464
PARTISAN REVIEW
Station" or "At the Cinema" the tension of the verse, with its density
and glitter of metaphor, is usually on the surface-the sort of intensity
that one feels in mosaics, hard, Byzantine, rigidly iconographic. Un–
deniably Miss Young can also be subtle-
The idea· of the universe is inconclusive
As albino nuns with partridge eyes and silk lashes,
As choirs of widows veiled in snowlight
. . .
I
Alhough she might well abandon Hopkins-like mannerisms, the
cadences are very artful. This second volume of strangely exciting poetry
puts her talent beyond question.
The inwardness of Shapiro's verse has naturally been affected by
his service in the South Pacific. Since Melbourne and Sydney must re–
main alien to one so deeply involved in the American milieu, Shapiro has
wisely determined to guard against becoming simply a war poet. Instead,
he has sought resources within himself, "the man in war." These resour–
ces are available by his honesty. He remains a "double man," moving
awarely and tolerantly through the ambiguities of his situation. "I try
to write freely," he explains, "one day as a Christian, the next as a Jew,
the next as a soldier who sees the gigantic slapstick of modern war." He
feels "divested of the stock attitudes of the last generation, the stance
of the political intellectual, the proletarian," and the "pundit-poc:>t."
Beset with difficulties as this position is, Shapiro's orientation seems
admirably sound. The evidence of this soundness is the mood of "The
Descent" and "The Geographers," or his "Elegy for ·a Dead Soldier,"
indicating with its severe formalism where he finds himself-unheroic,
completely aware, detached, self-possessed, able to qualify here and dis–
criminate there, and wary of cynicism. His slain companion may have
regarded the war only as a detour "that would steer/Into the Lincoln
Highway of a land/Remorselessly improved, excited, new"-but he also
died for "a peace kept by a huma.n. creed." Here is a measure of prog–
ress from the war poetry of 1914-18. "The Intellectual," with its fierce
contempt of
l'homme qui rit,
shows what we learned from the easy bit–
terness of the twenties and thirties.
The poems on Jewish themes-"Jew," "Shylock," "Moses"-come
with heavy impact, and "The Synagogue" attains the hieratic gravity of
Eliot's verse without preciousness and without posturing:
Our wine is wine, our bread is harvest bread
That feeds the body and is not the body.
Our blessing is to wine but not the blood
Nor to sangreal the sacred dish. We bless
The whiteness of the dish and bless the water
And are not anthropophagous to him.
There are sallies, also, in the Swiftian temper of the first volume-–
notably "Satire: Anxiety." "V-Letter'' and "Birthday Poem" are as full–
blooded as the earlier "A Robbery," and poems like "The Leg," with the
