Madge Morris Wagner — Collected Poems

Madge Morris Wagner wrote California from the top of an electric tower, from newspaper offices, from San Diego’s literary boom, and from the exposed reaches of the Colorado Desert. A journalist, editor, fiction writer, and poet, she could turn domestic grief into a recitation favorite, civic spectacle into a national campaign, or desert heat into something jagged and nearly modern. She also helped run The Golden Era, carrying forward one of the West’s most storied magazines. This edition gathers the poetry of her four surviving verse books, removes simple reprints in favor of the latest substantially equivalent text, and records earlier appearances after the poems. The result restores the range of a writer once famous far beyond California.