[JUARTERLY REVEW ','C?LUME XV WNTER, 1918 NUhBER q CONTENTS ;,';:.-, NEW NTER-AMERCAN SYSTEM. Page Mzguel Jorru.. 385 '<a YAJO TRADNG POSTS. Frank Waters...... 395 3..TERCUPS N HER HAR. Story. Davzd Cornel DeJoq... 409.-:KSHOP N THE SLUMS, Marvn Magalaner.. 421. COACH FROM NEW ORLEANS. Story. Powell Murchson.. 431 ;.;; : THE NEWSPAPERS SO BAD? Keen Raferty... 443 Y: Lawrence Olson, 391; Kenneth Patchen, 392; Peter zereck, 393; Ernest Kroll, 406; Byron Vazakas, 407; Lawnce P. Spngarn, 419; Elzabeth Daryush, 420;,Judah M. urkat, 429; Howard Grfn, 430; Harold V. Wtt, 430; Clarence Alva Powell, 440; W. Wesley Trmp, 441; Clellon Holmes, 442; Edth Weaver; 454; Lor Petr, 454. ;,,GE CURRENT POETRY. Crtcsm. Alan Swallow, Deane Mowrer; Edwn Hong 455 ' b..,........... $7: K REVEWS............. 468 y.. X'ORAL STATEMENT.......... 492 l a : UDE TO THE LTERATURE OF THE SOUTNWES~ 27 Lyle Saunders and Frank L. Bazrd....... 497, t
NEW MEXCO QUARTERLY REVEW 1 MADREPORARA We do not know that we are walkng on the bottom of the seas, havng desert n us, echoes talkng n a panted place. Beyond heart's desert and ts walls of dust lght thckens and turns aquamarne. We waver n the eddes; our fngers rust; our eyes, seagreen, note Cathay sway lke kelp n the tde's fst, but we laugh, protected by the agate forest of our own belef. Yet as the soul explores ts fossl hertage the swft sands pass, drawng that permanent and rouge mrage down through the hourglass, and, as skeleton on coral skeleton constructs the atoll, our hstory rses through an unknown ocean, anmal on dead anmal. FARMER LOOKS AT SKY Heaven s a bg-belled dam, A mare expectant of her colt, A ewe who soon wll yeld her lamb. Wll she delver wth a bolt, Or roll and rumble n the pan And labor of slow-droppng ran? 't p /. ' SOME CURRENT POETRY Th- Long Reprteve and Other Poems fjotn New Caledo?z~a, by Hubert f;t,:ekmore. New York: New Dlectons, 1916 $2 50 Laraeff for the Sleeflwalker, by Dunstan 2 ho~npson Ncw Yolk: Dodd, 'efrad and Company, 1947. $2 50 The r~rrn Pastoral, by John Frederck Nms New Yolk: Vllam Sloane '.ssocates, 1947. $2 50. Seler:: $ Poems, by Oscar Wllams New York: Char les SC b11c1 's Sons, 9.47. $2.50. The.?'mazng Year: May, ~gf~-aprl jo, 19+6, a Dta~y zn Ve,se, by Selden "~odman. New York: Charles Scrbner's Sons, 1917. $2 50 The Wound and the Weather: Poems, by Howard hloss New Yolk: Reynal and Htchcock, 1946. $2.00 The Baautzful Changes and Other Poems, by Rchard Wlbur New York: LL ;ral and Htchcock, 1947. $2 00 The?%n My Monument, by Laure Lee Garden Cty: Doubleday, 1947. $2.00. Sl/"olt not Streamlned: Poems and Shalt Pzeces, by John Betjeman; serted, and wth an ntroducton by M H Auden. Garden Cty: DOU- ":day, 1947. $2.50. Fc. -2 Thy Ravens: Ddacttc and Lyrtcal Poems, by Rolfe Humphres. New rk: Charles Scr bner's Sons, 1947. $2 50. H* e.r c and Herotnes: Poems, by Reed Whtternore; drawngs by rwn Tous. 5 T. New York: Reyna! and Htchcock, 1946 $2.50 Bu; + ~aks, by Rchard Eberhar t. New York: Oxford Unversty Press, 1947. ggo and the Centaur, by Jean Garrgue. New York: New Drectons, 7347- $2.50. Th;: Selected Poems of Kenneth Patchen. New York: New Drectons, 1946. j $x'.50. A &@lop of Verona and Other Poems, by Henry Reed. New York: Reynal and Htchcock, 1947. $2.50. The adspossessed, by John Berryman. New York: Wllam Sloane Assocates, 'rc., 1948. $2.50. T* jort to Summer, by Wallace Stevens. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 947. $2.50. T' 9des of Pzndar, translated by Rchard Lattmore. Chcago: The Unrsty of Chcago Press, 1947. $2.75. 9 : n the Cathedral, by Fred Marnau; Englsh translaton by Ernst Sg- :. London: The Grey Walls Press, 1946. 8s 6d. a,'he books lsted above are beng revewed here approxmately a year.her publcaton A nu~nber ol [actors have caused ths delay; and, 455
