90
PARTISAN REVIEW
Of course, all literature has had to deal with precisely this problem,
and of course, it is impossible--even if it were desirable-for any writer
to achieve absolute identification with each of many, and vastly different,
lives drawn from outside himself. That is, in every presentation the
author's personality remains, as an invisible center of a visible circle. But
there is, at any rate, the illusion of objectivity, the indispensable illusion,
that which convinces the reader he is no longer reading words, and those
the words of a single man, but is actually undergoing experiences, and–
at its best-is, through these experiences, living the lives of many men.
And Gregory has contributed much, has greatly broadened, the perspectives
and possible reaches of this objectivity.
In
Chorus For Survival,
however,-Gregory's third volume of poetry
-there is a considerable weakening of his grip upon the external world.
Without his previous
No Retreat,
and particularly the earliest volume,
Chelsea Rooming House,
this present "series of episodic poems all written
within the last two years and all relevant to a single theme indicated by
the title" would still be distinguished poetry, but much of the firmness
that rna rked his previous work is missing. The balance formerly pre–
served between Gregory and those of whom, and through whom, he has
sought
1
o speak, has here become insecure, the dividing line is blurred.
In short all the voices in
Chor,us For Survival
have now become one voice,
Gregory's, and, what is more regrettable, it is the author in a single–
almost favorite-mood. The reiterated note is this:
outlive the syllables that sound my name,
being alive
down corridors of steel,
at•oiding death, the brief, post mortem fame,
the empty wreath closed with an iron seal,
the secret locked, the word unsaid,
body at rest among unfriendly dead.
Being alive, and through disquiet, smiling,
let me survive, naked in light, this room my cell;
learn bitterly to know myself too well,
till the self-flowering tree
that hears man's destiny
hangs withered fruit across the garden wall.
See the world break in me
flood, war and hurricane
enter ihe narrow rivers of the brain,
break and subside
in darkness flowing with the warm blood-tide
until I wake, ageless, the limbs walk free,-
open my heart to meet my love again.
The wish is legitimate, and moving, but when it is too often repeated
it
no longer carries conviction, begins, in fact, to lose its very meaning.
