Poetry Commons^™

Excerpts

Manuscripts

Excerpts from additional submissions by authors: Betty Lewis, Joseph C. Greenlee, Suzanne Weesner, Katherine Armstrong, and J. Wm. Lynn.

A Nightmare, Jane Burrin

Manuscripts

The lake was unusually calm that particular June day, when my Mother and Father started on their daily fishing trip.

I bade them farewell from the dock, and reluctantly started back to the cottage. Although I did not have the patience for fishing, it seemed that there should be something more exciting to look forward to than a game of solitaire.

Resigning myself to this entertainment, I settled down on the screened porch with my cards and the radio. I played the necessary unsuccessful game, and my luck began to change. I triumphantly placed the last ace on the stack …

The Butler University Library, Fayetta Hall

Manuscripts

There are many features about our school which I admire, and there are surely some features which I have not yet learned to appreciate fully. One prominent feature which falls into both of these classes is the university library. My realization of its worth has increased with my growing knowledge of the library's history and development.

When our college was known as the Northwestern Christian University, it was located on College Avenue. As far as is known, no real library was then existant. However, as far back as 1873, a small room in the building was set aside and two …

Ode To A Jukebox, Rosemary Haviland

Manuscripts

Oh fat gleaming monster reposing in the corner
With your soul glowing like satan's fires,
Whence have you come to destroy life's peaceful existence;
To tempt youth and put new lines in the seers' brows?

Like the roaring blasting furnace, you require nourishment,
Taking pity on your pangs of hunger, I'll feed you a nickle,
Ungrateful one! There you sit with your polished sides gleaming,
Smug and satisfied like a fat Buddha.

Slowly you devour my offering,
And as it reaches your digestive system,
You gr--rr-owl and gr--rr-Ind;
Instead of a soft crooning thanks, you stab at me with a …

Frustrated Genius, Arthur Graham

Manuscripts

He sits down at the desk, tears a sheet of paper out of a tablet, picks up a pencil, and commences. After commencing for some twenty minutes he decides that he should un-commence long enough to decide upon a subject upon which he can commence, Another twenty minutes pass during which he systemazically breaks the lead of his pencil, sharpens his pencil, turns the radio on, turns the radio off, takes his shoes off, puts his shoes on, musses up his hair, combs his hair, loosens his necktie, takes his necktie off, takes off his glasses, twirls his glasses around …

Our Christmas Tree, Lester Hunt

Manuscripts

We, like many other families, have our own special customs. We have our holiday customs, our dinner customs, our own way of making beds, and our own brand of humour. There is one holiday custom, however, that I especially treasure because I had a share in its initiation. It is the custom of getting our own Christmas tree.

As I remember this first experience, it took place about a week before Christmas, but we still hadn't found a Christmas tree that we liked. It was then that we "menfolks" decided to get our own tree. I was eight years old …

Oh, Pudgy!, Peggy O'Donnell

Manuscripts

Well, Pudgy, here we are on top of Maple Ridge. Isn't this the most splendiferous day? I can just lie here basking in the sun (as the Florida travel folders say), and you can sniff around and explore everything to your canine heart's content.

Yes, a spring day up here is wonderful, but I guess it will always be fall on the Ridge for me. Fall, with the maples all gold and red, and the sky all blue, you and me and .. .. and Bill.

'Member Bill, Pudgy? You used to love it when he rubbed your ears. He …

Shortages And Priorities, George Zainey

Manuscripts

The day is soon to come when the shortage of men will become so acute that our feminine sex is going to have to have a priority rating to get a date. This of course will be a great blow to our beautiful, energetic, and studious co-eds when they will have to tear a little coupon from their book, push it in the face of a "soon to be rare" man, and yell with anxiety and a gleam in their eyes, "You're mine tonight --oh boy!" It will be an equally tragic situation if the precious men should choose to …

An Era Was Past, Stuart Palmer

Manuscripts

There sat the old station, all boarded up, and looking very much like a thing of the past. It had changed a lot in five years. It had changed from a place of activity, of hasty farewells and hearty receptions, to a dingy old building that nobody noticed now. Someday soon someone would come along and tear it down for the wood in it, and thus would end one of the most significant and colorful epics that the little town of Richfield Springs had ever witnessed.

Slowly I walked up the old brick path that led to the ancient structure, …

A Dime Novel, Arline Hyde

Manuscripts

Spying a red cover on a magazine at a newstand, a customer may pick it up and upon casual examination notice. the title LOVE blare in large print across the page. "A ten-story issue" the cover reads, with two featured articles entitled "Revenge Honeymoon" and "Hotel-Lobby Flirt." A blond cover-girI peers over her almost bare shoulder. "Hmm, looks interesting," thinks the customer and so another typical pulp magazine is sold for the small sum of one dime.

