244
PARTISAN REVIEW
his way he is bolder than Jarrell, line by line, but within a structural
timidity of feeling which I believe comes of his too great reliance upon
Yeats.
These men would be good poets anywhere. (How many poets, in any
ultimate sense, "come off"?) O'Donnell's poetry has puzzled me for some
years. He has been almost wholly successful in frustrating himself with
certain influences (chiefly Ransom) that have come his way. I think the
main trouble with O'Donnell is that his poems are less structures of feel·
ing and image than public performances, of which "Commencement Ora·
tion" is typical. He has succumbed even more completely than Berryman
to the tone and convention of "In Memory of Major Robert Gregory." But
on the credit side it must be said that his mimicry has a certain innocent
quality, which may mean that he lacks self·consciousness and that he may
develop genuine power when he matures. There is no doubt about his
gift for language.
I can see Mr. Moses' virtues, but after reading his section three times,
I could not remember an individual poem, and I decided that his virtues
were not interesting. I think Miss Barnard might be more interesting if
she applied the same finical anxiety to the development of a prosody that
she applies now to avoiding one.
ALLEN TATE
LAWRENCE DENNis·s •REVOLUTION•
THE DYNAMICS OF WAR AND REVOLUTION. By Lawrence Dennis.
The Weekly Fareign Letter.
$2.50.
The mortal danger for American democracy that is signalized by this
book does not arise from the outright Fascist character of its main thesis
according to which
"The American problem, now that the capitalist·industrial revolu·
tion is over, is to get on with the new socialist revolution. To stop
the new revolution, here or abroad, is impossible. It should, there·
fore, not be attempted. The New Deal in America is as integral a
part or phase of the new world revolution of collectivism, the suc·
cessor revolution to that of 19th Century capitalism, as are Com·
munism in Russia, Fascism in Italy, or Nazism in Germany."
In spite of this outspoken "totalitarian" bias, the book of Mr. Dennis
does not constitute a handbook and pocket guide for the American Hitler
to come. It is by far too rational, coherent and consistent to compete with
"Mein Kampf'' as the ideological expression and corollary of an effective
totalitarian "revolution." More likely it corresponds to the preliminary
work done by Sorel, Pareto, Charles Maurras, Nietzsche, Spengler and
other luckless th roreti ca
I
forerunners of the fully matured Fascism and
Nazism of 1922 and 1933.
