The Dial: ARetrosp·ectt
Marianne Moore
As
GROWTH-RINGS
in the cross section of a tree present a contrast–
ingly differentiated record of experience, successive editorial modifications
ot a magazine adjoin rather than merge; hut the later
Dial
shared or
thought it shared, certain objectives of its predecessors.* It is that
Dial
which I know best, and when I think of it, recollections spring up, of
manuscripts; of letters; of people.
I think of the compacted pleasantness of those days at 152 West 13th
Street, and the three-story brick building with carpeted stairs, fireplace and
white mantel-piece rooms, business office in the first story front parlor, and
of plain gold-leaf block letters, 'The Dial,' on the windows to the right of
the brown stone steps leading to the front door. There was the recurrent
flower-crier in summer, with his slowly moving wagon of pansies, .petu–
nias, agaratum; of a man with straw"ber"ies for sale; or a certain fish–
roan with his pushcart-scales, and staccato refrain so unvaryingly impera·
tive, summer or winter, that Kenneth Burke's hit of parenthetic humor
comes hack to me-" I think if he stopped to sell a fish, my heart would
skip a heat."
I recall a visiting editor's incredulity on receiving the statement, "To
me it's a revel,'' after asking if I did not find reading manuscript tiresome;
-manuscripts meaning the requested, the volunteered, and the recom–
mended; that third and sometimes uneasy entrant inducing a wish not
infrequently, that the roles of sponsor and author might he interchanged
as when in a letter of introduction, a (Persian, I think) typographic neigh·
hor wrote us, " In the country where I came from, the people say: 'Ham
Liyarat, ham Tujarat'-Both pilgrimage and business, and so it is. Miss Z
would like to have you see some of her poems."
Before being associated with
The Dial
editorially, I had been a sub–
scriber, and still feel the impact of such writing as theW. B. Yeats remi–
niscences,-"Four Years,'' "More Memories,'' and
"An
Autobiographic
t Miss Moore hu
requested u1 to print
the following
footnote :
Since· this article hu been defened
until
it
follows
~be editori~tl,
10 Propoji:io.ru on the War
in the July-August
inue,
may I aay that I ara
not co-opera tive
with
that s!atcment; that I am intensely pro-Churchill, pro-DeGaulle, and prq,-U.S.
dcfens~
efTnrt.
MARIANNE
MOOftE.
*The DUll,
founded in 1840 with Margaret FulJer aa editor, Emer&On
u
next oditor, and Oliver Wendell
Holmes, Hawthorne and others, as contributors, wu di!continued after four yean. In 1880 it waa re·ettab·
Hshcd by Francis
F.
Browne of Chicago, but in
1917
th<'re wo.s a change in editorial policy; the publica·
tion office• were moved to New York and
u a
fortnightly with socially analytical and humanitarin
emphasis, it
was
varyingly edited, tint
by
George Bernard Donlin,
lhen
by Robert Mons Lovett;
with
Thonten Veblen, Helen Marot, Randolph Bourne, Van Wyck Brooks, Harold Stearns and othen aa
coD•
tributing editors. In
1920
it
was rdu hioned and brought out
ae a
non-political monthly of "art and
letters" by Scofield Thayer, Editor, and
J.
S. Watson, President; with Lincoln MacVeagb
as
Treuunr,–
[and was entitled
The Dial,
The Dial
Publishing Company Inc. being
the
full title, a1
it
had
been of the
fortnightly
Dlal.
The Dial Press,
it
might be noted, was not aynonymou1 with it, but a separate organ·
lzation.l Then with Stewart Mitchell
as
Managing Editor, followed by-thouc:h not alway• with the
umt
title--Gilbert Seldea, Alyae Gregory, Kenneth Burke, and Marianne Moore,
it
was
discontinued
with
tbe
July iuue,
1929.
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