Poems 1911-1940

Poems: 1911-1940 collects 149 of F. Scott Fitzgerald's verses (poems, jingles, doggerel) written over the entire span of his career, plus the fifty-five lyrics he wrote for three Triangle Club musicals as a Princeton undergraduate. These are not great poems; but they are poems by a great writer. Fitzgerald was a failed poet. Before he wrote his first novel he had hoped to publish a book of poems and may even have considered writing a novel in verse. For the rest of his life Fitzgerald wrote poetry, much of it humorous occasional verse which permitted him to indulge his love of rhyme. He believed that the best thing he got from his years at Princeton was his self-tutelage in poetry. The rhythms of Swinburne delighted him, but Keats provided his gauge for great poetry. Fitzgerald's response to Keats convinced him that he could never become a great poet. But the lessons of poetry were not wasted: he tried to become a prose Keats.