164
PARTISAN REVIEW
For, far from having "smashed the Fifth Column," Stalin has rather
wiped out the most intelligent section of the population, the most reso·
lutely hostile to Hitler and determined to fight him, the most deeply
opposed to any pact with Hitler-that pact undertaken on the initiative
of Stalin and broken not by Stalin but by Hitler. The massacre of the
cream of the Russian Communist Party by Stalin was the first victory by
Hitler over the U.S.S.R.
LEON
CoLBERT
ONE OUT OF FIVE
5 Young American Poets, Second Series 1941: Paul Goodman, Clark Mills,
Jeanne McGahey, David Schubert, Karl Shapiro. New Directions. $2.50.
In war they tie a metal tag around the soldier's neck to identify the
individual and his blood, and in games such as football there is a large
.!).umber on the back of each player. But in the great melee which is
modern poetry, the onlooker is not so fortunate as to be handed a tag with
each poet. The poetry lover is asked to differentiate between the talents
melting into each other in the blur of activity, usually under the cover of
"influence" which hides a multitude of petty thieveries. The result is that
it becomes extremely difficult for the reader to figure out what poet is
capturing a pill-box or making a touchdown.
Paul Goodman has thrown away his "influence," from the modern
poetry direction, anyway. He comes a stranger and a soldier of peace
into the armed camp, fresh from the bland and neutral province of prose,
all rosy and breathing humanism.
It
is unfortunate that he has seen fit to
divide his excursion among the Five Young Poets by includ.ing a verse
play which
t&~es
up half his allotted space.
Cain and Abel,
a play for
dancers, is very interesting, almost exciting, but not worth its weight
in
poems. Perhaps the proQf is in the dancing, for which we must wait.
I
find in the few poems under consideration that Mr. Goodman is a cogita·
tor, a philosopher, a thinker, thoroughly concerned, but not a poet.
He
knows what he should write, why, how and when, all the classic angles,
but he hasn't written it. I quote in full a short piece showing him at his
poetic best:
Relying on disasters o' the war
to minimize my misery; and counting
those penalties that none can doubt as such
as the proof and the price of private vices I
otherwise do not believe in-
No!
I'll rather say it was our public crimes
that caused the world-wide calamity,
and that my private lapses get their wages
