Sydney King Russell — Collected Poems, 1923–1949
Sydney King Russell moved easily among formal lyrics, satirical portraits, devotional poems, popular songs, film publicity, anthology making, and the private books of his later decades. Seven substantial surviving volumes show a poet repeatedly rearranging his own career rather than settling on a final version. The sonnet was his strongest recurring form: Lost Warrior used it for compressed social types and the sequence This Mortal Love; Bright Avowal expanded that love sequence to forty-two poems; Selected Poems, 1919–1948 shortened and reordered it again. His free-verse lyrics and comic portraits display the same appetite for polish, closure, and direct address. Contemporary notices describe more than fifty books and pamphlets, many still unrecovered, but the available record already reveals an unusually prolific Los Angeles writer negotiating popular culture, private devotion, romantic sequence, and self-curated literary memory.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Bibliography
Russell, Sydney King. The Changing Flame. Four Seas Company, 1923.
———. Pilgrimages. Harold Vinal, 1925.
———. The Golden Snare. Harold Vinal, 1928.
———. Lost Warrior. Thomas Bird Mosher, 1931.
———. Bright Avowal. Bruce Humphries, 1933.
———. Proud Universe. 1940.
———. Songs for America. 1943.
———. Selected Poems, 1919–1948. 1949.
———. The Listening Year. 1953.
———. Give the Heart Rein. 1955.
———. Ghosts at My Window. 1959.
———. Shores of Tomorrow. 1960.
———. The Shadow Walks. 1962.
———. Now I’ve Seen Everything. 1963.
———. This Is Where We Came In. 1966.
———. Take a Long Look. 1966.
———. Girl with the Tired Hair. 1968.
———. Their Faces Haunt Us. 1971.
———. Poems published in The Christian Science Journal and Christian Science Sentinel, 1927–42.
Crow Hop Rare Books. “Poetry collection belonging to Sydney King Russell, poet, editor, composer.” Dealer catalog for Russell's personal library.
The New Yorker. “Sydney King Russell.” Contributor archive, eleven poems, 1929–1931.