256 NEW MEXCO QUARTERLY REVEW although the delay has certan dsadvantages, t also has many advantages. tt~mptng to escape any topcal nterest n the books, have tred to ex- ;]mne them wth an eye to a representatve concluson The lst by no means ncludes all the books of poetry publshed n 1947; however, t ncludes a selected lst of the books of that year, wth a few from 1946 and one from 1918; n addton, t has the frst collectons of some poets who have ganed ntal fanfare, collectons n poets' md-career, two selected volumes, and the latest volume of one of our fnest poets. Early n my readng of the books began to wonder about the style of the lnes was readng Now -- n the ffth decade of the twenteth century ard n the fourth decade of the hghly-touted "poetc renassance" -what tloes modern Amercan poetry offer n the way of a style? What does t offer the new poet, what has the establshed poet ganed? And style would take to be that result, that manner, when the sensblty of the poet apprehends experence and attempts to brng the apprehenson off nto the realms of human knowledge, human judgment and assmlaton, f you wll n what way does the recent poet acheve style, assmlaton, apprehenson, judgment? Obvously the answer s as varous as the number of poets. But after one has examned carefully such a lst of books as the above, he wll fnd the books fallng nto groups. The dvsons are arbtrary and nfluenced by the factors of personal taste, of course; but have put frst the fve books whch seem to me not to acheve a style, or to acheve an avodance of the problem; next sx books whch beleve acheve a style but a style very mannered and dependent upon practces commonly avalable to many poets; and fnally sx books n whch the authors seem to be reachng for, n part attanng, a style whch s ndvdual and suted to the ndvdual sensblty. The two translatons are consdered apart from ths groupng. A perod of poetry has certan surface manfestatons of a common style whch are avalable to anyone. n the Renassance we recognze common Petrarchan magery whch went nto thousands of stale sonnets; n the eghteenth century we quckly grow tred of poetc crcumlocutons n the second and thrd rate poets; the apprehenson of nature and an emotve response to nature n late romantc poetry frequently became thnned out to nnocuous words. Unless the manfestatons of a style are used for ther orgnal purpose of leadng to mportant nsghts nto human experence, one can surely say that they add up to no style at all, or at least to avodance of the problems nvolved n creatng a style. Such, beleve, s largely true of the frst fve books have lsted. The surface qualtes of a "modern" style whch each approprates wll vary consderably. Mr. Creekmore appears emboldened by recent practce to launch nto hs poems as f there were no tradton behnd hm; he wll nvent one as he goes. Unlke some of the other fve, he does not borrow a volent, homeless language; nstead hs language s qute expansve, even dffuse at tmes, and n some knd of comparatve judgment can feel that ths s far superor LO a language whch s typcal, unndvdualzed. ndeed, Mr. Creekmore makes a worthy effort to make hs observatons of a tme and of a Sold, CURRENT POErKY 457 sonxw9at strange culture avalable to us. But nucll s lackng - management $ rhythm, tensty n language equal to what we may presume hlr. QeeT:mcre would communcate wth us Technques of fcton, to whch Mr. Clsekmore has turned for two novels, nlay povde hm wth a better meddn; the poetry, surely, needs abandonment of the ole of nventor and pole9&~ n what s, probably, a desert of possbltes Very much the same comn&at-can-bemade4l