248
PARflSAN REVIEW
this. But in at least one poem, "Interior: the Suburbs," there is the
fine grave movement of later poems.
There is no rest for the mind
in a small house. It moves, looking for God
with a mysterious eye fixed on the bed,
into a cracked egg at breakfast -
The details are not too ambitious; in other poems they too often
try to be representative, typical. Here (and in "Homestead") they
are of one place, a real place. But this poem too ends in excess. Human
life is impossible. He can manage the city now; among the new poems
there is an "urban dialogue," "The UnwiIIing Guest," an ominous,
ironic conversation all in a variety of the language of actual speech,
wonderfulIy flexible in tone and rhythm, full of pictures of the city
which easily and naturalIy become marvelous.
- There is a half-domed
Casement pouring light above us; it is not,
But looks like a three-quarter moon.
Would you like to see it?
-No.
- If I open the shades
You will see layers and layers of freshly cut
Plate glass, light splintering
The streets from a million windows.
And
0
the people! Everyo.ne talking, laughing, dining out,
But you cannot hear them.
In
the best poems Mr. Gregory maintains his language
in
a
rhythm that stays alive like a song from the beginning to the end;
a line based on sound not on spelling, which can use rhyme when it's
needed.
If
he doesn't go
in
for the modern "roughness" and doesn't
stumble on purpose, it's not because his themes are trivial or because
he dodges hard subjects. Theme and subject - certain attempts on
American history, particularly - he sometimes shares with Allen
Tate, for instance; not that there is any other resemblance.
Sometimes the language is formal, elevated, even oracular, and
the rhythm stays up with it; sometimes, even, this makes good poems.
But it's not alI full chorus. There are a number of these well-trained
voices, and they have plenty of range.
Not much of
No Retreat
(1933) is here. But its good things
were done even better in
Chorus for Survival
(1935). This should
