Anthology of Manual Arts Verse – Extremes and Moderations

Edited by Grove Brown

1922Poetry Anthology California Poetry Anthologies

Manual Arts High School’s alumni made this 1922 anthology from eleven years of student writing, and its forty-nine poems retain the exploratory energy of a workshop rather than the uniform finish of a school monument. Ralph Cleveland’s opening group moves from “Alma Mater” and a Pacific address to mythic forests, Vikings, and Stevenson; Jose Rodriguez follows with sonnets and a triolet whose formal control is deliberately intimate. Betty Dick Frazee alternates chant, prayer, flower lyric, and sea poem, while later contributors compress their ambitions into epitaphs, reveries, and short night pieces.

The book’s strongest distinction is tonal range. Earnest invocations of liberty and humanity sit beside mock-heroic schoolroom verse, the dialect performance of “’Cause I’s Be’n Borned Ag’in,” and Grove Brown’s compact urban scene “Chinatown.” Regular rhyme and stanza patterns dominate, but students bend those structures toward spoken humor, song, and locally observed detail. Three separate poems titled “Night” make an accidental formal experiment: each uses darkness differently—as atmosphere, reflection, or dramatic setting. The concluding “Fallen Monarch” turns a damaged tree into an elegy, bringing the collection back to the relation between craft and endurance that its editors hoped student publication could secure.

Complete Digital Reading Edition · Public PDF

Read online Download PDF

Contents

Editorial notes and the Alumni Association’s foreword introduce forty-nine poems by twenty-four Manual Arts High School writers. Contributor groups move from Ralph Cleveland and Jose Rodriguez through comic, devotional, nature, school, urban, and occasional verse, followed by a textual note.

Title	Creator	Genre / type	Reader PDF page
Edition Note	Brian Kim Stefans	digital edition apparatus	reader PDF p. 3
A Note on This Edition	Brian Kim Stefans	editorial introduction	reader PDF p. 6
Foreword	Alumni Association of Manual Arts High School	foreword	reader PDF p. 8
Alma Mater	Ralph Cleveland	poem	reader PDF p. 9
The Trail of the Sunset	Ralph Cleveland	poem	reader PDF p. 10
The Naiad’s Kiss	Ralph Cleveland	poem	reader PDF p. 11
To the Ocean	Ralph Cleveland	poem	reader PDF p. 12
The Hunter’s Song	Ralph Cleveland	poem	reader PDF p. 13
A Viking’s Son	Ralph Cleveland	poem	reader PDF p. 14
California	Ralph Cleveland	poem	reader PDF p. 15
Isle of Mists	Ralph Cleveland	poem	reader PDF p. 16
To Stevenson	Ralph Cleveland	poem	reader PDF p. 17
Sonnet, to Helen	Jose Rodriguez	poem	reader PDF p. 18
To Helen’s Portrait	Jose Rodriguez	poem	reader PDF p. 19
Sonnet, to My Mother	Jose Rodriguez	poem	reader PDF p. 20
Sonnet, to a Baby	Jose Rodriguez	poem	reader PDF p. 21
To	Jose Rodriguez	poem	reader PDF p. 22
Triolet	Jose Rodriguez	poem	reader PDF p. 23
Lines Addressed To A Merciful Teacher	James Doolittle	poem	reader PDF p. 24
“Cheer”	Betty Dick Frazee	poem	reader PDF p. 25
Chant to the Imps	Betty Dick Frazee	poem	reader PDF p. 26
Penstamens	Betty Dick Frazee	poem	reader PDF p. 27
Night and the Sea	Betty Dick Frazee	poem	reader PDF p. 28
A Prayer	Betty Dick Frazee	poem	reader PDF p. 29
To a Bee	Betty Dick Frazee	poem	reader PDF p. 30
The Weaver	Clarence Osborne	poem	reader PDF p. 31
Sing, My Little Cricket!	Kenzo Kubota	poem	reader PDF p. 32
Chinatown	Grove Brown	poem	reader PDF p. 33
I Long to Dance on the Sea	Ynez Lowe	poem	reader PDF p. 34
Humanity, Generation After Generation, Wages a Never-Ending, Hopeless Battle Against an Unconquerable Foe	John Jackson	poem	reader PDF p. 35
’Cause I’s Be’n Borned Ag’in	Wendell Phillips Gladden, Jr.	poem	reader PDF p. 36
Dreaming	Wendell Phillips Gladden, Jr.	poem	reader PDF p. 37
Night	Jo Leavitt	poem	reader PDF p. 38
In Reverie	Henry Reinecke	poem	reader PDF p. 39
Playmates	Henry Reinecke	poem	reader PDF p. 40
Memories	Henry Reinecke	poem	reader PDF p. 41
For Liberty	Raymond Jones	poem	reader PDF p. 42
At Twilight	Raymond Jones	poem	reader PDF p. 43
Night	Raymond Jones	poem	reader PDF p. 44
The Adventures of Andy	Raymond Jones	poem	reader PDF p. 45
Spring’s a Comin’	Phil Reynolds	poem	reader PDF p. 46
The Violet	Mary Jane Beekman	poem	reader PDF p. 47
An Epitaph	Don Bullis	poem	reader PDF p. 48
The Rosebud	Helen Newton	poem	reader PDF p. 49
French-Heel Lass	Jack Du Bois	poem	reader PDF p. 50
Night	Elizabeth Gallagher	poem	reader PDF p. 51
To My Dream Child	Violet Wilson	poem	reader PDF p. 52
The Wind	Violet Wilson	poem	reader PDF p. 53
Evening	Louise Hackett	poem	reader PDF p. 54
Seeking	Dorothy Gilbreth	poem	reader PDF p. 55
Evening Picture	Josephine Gidley	poem	reader PDF p. 56
The Fallen Monarch	Lizabel Hemenes	poem	reader PDF p. 57
Textual Note	Brian Kim Stefans	digital edition apparatus	reader PDF p. 58

