SOURCE: Grover, Dorys C. “Vardis Fisher: The Antelope People Sonnets.” Texas Quarterly 16, no. 1 (spring 1974): 97-102.

In the following essay, Grover discusses Fisher's “The Antelope People” sonnets, concluding that this series represents the best of Fisher's poetry.

In the late 1920s Vardis Fisher, the Idaho novelist, essayist, and poet, wrote what he called “The Antelope People” sonnets. Ten in all, they were published in poetry magazines and anthologies, as follows: Voices: An Open Forum for the Poets, VII (March, 1928), pp. 203-204, “Antelope People,” and XLIX (April, 1929), pp. 134-36, poems on “The North Family.” The anthologies are Harold G. Merriam (ed.), Northwest Verse: An Anthology (Caldwell, Idaho: The Caxton Printers, Ltd., 1931), pp. 137-39, “Antelope People,” poems “Slim Scott,” “Susan Hemp,” “Konrad Myrdton,” “Perg Jasper,” and “Joe Hunter.” William Stanley Braithwaite (ed.), Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1928 and Yearbook of American Poetry (New York: Harold Vinal, Ltd., 1928), pp. 113-17, poems “Slim...