John Vance Cheney

Reviews

• Complete Poems of John Vance Cheney Riverside Press, Cambridge, and Massachusetts.

  "Though the author of this attractive book of verse, John Vance Cheney, has been a stranger to California for many years, he has not forgotten the charm of out-of-door life and the love of Nature which held him while a resident of San Francisco. In his later poems, included in the present volume, recently issued by the Riverside Press, he touches with delicate phrase and musical song many bits of sentiment suggested by the trees, the flowers, the birds, the clouds of the land of out-of-doors—the same spirit that pervaded the poems of his earlier books. All these are here reprinted, also the fugitive verses which have appeared in the principal magazines, and the harvest here shown is one well worth a poet's pardonable pride. Mr. Cheney was for many years librarian of the San Francisco Free Public Library, leaving that post several years ago to take charge of the Newberry Library of Chicago; but a poet's friends are limited to no place, and the readers of this cheerful singer everywhere will welcome this opportunity of holding in one volume all the good and gracious verses written by their favorite up to the present time. His is a happy faculty of touching the little things of life with a glamour that comforts and brightens. For instance, this, which suggests the "book of verses" quatrain of old Omar:"

"The volume contains a valuable index to the first lines, in addition to the usual contents by title. Mr. Cheney is a frequent contributor to Sunset. The portrait frontispiece of this present March number shows Mr. Cheney as the camera shows him in his latest photograph."