BOOKS
revolutionary literature-or, more precisely, in the case of
Dynamo,
revolutionary poetry-has definitely passed its hit-and-miss, catch-as-catch–
can period.
Haakon M. Chevalier, Horace Gregory, l\1ichael Gold, Joseph Free–
man, Isidor Schneider, Kenneth Fearing and Stanley Burnshaw contribute
to this issue the best collection of revolutionary poetry which has appears
since the publication of
IFe Gather Strength.
James T. Farrell, whose
third novel,
The Young 1I1anhood of Studs Lonigan,
is to appear this
month, is represented with a short story,
The Buddies.
It is unnecessary, I believe, to dwell long on the merits of the respec–
tive poems. All of them achieve a satisfying standard of poetic achieve–
ment. I should like here merely to examine briefly the six poems by
Joseph freeman and to recommend them for serious
~tudy
both by poets
and by readers of poetry-particularly the former group. Freeman, an
excellent lyricist, offers in this group of poems an intensely personal series
which at the same time varies and broadens our conception of what revolu–
tionary poetry can be. While many poets who have been publishing their
verse within the past five years have been content with what might be
called revolutionary exhibitionism in verse, satisfied with the mere affirma–
tion in their work of their identity with the working class or of their faith
in Communism, Freeman has gone far beyond this. Although he has pub–
lished very little during the past half-dozen years, his development as a
poet, as his
Six Poems
written over a period of eight years reveal, use
the acceptance of the class struggle-the goal for most of our poets-as a
beginning; from this beginning, he progresses to a treatment of the limit–
less human problems-hope, doubt, anger, fear, pain-which have never
before been adequately treated in revolutionary poetry. Instead of the
grandiosely general, Freeman deals with the specific and achieves both by
implication and direct statement more of the general meaning of the
problems with which he deals than all of our younger poets.
This is not to say that Joseph Freeman is-at least in these poems–
an accomplished poet. He still writes in the too-facile manner and forms
of an outgrown method; his thought is too often dulled and blunted by
convenient and traditional phrases. But his authentic poetic feeling emerges
as the clearest and most honest statement of the revolutionary poet's pre–
occupations that has as yet been published in this country.
WALDO TELL
63
