Excerpt from Poems and Plays

An introduction to such a volume as this may seem an impertinence' what the author has to say must Speak for itself and to its fitting audience. Yet the editor cannot let the book go out without a word as to the life-long interest of Gertrude Buck in imaginative writing and the part played by this interest in her intellectual and prao tical life. She was, even to her friends, primarily the teacher, the thinker, the administrator, remarkable for constant and energetic advance towards new ends or for unflagging zeal in working out new experiments. But, however apparently absorbed in such tasks, she lived al ways to a surprising degree outside and beyond them; was from first to last, as artist and poet, most deeply concerned with shaping into form some mood or charac ter, some situation or idea, that had touched her imagi nation. This creative impulse, moreover, grew with her growth, gave tone and character to everything she did, and in turn changed direction as she gained in maturity and in intellectual and emotional experience.

There was never a time when Miss Buck was not di rectly occupied with some piece of imaginative writing. Her literary experiments began in her School days. Be fore she was graduated from college, she was recognized as a successful newspaper writer and a poet remarkable among her contemporaries for delicacy of technique and range and depth of emotion. Throughout her pro fessional years, she found in the writing of verse or novel or play not only illumination of literary theory, but a counterpoise to the distracting demands of practical life. Almost her last definite plan was the completion of a novel dealing with contemporary social and academicconditions, laid aside a few years before in the stress of a developing interest in drama. The strength of her im aginative bent showed itself throughout her life in the use she made of such scanty leisure as came to her. A few days of vacation were prized less that she might hear or see some new thing than because in them her imagi nation, released from daily service, could work out some one of the many themes always revolving in her mind. This persistence of the artistic impulse in her was the more remarkable because she responded whole-heartedly to calls, individual and social, that might easily have ab sorbed all her energy. She began her career as a teacher just when the rapidly increasing number of students in Vassar was rendering the faculty acutely conscious of the need to reconstruct its educational theory and practice. The practical grasp of the issues involved and the thor ough training in philosophy which she brought to this work of reconstruction were rare indeed among her colleagues; and to these gifts she added a genuine passion for teaching and an administrative ability that forced her into the very center of the struggle between old and new conceptions of education. The tasks she set herself were the more arduous because she made no compromise with her ideal of perfection; was as indefatigable in doing the kind of teaching in which she believed as in estab lishing fundamental educational theories. When the vantage ground for which she had long striven was attained, and real and vital order realized, at least ap proximately, in English teaching at Vassar, she was ready for the next step and at once enlarged her depart mental activities by initiating and organizing two co Operative educational ventures, the Vassar Workshop and the Community Theatre of Poughkeepsie. Her work, from beginning to end of her professional career, was thus that of the pioneer; and, like that of the pioneer in every field, pressed all her faculties into its service.

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