726
PARTISAN REVIEW
fessional effects have been replaceq by a dry plainness and hardness, a
"classical" stiffness and severity. Now
if
Odysseus tried to swim ashore to
the Sirens, it wasn't for the stretched metre of an antique song, but for
something that sounded-as he must have said to his men afterwards–
a lot like Alban Berg; and, too, Mr. Nemerov's "classicism" is just as
much of a learned bedside manner (modeled, as different poems show,
on Empson, Ransom, and Tate) as is Mr. Nims's mechanical ginger–
bread. But at least it isn't the sort of manner that stupefies the patient
before he can even hear the prescription; and it is, at times, thin enough
to seem a morning mist, fairly easily burned off. This book-very much
a second book-shows an often vexing wit; half the poems have the
decided-upon look of exercises-are possessed,
if
at all, by worked-out
formulae of hypothetical demons; and many of them might be given
the name that John Berryman-a better poet with whom Mr. Nemerov
has something in common-gave to some of his: the Nervous Songs. But
the book is here and there sharp enough, dry enough, and serious
enough-shows, too, enough gift for organization-to make one inter–
ested in Mr. Nemerov's future poems. He knows very weII that the poet,
as Goethe says, is someone who takes risks (and today most inteIIectuals
take no risks at all-are, from the cradle, critics) ; but he thinks romantic
and old-fashioned, cou'ldn't believe, or hasn't heard of something else
Goethe said: that the poet is essentially naive.
Alfred Hayes is unusual because he is interested in people-most .
contemporary poets think them one of the causes of words-and because
he has a rare ill-brokered talent for thinking up ingenious, immediately
effective ideas for poems (so that one can identify his best poem merely
by saying: "Oh, you know, it's that poem in
A Little Treasury of Modern
Verse
that's a conceit about pigs in a slaughter-house"). These ideas
usuaIIy are worked out well enough-which is to say, not reaIIy weII
enough at aII-in a rhetoric that is frighteningly near to becoming, or
that long ago became, vulgarly effective in the way that
Death of a
Salesman
or good radio sketches or imitation Hemingway stories are
effective. Mr. Hayes's poems about Italy, which are poorer than his
others, are unusuaIIy influenced-just as his stories are usuaIIy influenced
-by Hemingway; and he is influenced, both usuaIIy and overwhelm–
ingly, by various periods of Auden - for instance, "In the Days
of the Recruiting Stations" is thoroughly like "Which Side Am I
Supposed to be On," and his poem about Heine at Paris
is
an amusingly
faithful imitation of "Voltaire at Ferney," even down to cadences:
because the last line of Auden's first stanza is
The white alps glittered.
It was summer. He was very great,
the last line of Mr. Hayes's first