Dunstan Thompson's second collecton of poems n a$~ont-h'wt~k-~dgesat~wwarenes~oltta~l~y n much modern poerr:: 1 qualty we may call "wt " hlany modern poets have taken up the juxr.puston of language, wrenchng t out of ordnary usage, to force the readd to new nsghts, new awarenesses n such a ~rolk as that of Thompson, %kt'' s lkely to be the only qualty worthy of notce; sonetn~es t does ach:evc a very lmted success n ts ntenton; 11101c fcqt~entl) t s llkclg to fall on ts face n a boorsh comedy, as n hs "Love, Larewell you out of sgtt." John Frederck Nms and Oscar Wllams, the former wth hs frst collecton and the latter wth hs selected volume, ale even more dependent thrn Thompson upon the wtty use of language. Not very often do these pm*:.res lead to any valuable nsghts. Mr. Nms' qualty, both n the use of anguage and n the pont toward whch t seems he d~ves, can be summar7cd somewhat farly by the last lne of hs poem "Letter": "Lttle glass fgu. a world of stone,'' Nether the language nor the observaton appears vex] -, lfcant. Smlarly Mr. Wllams: n a thrty-sx lne poem "The New Sp +.*%the thrd lne asks "What s realty?" and the last two lnes seem to -.vde the only answer: And only when the drums stop to let the future pass Does the man hear the small feet of the frghtened deal. Tbe jacket of Mr. Wllams' Selected Poems quotes a revew by John Malcolq Brnnn of a former volume by Oscar Wllams: "Ths, n effect, s hs &+a1 preoccupaton and theme - the problem of dentty n the cvlzaton represented by modern urban lh, partcularly that of New York C@.fv:One mght easly say that ths s the problem of any modern poet n the paaton of a style, for style s asserton of dentty, or ndvdual nsght. But?Jx. Wllams, n handlng modern urban lfe, largely gves us mages of'c'hot nsght nto t; rather than assertng hs dentty n ths lfe, he latgely loses hs dentty n at least hs mages of t. And, n many of hs o @s, he largely gves up to the language he uses, to the surface volences modern "style," and the language attans lttle other nterest. Ths s not to say that hs poems are alke; he has practced wth a good many styles; arl''+?rerestng example s "Cty Tree on a Wndy Day" wth echoes of the laz:$age and the theme of Frost's "Tree at My Wndow"; another, the hndlng of the presumably romantc atttude toward "Sprng": 3 0 truly now, t s gayer and warmer, Tomorrow's the only dark 1,ush on the land And full of ts doubts, but God thc pcrfornrer 1s walkng about wth the brd n Hs hand
458 NEW MEXCO QUARTERLY REVEW hfr. Wllams has a partcular lkng for a long, loose lne; beleve t has much of the hackneyed rhythm of the poulter's measure of the early Elza. bethan perod. Hs poems wrtten on the occason of a presented subject, 1 as t were, are often shrll and shoutng, lackng management of approprate tone. What s left s a bundle of mages of modern lfe, frequently nterestng by themselves, plus a determned and even exctng effort to wrte and wrte about somethng whch he can't qute dgest. Mr. Rodman has arranged a large number of poems n a topcal reference. The commentary on the tmes s nterestng and worthy, but the poems acheve some other dmenson - for whch many of them presumably were wrtten before Mr. Rodman made hs topcal arrangement - only hestantly and nfrequently. Hs rhetorc s often exact n the short poem but more frequently thunders wth r ghtcousness A poet may borrow, wth lttle adaptaton to hs own ndvdual nsghts, a style whch s avalable to hm. f the style s good enough and borrowed wth enough completeness, the poet s lkely to turn up wth secondary poems whch acheve sgnfcant nsght, even f the poems be slghtly mannered. Such, beleve, to be descrptve of the next sx books of my lst. Reed Whttemore, Howard