My Favorite Spot, Elizabeth Hyatt

Manuscripts

About an hour and a half from nowhere in a. western woodland, a tiny cabin nestles among the trees. Nearby, a small brook runs clear and cold, babbling softly over the stones. Flowers flaunt their colors in a gay parade around the cabin.

Inside, the odor of clean, bare pine is strong and refreshing. The furniture is simple and sturdy. Its unpainted finish matches the walls and floor perfectly. In one corner, a double-decked bunk bed stands invitingly. The stone-hewn fireplace at the far side of the one room cabin leads a double life; it warms the occupants and cooks …

The Scrawl Of An American, Joe Howitt

Manuscripts

An American is the sum of all the contributions, both good and bad, of all the peoples on earth. Our country was founded to satisfy the desires and to develop the interests of everyone, be he Jew or Gentile, white or yellow. At first America was settled by people who had been religiously persecuted, and then later by those who sought economic gain in the land of "golden opportunity."

The American, from the time of the writing of the constitution up until the present day, has valued more than anything ~is right to worship as he pleases, to enter into …

Upon Entering My Seventeenth Year, Donald Morgan

Manuscripts

The past summer was, by all of the usual standards, uneventful. It was the first summer I can remember that did not include an automobile trip to the East, West, or to the beloved "north country." Instead, I attended summer school for six weeks, then suffered the worst month of absolute idleness that I have ever experienced. Although disappointing in its monotony, the vacation was not entirely without advantages. In my school course, I was introduced to a subject which interests me intensely, economics. Although totally different from the sciences I had studied previously, it fully satisfied my craving for …

Winter Evening, Donald Rider

Manuscripts

As the year evolves, nature contemplates, nature broods, nature rants, and nature breathes the warm glow of spring. She may brood the noisy thunderstorm of summer, rant the early autumn squalls, and whisper with zephyrs the heralding of spring, but tonight she contemplates. Tonight she contemplates and her utter silence pervades the hunter's cabin.

Rubber And The War, Mildred Reimer

Manuscripts

We walk on it, ride on it, wear it, and use it in our pastimes. We make use of it for comfort and safety. We see it everywhere. Much of it that is used is hidden from us under silk, cotton, or steel. This popular product can be made to stretch ten times its length or treated so that it will not stretch at all. It can be spun so fine that it resembles a spider's web or made so lasting that it will outwear steel. It can be made to withstand hot or cold temperatures, to absorb water or …

Sonnet, Lucy Kaufman

Manuscripts

Now let the sweeping clouds of spring be gone
forever from these wild perfidious skies,
and let no more a laughing sun mask dawn
with psuedo-joy to veil its mocking lies.
No more the solitude of swinging space
stretching through the unrecorded hours,
marks alone time's lofty ponderous pace
across this heaven and above these towers.

Now you will see a servile sky defer
at dusk before a dark-winged enemy,
and you will hear the low portentous purr
of planes announcing death decorously.
No more can nights which swept the heavens clean
of war, within these shell-shocked skies be seen.

Conversion, Jack Devine

Manuscripts

Mary Anna opened the door and saw her man. Her man was a hobo, looking for a bite to eat and possibly a pie which had been set on some ledge to cool.

Rambling Joe looked at the little girl and in his most polite manner, doffed his hat and said, "Little girl, I wonder if you would ask your ma if she could spare a man a bite to eat."

"My mother isn't here," Mary Anna replied, and puffing up with importance said, "if you will come in; maybe I can find something."

Mary Anna had just come bark …

Evolution, Jeanne Gass

Manuscripts

Lora Tiptoed across the bedroom stepping gingerly from one rug to another, avoiding the chilling touch of the hardwood floor. She fumbled in the closet and finally slipped her cold feet into sensible blue leather house-slippers. The heels clicked softly on the hall floor. She raised the window shade in the bathroom, and the half-light of the early morning added cheerless rays to the cold room. Lora gasped at the shock of cold water on her face, and her hands shook as she drew curlpins from her hair. She combed her hair hurriedly, and its electricity bristled about her shoulders …

Verse Forms Class Poetry

Manuscripts

Once from Carthage Dido's funeral pyre
Signalled Aeneas that his dream was ended
And all his hour of passion purged by fire,
By fire of brand and fire of spirit blended.
The way the gods had marked once more seemed best
And he was free to found the destined race
That sprang from Troy but settled in the West
With trojan greatness in the Roman place.
Again from Carthage sails the founding host
Again toward Rome the guided legions sail
To build a newest Troy upon the coast
That held Aeneas in the older tale.
But now the guides are …

November With The World At War, Mary M. Schortemeier

Manuscripts

November with the world at war
Is a strange sight
And a frightening thing.

When the leaves die and the headlines scream
Of more important deaths it is so evident
What death is.

