Playing Japanese 1896–1922

Introduction to Frank Putnam’s Love Lyrics

Author
Onoto Watanna
Monograph Title
Love Lyrics
Publisher
Date
1898
Document Type
Genre
Exhibit

Introduction to Frank Putnam’s “Love Lyrics”

Introduction to Frank Putnam’s “Love Lyrics”

Only a lover could have written “Love Lyrics.” All poets are lovers, but few of them write love’s language in the expressive way in which Mr. Putnam does. Perhaps the chief beauty of the little volume lies in the individuality of the poems, each one being entirely different from the others.
I do not think I have ever read any poems that struck me with their clear ring of sincerity and grace as these do. His songs appeal to the heart; they touch a responsive chord in us. They are human, vital, full of life and warmth of expression. In these days of poseurs and affected poets it is refreshing to pick up a little volume that vibrates with its genuineness; that reflects the true character of the man who wrote it. Frank Putnam’s is no studied art. Every poem is a song that lingers in the ear like Japanese music. One wants to hear more.
There is a sermon found in the lines:
Having youth with its promise of gladness,
Facing age with its menace of grief,
It were folly supremer than madness
Did we dully cohabit with sadness
In the green of our leaf.
And one envies him his “felicity” with his “morsel of frivolity.”
Onoto Watanna

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People Mentioned

Mary Chapman

Mary Chapman is the Director of The Winnifred Eaton Archive, a Professor of English, and Academic Director of the Public Humanities Hub at University of British Columbia. She is the author of the award-winning monograph Making Noise, Making News: Suffrage Print Culture and US Modernism (Oxford UP) and of numerous articles about American literature and women writers. She has also edited Becoming Sui Sin Far: Early Fiction, Journalism and Travel Writing by Edith Maude Eaton (McGill-Queen’s UP) and published essays on the Eaton sisters in American Quarterly, MELUS, Legacy, Canadian Literature, and American Periodicals. Her current research project is a microhistory of the Eaton family. For more information, see http://faculty.arts.ubc.ca/mchapman/.

Winnifred Eaton

  • Born: August 21, 1875
  • Died: April 08, 1954
See the Biographical Timeline for biographical information on Winnifred Eaton.

Pseudonym used in this text

Joey Takeda

Joey Takeda is the Technical Director of The Winnifred Eaton Archive and a Developer at Simon Fraser University’s Digital Humanities Innovation Lab (DHIL). He is a graduate of the M.A. program in English at the University of British Columbia where he specialized in Indigenous and diasporic literature, science and technology studies, and the digital humanities.

Organizations Mentioned

Blakely Press

Chicago-based, also known as the Blakely Printing Company. Established in 1871. Company established a newspaper in 1898.
Written by Samantha Bowen

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November 23, 2023JTPublishedAdded citation from bibliography.xml to sourceDesc using utilities/msdesc.xsl.
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