SOURCE: An Introduction to Bright Cages: Selected Poems and Translations from the Chinese, by Christopher Morley, edited by Jon Bracker, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1965, pp. 13-34.

In the following essay, Bracker examines Morley's poetic career and traces the influences that informed its development.

Although well known as the author of Parnassus on Wheels, Where the Blue Begins, Thunder on the Left, and Kitty Foyle, Christopher Morley thought of himself as essentially a poet and wanted to be remembered as such. Late in his career he confided, "I have never been completely happy except when writing verse. I've the horridest feeling that after it's too late for me, someone will say, 'He wrote poetry.'" When given the opportunity in 1942 of making a selection of his writing for Whit Burnett's anthology, This Is My Best, Morley contributed four poems, remarking, "I hope it will not startle you if I...