Moss, and Rchard Wlbur have borrowed ther style from modern "metaphyscal" poetry and the most ds- 1 tngushng characterstc n ther use of the style s "wt." n ther hands, one would thnk the style approprate for settng down a momentary nsght 1 but not for the composton of a full poem. Mr. Whttemore has one style, not adapted to the separate speeches or poems of hs many heroes and herones; the poems are amusng, the vson offered s pette and clever. Mr. Moss has dffculty combnng hs bor~owed style wth a real gft for lyrcal phrasng; hs best poems are lkely to be those n whch he has adapted hs "metaphyscal" style to such pedestran subjects as a natural scene. Mr. Wlbur, although he appears more youthful n manner than the other two, s more arrestng n hs struggle to subdue hs wtty style when he needs to get down hs approprate nsght. Hs ttle poem, "The Beautful Changes," s excellent evdence: much the qualty of a fne poem pecularly suted to hs language, but stll marred by some compulson whch he seemed to feel that he make the surface wtty, as n "a chameleon's tunng hs skn to t." Laure Lee, an Englsh poet, attempts to gve a modern appearance to poems whch, n the style communcated, are largely late romantc. t s a style whch, happly, thnk, we do not often return to; yet Mr. Lee's handlng s good and many of hs poems worthy of real respect. W. H. Auden has had fun n ntroducng John Betjeman's frst collecton of poems n Amerca, and we may approprately accept them n the same sprt. The central factor s a term, "topographcal verse," poems of places and people. Mr Auden makes a good plea for the relatvely small yet real values of such. verse, and Mr. Betjeman turns the trck pleasngly. Slck but not Stream- 1med s a volume lke a stranger among the others, but a worthy suggeston of one other qualty n poetry whch we can fnd nterestng. The new vol- f 1 f 4 S t "T& CURRENT POETRY 459? u~ej By Rolfe Humphres, Forbzd Thy Ra~~ens, s not, 1 beleve, mportant rh "AJ$. Humphres' development as a poet; t has the ar more of a throwof2 Casual volume. Here, at least, he s content wth an easy, casual rhetorc, a Toxgsh poem of qute a few stanzas, and a pertness of statement partcularly evdent n the last lnes of many poems Mr. Humphres has done better tlan Lven the best poems n ths volume and wll undoubtedly do much bet&. n the future. Developng a style ndvdualzed approprately to the partcular talent *- xaae and dffcult The attempt may be studed n the next sx books on m)!;st. Rchard Eberhart and Jean Galrgue have been workng at t; t nxsy 3e sad that nether s entrely successful but that the attempts have becn rutful Mr. Eberhar t has been developng a style whch gves surface fhtness, rather than wt, approprate to rumnatng poems upon b~oad thexaes about lfe, death, relgous experence; occasonally, as n "Trptych," the style s adapted to "wtty" dalogue and word-play. When he works carefully and does not lose control of the movement of hs lnes - hs greatest fyk!: -he has a style of value: For death has done ths and he wll Do ths to me, and blow hs breath To fre my clay, when am stll \ & - 'x5ut too much dependence upon such contemporary masters of the type o ocm as Maranne Moore and Wllam Carlos Wllams, Mss Garrgue l-j ~ne remarkable work at apprehendng and communcatng the detals ctr -:tprestng experence. She, lke so many poets here examned, has a fond wdor a longsh poem of thrty lnes and more; n many of these poets, the 1.a..