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PARTISAN ReVIEW
Lewis seems the surest of them. The three books of verse included in his
"collected" works show a disciplined progression.
Transitional
Poem,
dealing with the "pursuit of single-mindedness" is a lengthy exercise in
metaphysical writing. Its theme, an individualized abstraction, is an ex–
ample of what a proletarian poet, immersed in central social experience,
would not be likely to write about; or, if impelled to do so, he would
handle it in a more objective, social manner. It is full of little fragments,
handled with amazing
dext~rity,
like-
What use the difference
Between a gust that twitters
A long the wainscot at dawn
And a burly wind playing the uzny
In fields of barleycornf
Obscure as some of his references are, one feels occasionally that Lewis's
verse is like this stanza from
Transitional Poem-
Charabancs shout along the lane
And summer gales bay in the wood
No less superbly because I can't explain
What I have understood.
However, there is one ironical stanza in this poetic cycle which bounces
back at its own author-
Few things can more inflame
This far t.oo combative heart
Than the intellectual Quixotes of the age
Prattling of abstract art.
From Feathers to Iron
deals with the thoughts of the poet before
the birth of his first child. It is breezy but it also has the tight, clipped
quality of intellectualized verse. In it, too, there are little poetic bits
whose effect is dissipated because they are merely spnnkled over the fibre
of the poem.
The Magnetic Mountain
is the most successful of the three and the
most revolutionary. It describes a railroad journey toward the magnetic
mountain-the classless society. The very fact that this concept is ex–
pressed in romantic symbols, is itself a reflection of the emptiness of ex–
perience of the creative writer who tries to voice in aesthetic terms the
idea which he has accepted only abstractly. Nevertheless, the orientation
of the poet toward these symbols and the poetic response is genuine-
Somewhere beyond the railheads
Of reason, south or north,
Lies a magnetic mountain
Riveting sky to earth.
• •
•
Kestrel who yearly changes