And when the darkness hours are almost twice
The light, it is far too easy to guess how it would be
With the dead.

And when a lame bird is all that is left
Of the summer singers it is plain what the world would be
After all the deaths.

And the cold wind and the first snow
Chill the soul like the final kiss on the …

The Camera Marches To War, Thomas J. Luck

Manuscripts

"Since the United States is engaged in a deadly struggle for its very exsistence, every industry and every man, woman, and child must alter their peace-time operations so as to fit into the war program," declared Paul V. McNutt, Federal man-power commissioner, in a recent speech. Nowhere is the will for readjustments to fit the war program any greater than in industry. The photographic profession has especially made a large contribution to the geared-up production, and the results of these changes may bring about new types of endeavor for the profession.

Front Matter

Manuscripts

Front matter includes: front and back covers, table of contents, and masthead.

It's Snowing, Lucy Kaufman

Manuscripts

An icy wind lashed down from the north, snarling at the city. During most of the night it continued, and people winced under the frosty whip, while they offered platitudes concerning winter and its early art-Iva]. Shortly after midnight however, the gale subsided. Huge clouds rolled in over the fields and streets and houses, obscuring the stars and bringing the first snow of the season. Silently and steadily it fell, as window-panes and street lamps became fuzzy with the clinging white flakes. Trees and buildings exchanged sharp outlines for blurred shadows, and the snow-covered bushes faded into the snow-covered ground, …

Volume 10, Issue 1: Full Issue

Manuscripts

Full issue of the November 1942 issue of Manuscripts. Includes work by: Patricia Sylvester, Lucy Kaufman, Richard Moores, Janet Jarrett, Mary Margarette Schortemeier, Virginia Skidmore, Jeanne Gass, Jeane Siskel, Bob Dyer, Thomas Haynes, William Roberts, Nancy Rodecker, Doris Daley, W. S. McLean, Peggy O'Donnell, Dorothy Masters, Ann Holloway, Dick Runnels, Lois Jean Shipley, Mary Elizabeth Donnell, Don Griffith, and Betty Alice Hodson.

Excerpts

Manuscripts

Excerpts from freshman themes by authors:Robert Mann, Robert Holcomb, Helen Wells, Evelyn Petersen, Donald Morgan, Clara May Masterson, and Mary Elizabeth Donnell.

I Like To Meet People, Betty A. Hodson

Manuscripts

I like to meet people of all kinds - old or young, famous or unknown, well-educated or illiterate, brilliant or stupid, good or bad, Negro or Chinese, foreign or American. They are all needed to make up this world in which we live, so why not get to know them? One can enjoy living much better if he knows those with whom he associates. There are so many interesting people to meet that I know I shall never tire of meeting them.

How To Amuse A Younger Sister, Don Griffin

Manuscripts

Amusement for a younger sister depends upon her age. Suppose she is just ten months. There's not much to do for her when she cries except carry her about the house and change her diaper. But that isn't very amusing.

A few months later she will be delighted to yank on your hair, poke your eyes, or grab for your spectacles.

When she begins to walk, she will find many things to be amused with around the house. There will probably be broken lamps, torn clothing and paper, and many things damaged. You will not be required to do more …

Heaven, Hell, Or Earth, Mary E. Donnell

Manuscripts

Since my first days in the Cradle Roll Department of Sunday School, the merits of the bad place against the good place have been impounded upon my mind. In my childish fancy heaven represented a place where everyone wore water wings, balanced embroidery hoops on their heads, and sat all day on cloud tufts eating water melons. This connotation was no doubt derived from the picture Green Pastures. One of my first thoughts about heaven was that it would be very boring with everyone so good. I" had never heard of night in heaven and wondered if the angels …

Evening At Juniper Knoll, Lois J. Shipley

Manuscripts

Oh, the glory of it all! The sun was a magnificant ball of flame as it descended low in the heavens. Small fluffy clouds of gold floated around the huge flaming ball, but kept their distance as though there was some fear of it. Occasionally, a graceful swallow Hew across, lending his profile to the glory of the heavens, and the cry of night birds as they took to flight gave the woods that necessary note of evening time. As I strolled through the woods, the sticks crackled beneath my feet and one little squirrel in the tree top took …

The Three Most Quiet Things I Ever Knew, Dick Runnels

Manuscripts

In these turbulent, noisy days, I sometimes like to stop and think of the peaceful, the quiet things in my life. As a child, I suppose the most quiet things I knew were the great, silent hills of our farm. How often have I romped and scurried over/ these hills, independent of all restraint'! Or how often have I wandered aimlessly through their protecting shadows while pondering my boyish problems? Always their vast silence offered no opposition to my mood, Like friendly old men, they sat about watching me grow, sometimes smiling, sometimes frowning, but always quietly understanding.