This first published collection of poems by John G. Neihardt earned him extravagant praise from critics and the attention of literary circles in New York. Daring in its embrace of sensuality, rapid-fire emotion, and free verse, the thirty-one poems in A Bundle of Myrrh marked the very public beginning of the career of America's great epic poet. This collection fell into the hands of Mona Martinsen, a student of the sculptor Auguste Rodin. Taken with the passionate young poet from Nebraska, Martinsen began corresponding with Neihardt and later married him.