+ TE'~ >, 5.1 seems lack of economy and management of language, and n Mss r;,ptrgue the length s not requred by developng logc of the poem - t s re&red, nstead, by the densty of detal worked nto the poem She s bpstat the poem whch remans close to the mnutae of experence and only tentdtvely probes for symbolc ntegraton or meanng; when she loses ths tenhveness and strkes out verbally for meanngs for the experences, a dg~k$ppment she apparently s tryng now, she launches nto a land whch s' s;ll strange and dffcult for her. : Comng to crtcal terms wth the poetry of Kenneth Patchen s dffcult and, possbly, not very useful at ths moment. The fault s largely Patchen's: as $wrter, he seems to be less nterested n the accomplshment n any one poqx or even n any one book than n appearng always on the move and &r,l$stantal; hs vson of the lterary world seems to be that of a "fournjr eman" backfeld, n whch he s the shfty, trple-threat, scat halfback. Sclscted Poems does do hm some justce, beleve; whoever made the selec- ::or. kept representaton of hs work at ts most accomplshed level and chose Jbeq+lly from Patchen's second volume, where he was most congenal wth 1t:s -reader. Through the volume a number of observatons nsert themselves a., 3s. a careful readng: Patchen's progentors are prmarly Whtman and ~~~:,cendental Emerson; note the doctrne of "Who made the snow wats
NEW MEXCO QUARTERLY REVEW where love s" and "Who made the sky knows of our love." Patchen's pacfsm s hardly based upon an urgent moral or ntellectual bass --he would have rather lttle to do wth ether aspect of experence - but more upon hs messanc pose, ndcated n the ttle of one of the poems: e WAS ALONE (AS N REALTY) UPON HS HUMBLE BED, when magna. ton brought to hs ears the sound of many voces agan sngng the slow and monotolous psalm whch was nterrupted by the outcres of some unseen thngs who attempted to enter hs chamber, and, amd yells of fear and execratons of anger, l~nde hm "Arse and come forth and ad"; then the coffned form, whch slept so quetly below, stood by hs sde and n beseechng accents bade hm "Arse and save.that s beautful " Ar P tchen's role s amusng and sometmes frutful. John Berryman has wrtten n great prase of Henry Reed's frst volume to appear n Amerca. The reason, beleve, s that Berryman recognzes n Reed a fellow toler on the same road. Reed, even more strongly than 13crryman, ndcates a strong reacton to the wtty, metaphyscal style m. tated by so many young poets; a reacton to Elot, Yeats, and Auden as gods of the young poet Berryman has moved, less sharply, perhaps, n a smlar stuaton. By analogy they can be compared wth Robnson and Hardy, n that they turn away from a popular style whch had nserted tself everywhere an$ was leadng more and mo:e to nnocuous repetton and thrdrate wrtng; they strke out for a new style. And, lke Robnson and Hardy, the two young men have dabbled n a varety of efforts n ther search; lke the two older poets, Reed and Berryman occasonally lapse nto one aberraton of style or another, losng the dentty of apprehenson. At that pont, the analogy ends; Reed and Berryman have far to go to attan the achevement of the two older men, and, fortunately, wth good luck they wll have great chance to attempt that achevement. Reed s attracted to a long lne whch, by ts control of rhythm and other aspects of language, contrasts re.. markably wth the long lne n the poems of Oscar Wllams. Reed's language moves wthn the qualtes of heghtened, controlled speech; the style s equally prepared for argument and logcal development, for the economy of a short lyrc, and for rony. t s an mportant achevement for one at the begnnng of a career. Much the same can be sad of Berryman's style and hs ablty to adapt t, but wth somewhat more reservaton than n the case of Reed; Berryman has seemed a bt more confused, somewhat less wll. ng to launch forth on hs own, than has Reed. Ths may well be accounted for by the poetc clmate n England, whch has already