader PDF p. 42 |
| Yucca on the Hills | Grace Wallace | poem | reader PDF p. 42 |
| Old Mothers | Grace Wallace | poem | reader PDF p. 43 |
| Spring Rain | Ben Field | poem | reader PDF p. 43 |
| Gipsy Compensation | Ben Field | poem | reader PDF p. 44 |
| A Vision | Ben Field | poem | reader PDF p. 45 |
| Arjuna | Florence Parker Bornholdt | poem | reader PDF p. 46 |
| Louana | Florence Parker Bornholdt | poem | reader PDF p. 46 |
| Comprehension | Florence Parker Bornholdt | poem | reader PDF p. 47 |
| The City | Florence Parker Bornholdt | poem | reader PDF p. 48 |
| On Hearing an Etude by Bortkiewicz | Pauline Barrington | poem | reader PDF p. 49 |
| Secret Thoughts | W. H. Bainbridge | poem | reader PDF p. 50 |
| Balboa, California—Where Breakers Meet | Katharine Bainbridge | poem | reader PDF p. 50 |
| The Lily Pond | Virginia Burton Bradley | poem | reader PDF p. 51 |
| Chinatown | Virginia Burton Bradley | poem | reader PDF p. 51 |
| Songs of a Corn Field | Virginia Burton Bradley | poem | reader PDF p. 53 |
| The Will-o’-the-Wisp | Virginia Burton Bradley | poem | reader PDF p. 54 |
| The Aviator | Virginia Burton Bradley | poem | reader PDF p. 55 |
| Love's Lament | Virginia Burton Bradley | poem | reader PDF p. 56 |
| The Busy Bee | Virginia Burton Bradley | poem | reader PDF p. 56 |
| When de San' Man Comes | Virginia Burton Bradley | poem | reader PDF p. 57 |
| Bre’r Rastus Leads de Meetin’ | Virginia Burton Bradley | poem | reader PDF p. 58 |
| Summer Symphonies | Virginia Burton Bradley | poem | reader PDF p. 59 |
| California Bluejay | Ben Field | poem | reader PDF p. 60 |
| My Thoughts of Thee | Blanche E. Greenough | poem | reader PDF p. 61 |
Contributors
- Verse Writers’ Club of Southern California — Collective compiler
- Belle Cooper — Poet
- Estella Williamson — Poet
- Jay Dwiggins — Poet
- Sara Earl — Poet
- Sydney Sprague — Poet
- Esther Yarnell — Poet
- Joy Bennett — Poet
- Jessie Yarnell Kimball — Poet
- Grace Atherton Dennen — Poet
- Sarah Pulver McLean — Poet
- Ernest McGaffey — Poet
- Snow Longley — Poet
- Blanche E. Greenough — Poet
- Grace Wallace — Poet
- Ben Field — Poet
- Florence Parker Bornholdt — Poet
- Pauline Barrington — Poet
- W. H. Bainbridge — Poet
- Katharine Bainbridge — Poet
- Virginia Burton Bradley — Poet
- Brian Kim Stefans — Editorial introduction and digital edition apparatus
Publication details
Subjects and editorial notes
Subjects
Keywords
Verse Writers’ Club Anthology of Verse Southern California Harr Wagner 1919 literary clubs
Continuity notes
Part of the shared Anthologies and Documents collection.
Edition note
The formatted edition presents the selected source text in a stable, searchable reading format with modern navigation. Source scans remain private editorial evidence and are not part of the public upload. For the website upload, the page canvas was proportionally fitted to a 6 × 9 inch trim without cropping or changing the text.
Source note
Metadata and contents were checked against the 61-page formatted PDF and the identified source scan files where available.
Rights and citation
Copyright notice
Copyright in public-domain source texts has expired in the United States. Copyright in later works and new editorial matter remains with the respective authors, editors, publishers, or successors.
Rights status
Public Domain
Rights basis
The original 1919 publication is in the public domain in the United States. New editorial introduction, apparatus, and design were prepared in 2026.
Suggested citation
Verse Writers’ Club of Southern California. Anthology of Verse, 1916–1919. Harr Wagner Publishing Co., 1919. Text/Tech Anthologies and Documents, reader’s edition, 2026.