BOOKS
open green those
(dear)
worlds of great
more eyes.
359
Well, according to conservative theory, this technical disorder
ought long since to have made a universal prey of Mr. Cummings'
verse and last eat up itself. Yet Mr. Cummings has gone on writing
steadily at or near his best for twenty years now and shows no signs of
dangerous self-absorption. This is in itself a considerable accomplishment
in a time when the ali-I-wish-to-preserve of so many poets of his age
goes into a very thin volume. It may just be that Mr. Cummings has
discovered a virtue in disorder unknown to Ulysses and that his critics
have been preaching all this time to a Trojan rather than to the Greeks.
Perhaps the most interesting of these poets is Mr. Warren; inter–
esting because, being a kind of academic poet, he has not only inves–
tigated the possibilities of a large number of influences but studied them
to the point where he does not produce a pastiche so much as a recrea–
tion (e.g., "The Garden," "Love's Parable") ; interesting because, partly
at least as a consequence, he is still developing not only in style but in
theme. For all his technical skill, and it has been great from the begin–
ning, you feel that only in the most recent poems has he completely ab–
sorbed his influences and settled on a voice of his own; and given the
evidence of these poems as to the range of experience which is avail–
able to him, it is reasonable to suppose that he has only begun to state
what he comprehends. It is this perhaps more than anything else which
commands the reader's respect; for there are real possibilities of major
poetry here.
I do not mean to imply that there is anything novel in the way of
an idea here; it is rather that Mr. Warren has made his theme his own
and finds it at the heart of every experience he touches. This is the
theme of the consciousness which, driven in on itself for certitude, has
suffered such division that it is no longer capable of self-knowledge, of
integrity.. For him, not the world but man's self "has crumbled out again
to his atomies." His poems are investigations of the consequences of this
disintegration, of man's incapacity for the integrated act "which alone is
pure"; for terror: "For yours, like a puppy, is darling and inept"; for
courage:
for love:
But a good pointer holds the point•
And is not gun-shy;
But I
Am gun-shy;
But darkness on the landscape grew
As in our bosoms darkness, too;
And that was what we took away.