moved farther n Reed's drecton than has the poetc clmate n ths country. Berryman's achevement s best n the few poems, such as "At Chnese Checkers" and "Farewell to Mles," n whch he manages a rumnatve rhetorc whch has the ablty of carlyng ts thnkng wth t and come out at the end wth : fully developed poem. Those few poems are a consderable achevement for a frst book. Wallace Stevens s, of course, a master at a style whch s pecularly hs 1 SC?dl? CURRENT POElRY! own d'kvelopment; ndeed, he s now a "classc" and bcquestllng hs style on 1 to yolnger poets who probably do not have Stevens' orvn sensblty and hedohstc atttude Each new volulne by Stevens pokes the old ponts agan; he extends hs thnkng and hs feelng nto slghtly nclv calns, and always nterkqngly so, but Yvor Wntes s surely collect n belevng that Stevens w;?s $*hs best n earle1 poems and that the scnsblt) sccnls thnner nowj addys. n part by repettveness n fact, Stevens has come to bc somethng of jester, the entertaner for those who care to bc anusccl by hs knd of enf?:franment; n hm there s a knd of tc~ble sn~cgncss and sclf-satsfac- ta;. Probably now he wrtes too much But these ale s~lall dctractons Stcbcns has a great style, he wrtes wth the qualtes 01 language (pal tcu- 1 la1 y, for these days, the sound qualty) unde~ hs fngeltps He s alrvays accomplshed and wtty, always has an answer fol any occason; and, at tmes, he cayl weld to ths a strong, dramatc movement to hs verse n Transpo~t to Swnmer have partcularly noted cerrrn statenentr ot hs ;tttlde: f The obscure moon lghtng an obscule world Of thngs that would never be qute expressed, Where you yourself were never qute yoursell And dd not want nor have to be, Desrng the exhlaratons of changes.. To pcnc n the runs that we leave. 9' Secrete us n realty. And taste at the root of the tongue the unreal of uhat s real, j The total past felt nothng when destroyed.. Spent n the false engagements of the mnd., 4.... because everythng we say Of the past s descrpton wthout place, a cast, 111 4 ' Of the magnaton, made n sound; 8, ' 0 And because what we say of the future must portend, ' Be alve wth ts own seemngs, seemng to be Lke rubes reddened by rubes reddenng b : s ;'he two books of translatons whch end my lst are both worthwhle : r ~terestng. Rchmond Lattmore makes Pndar odes nto accomplshed /,sh poems; cannot judge the relatonshp wth the Greek orgnals,!, 'ye translatons are evdently done wth a respectful and ordered con- :,n of Pndar's qualty Fred Marnau s plagued by a usual dffculty \ f modern poet: nervousness and only the momentary nsght of separate 1 1 or mages. n ther solaton, they have consderable power Hs pont YW s ndcated by the closng lnes ol hs thrd ode:
462 NEW MEXCO QUARTERLY REVEW over the old pathways of those gone, westwards, where once more the settng sun fantastcally llumnates our faces t s an atttude one would thnk approprate to a young European poet. ALAN SWALLOW Paterson (Book Two), by Wllam Carlos Wllams. Norfolk, Connectcut: New Drectons, 1948 $3.00, The Pzsan Cantos of Ezra Pound. Norfolk, Connectcut: New Drectons, 1948. $2 75. Poems ;9j7-ln;by Davd Gascoyne. London: McCorquodale and Company, 1948 (Thld mpresson). 