Contributors

Grove Brown — Editor and poet
Alumni Association of Manual Arts High School — Compiler and publisher
Ralph Cleveland — Poet
Jose Rodriguez — Poet
James Doolittle — Poet
Betty Dick Frazee — Poet
Clarence Osborne — Poet
Kenzo Kubota — Poet
Ynez Lowe — Poet
John Jackson — Poet
Wendell Phillips Gladden, Jr. — Poet
Jo Leavitt — Poet
Henry Reinecke — Poet
Raymond Jones — Poet
Phil Reynolds — Poet
Mary Jane Beekman — Poet
Don Bullis — Poet
Helen Newton — Poet
Jack Du Bois — Poet
Elizabeth Gallagher — Poet
Violet Wilson — Poet
Louise Hackett — Poet
Dorothy Gilbreth — Poet
Josephine Gidley — Poet
Lizabel Hemenes — Poet
Brian Kim Stefans — Editorial introduction and digital edition apparatus

Publication details

Broad format: Anthologies
Collection: California Poetry Anthologies
Document type: Poetry Anthology
Original title: Anthology of Manual Arts Verse
Original publication date: 1922
Editor: Grove Brown; Brian Kim Stefans (editorial introduction and digital edition apparatus)
Compiler: Grove Brown; Alumni Association of Manual Arts High School
Original publisher: Alumni Association, Manual Arts High School
Place of publication: Los Angeles, California
Language: English
Pagination: Original scan: 73 PDF pages, including archival wrapper. Digital reading edition: 58 PDF pages.
Available editions: Reader’s Edition
Edition type: Complete Digital Reading Edition

Subjects and editorial notes

Subjects

California poetry High school publications Los Angeles literary history Manual Arts High School Student poetry

Keywords

Anthology of Manual Arts Verse Grove Brown Manual Arts High School Los Angeles student writers 1922

Continuity notes

Part of the shared Anthologies and Documents collection.

Edition note

The complete anthology was reset from the photographed 1922 pages. The correction pass repaired OCR substitutions, missing letters and words, false punctuation, damaged line endings, and lost indentation while retaining supported historical spelling and dialect. The new cover uses the purple and gray named in “Alma Mater” and an abstract drafting-board and school-window grid. The source scan remains private editorial evidence and is not part of the public upload.

Source note

Metadata, contributors, contents, wording, lineation, and indentation were checked against the 73-page archival PDF and the 58-page formatted edition. The original colophon records Van Velzer Bros. as printer and a limitation of 250 copies.

Rights and citation

Copyright notice

Rights status

Public Domain

Rights basis

The original 1922 publication is in the public domain in the United States. New editorial introduction, apparatus, and design were prepared in 2026.

Suggested citation

Brown, Grove, ed. Anthology of Manual Arts Verse. Alumni Association of Manual Arts High School, 1922. Text/Tech Anthologies and Documents, reader’s edition, 2026.