is a florist by profession. His poetry is widely and steadily published in a large number of magazines and has been included in eight anthologies and compilations. Two volumes of his verse have been published: These People, 1926; and The Mountain in the Sky, 1930. In addition to the selection given below, "Joaquin Miller Crosses the Mountains", a poem that has attracted much attention, is included in the chapter "Oregon Authors About Each Other".
Pruning Vines
From The Mountain in the Sky, 1930
The inattentive earth, I take my shears
And prune away the too-audacious years.
It's grapes I want and not mere leafy show.
I trim the trailing year's growth to a span,
With only laterals intact for crop;
A snip or two and I know where to stop
To bring a harvest where my hooks began.
Half into dead ends for the cloying mold,
Where growth takes profit as the shears take hold,
Cutting the heart a little ... as I cut mine.
But since it's grapes I want, I understand
How to rebuke the heart to fill the hand.
6
MARY CAROLYN DAVIES
Mary Carolyn Davies learned the Oregon range country while teaching school on Crooked River in Crook County and the Oregon coast country while living at Rockaway. She was born in Sprague, Washington, but received her education in the public schools in and near Portland and was graduated from Washington High School. She attended the University of California for a year, in 1911 and 1912, until she received two poetry prizes and left for Greenwich Village, New York. The poetry prize money dwindled so rapidly on the way that she arrived in the city where she was to seek her for tune with exactly $4.85. She was able, however, to earn her living expenses by writing newspaper verse and short stories, and for a while critics associated her in promise with Edna St. Vincent Millay. In 1 919 she was adopted as a member of the Blackfeet Indian Tribe
