Literary artist and trusted associate editor of Poetry: A Magazine of Verse during its formative years, Eunice Tietjens is honored among that small band of minor lyric poets, such as Sara Teasdale and Gladys Campbell, whose verse records a small but vital world of clear perception and feeling. Essentially, Eunice Tietjens was an occasional poet whose work does not represent a grand scheme of vision but a more carefully nurtured response to sights and sounds of life as vital and joyous, a poetry romantic in origin--clear, lucid, uncomplicated. With Harriet Monroe, whose taste in poetry and caste of mind she shared, Eunice Tietjens's spirit was confident and enchanted by the gifts of human life.

Born Eunice Hammond in Chicago on 29 July 1884, the poet was the oldest of four children of Idea Louise Strong Hammond and William Andrew Hammond. A prominent banker, her father, known as Sam, moved his...