8s. 6d Selected Poems, by Vernon Watkns. Norfolk, Connectcut: New Drectons, 1948 $3 00. The Reszdual Years, by Wllam Everson Norfolk, Connectcut: New Drectons, 1948 $3.00 Spontaneous Now, by Sophe Hmmel New York: The Fne Edtons Press, 1948 52.00 Poems, by Davd gnatow. Prare Cty, llnos: The Decker Press, 1948. $2 50 Readers famlar wth Wllam Carlos Wllams' n the Amercan Gram wll remembr the nexorable precson wth whch Wllams molds the prose lne. And those who have read hs earler poems ncludng the frst book of hs present work-n-progress, Paterson, must be aware of ths poet's uncompromsng craftsmanshp, that chselled care for absolute ntegrty of language and experence whch seems to strp poetry to the beauty of ts bone and to make of the most ordnary word a stubborn symbol of that somber meanng n man's chaotc dust. Paterson (Book Two) leaves no doubt, thnk, as to the magntude of Dr. Wllams' under takng. Partcularzed about a sngle localty, ths long poem seems to embrace the wholeness of man's lfe from the dark ramfcatons of hs past, through the troubled complcatons of hs present and the ter~fyng mplcatons of hs future. Nor by wholeness do mean the lengthy data of the statstcan's record, but rather man whrled heedlessly n hs tme-and-space, exstng n fearful fuson of cosmos and trva before the mperturbable eye of relatvty. For n ths publc park where Wllams localzes hs poem, everythng- the drty scrap of refuse, the shards of hstory, the gulty lovers, the stone, the tortured poet - moves n organc relatonshp of thng and beng..and even The stone lves, the flesh des,-we know nothng of death. The dogs and trees conspre to nvent a world -. gone1 SC'sdE CURRENT POETRY 463 :A poem of such scope naturally nvoll cs comncnsu ate techncal dm cu:.tes Wllams, however, s an expct tc~lnc:~~~ wllose frz~l accon~l)lshm!?tct can hardly be spoken of n dsclete tcrns Pct tlce ac ccltar~ chal akqstcs of a Wllams poem whch should be noted: spacng and the vsual paltr.n, for example, a devce whch Wllams 1121s pobably used more success$uzly than any other modern poet; the effectve vaato~ls n 11ythm and co2!aqual speech; that apparent surface candor of word and lne whch suhsnrnes a taut densty of thought and feelng; the fne pose passages wbkp gve both contlast n tone and dversty to thematc treatment; and thn? strategc maneuverng of slence whclcby even cllpscs bcconle sgn. fcanr.,lthough one may regret n ths long poenl the loss of that pefecton of pattern whch characterzes some of Wllams' shol ter and slghter poems, the oss s largely compensated by the gan n depth and ampltude of meanng,!~y the vgor of affrmatons whch underle ths poet's sure grasp of hdze realty. For Wllams has grown, to use hs own phlase "up flnty pnnacles," has learned the poet's lesson that The descent made up of despats and wthout accon~~lshrnent realzes a new awakenng : whch s a recersnl of despar. For what we cannot accomplsh, what s dened to love, what we have lost n t11e antcpaton -. a descent follows,,# : ' endless and ndestructble. 18 'ftkl (: "Fnal apprasal of Ezra Pound's Pzsan Cantos must depend, as that of s: earler cantos, on the exegess of scholars. Never theless, the revewer %: has some acquantance wth Pound's earler poetry need not feel enr.ely baffled by these latest cantos. The general pattern of prevous cantos s, tnantaned. Mythology, hstory, lterary alluson, journalstc tdbts, bd~aphcal and autobographcal anecdotes jostle each other n a babel- 16?cc confuson of language and sense wth Pound's ancent antagonst Usury sexvng as a knd of central theme or unfyng factor. But there s a dffertace Wrtten as they were durng Pound's ncarceraton n a Psan prson canp, these new cantos are more ntmately concerned wth the tragedy of?ol?~~'s own lfe. Now though ths accounts n part for an unwonted aura of serousness n the Psan poems, t also explans, thnk, the notceable 'lljtlg-off from that suave and elegant rony whch one has come to asso- ;;st: wth Pound's better work. Whatever the reason, there s a fallng-off, ~'?r.k~ of rony and of memorable lnes - those great lnes whch, together Pound's vgorous leadershp of the poetry revolt earler n our century, 7% surely sustan hs fame. Yet all n all, The Pzsatz Cantos consttutes