Now hard to find complete 62-page, 72-year-old issue of Poetry (Chicago) for April 1951 is in good condition. Some soil to front and back paper wrappers. Nice clean text. Some highlights I find include:

Two new poems, here first printed, by Randall Jarrell, at the height of his power as a poet. These include his works "Conversations with the Devil," and, some say (including his biographer, William H. Pritchard), what may be his finest poem, "A Girl in a Library." This latter is an examination of the young life (and exquisite form) of a sleepy-eyed 19-year-old falling asleep in a library under the watchful eye of both Jarrell and a visitor, the precocious Tatyana Larina, who emerges from the pages of Alexander Pushkin's romantic verse novel, Eugene Onegin to assist in the playful analysis of what both Jarrell and Tatyana find to be the unexamined (forevermore) life of a physical education, or, worse yet, home economics student, one with imaginative possibilities which will not, as Jarrell rather selfishly ponders, ever be realized.      

The notable science fiction writer (and later adapter of "Star Trek" scripts into books) and multiple Hugo Award-Winner James Blish (age 29), who appears in the monthly for the first (and last) time with a poem called "A Song for Music." It's dedicated to poet "Ezra Pound." Blish would also later write stories under the name of "William Atheling, Jr.," the same pen name that Ezra Pound used in his early years as a sometime music critic. Pound was, at this date, locked-up in a Washington, D.C. sanitarium on a charge of treason. This is one of Blish's earlier appearances in print.  

A long (15-page) and detailed essay by Monroe K. Spears on the works of English dramatist Christopher Fry. It's called "Christopher Fry and the Redemption of Joy."   

A letter of some interest by the always engaging Edward Dahlberg, this (6 pages) called "How Do You Spell Fool?" in response to Edouard Roditi's rebuff of Dahlberg's new work, "The Flea of Sodom." This is pure entertainment.   

Also, new poems by Carol Hogben, Ruth Herschberger, Paul Goodman, British poetess Anne Ridler, etc., and other reviews, book news, etc.

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