The Little Review, May, 1917 (vol. 4, No. 1)

''The Little Review, May, 1917 (Vol. 4, No. 1) by Various'' is a literary magazine issue from the early 20th century. It showcases modernist writing and criticism across literature, drama, music, and art. The likely topic is the promotion and discussion of avant-garde aesthetics through editorial polemic, experimental prose and poetry, and cultural commentary. This issue opens with Ezra Pound’s editorial announcing his role as Foreign Editor and setting out a combative program: defending daring work, scorning mediocrity, questioning pieties about religion and nation, and praising magazines like The Egoist for publishing Joyce, Lewis, and Eliot. T. S. Eliot’s “Eeldrop and Appleplex” (Part I) follows two observers who haunt a quiet street by a police station to catch human beings in their unclassifiable moments, debating labels, intuition, and the mob. John Hall’s “Pierrots,” after Laforgue, is an ironic love monologue. Pound’s “Jodindranath Mawhwor’s Occupation” is a satiric vignette of a perfumed household and Kama Sutra-inflected routines, ending with pragmatic counsel to a son on love and strategy. Wyndham Lewis begins “Imaginary Letters,” a fierce, witty letter from William Bland Burn to his wife, attacking social complacency and the “gentleman-animal.” Morris Ward’s “Prose Coronales” offers brief, lyrical prose meditations on beauty, love, fatigue, and evening. The number closes with announcements (including forthcoming work by Yeats, Joyce, Lewis, and Eliot), a bookshop list, and advertisements.