BOO KS
115
MACLEISH AND VIERECK
COLLECTED POEMS 1917-1952.
By
Archibald Ma cLeish. Houghton Mifflin .
$4.00.
THE FIRST MORNING.
By
Peter Viereck. Scribners. $3 .00.
The poet' s responsibility to society. _ . a matter much de–
bated. In the phrase itself there is implicit some prospective metaphor
of the poet as criminal, vainly trying to
discharge his debt
by means of
his poems while all the time, really, it is something else that "society"
wants. What? This has not been made clear, but seems to have con–
fusedly to do with, on the one hand, messages of life and hope; with,
on the other, moral earnestness and a severe, traditional look at cur–
rent events. Archibald MacLeish takes in many places a severe view–
with virtue, with this R epublic, with poetry itself, things were formerly
different, are now much degenerated, but the poet by his images may
redeem the time, "Tum round into the actual air" and "Invent the age!
Invent the metaphor!" Peter Viereck brings, so it is held by some,
messages of life and hope; "perhaps ... the promised man who is go–
ing to lead modem poetry out of the wasteland" (statement by Van
Wyck Brooks, but what wasteland?), h e wears his rue with a difference.
Both these poets, the one long established and latterly neglected,
the other young and spectacularly successful almost from his first ap–
pearance a few years ago, are much given to debating, in poems and
elsewhere, the theme of the poet's responsibility to society, and both
have been quite downright on this subject; there is some temptation,
which I hope I shall avoid, to treat them as the same poet Before and
After. This temptation would lead conveniently away from the poetry
and into a discussion on the implicit premise that the poetry didn't in
fact matter and with the implicit conclusion that poet Before and poet
After were of the same caliber, something I do not believe. What would
matter, in such a discussion ? Attitude (positive), ease and rapidity of
"communication," political awareness, the quality of being
contemporary
(as today's newspaper is more contemporary than yesterday's news–
paper ). Above all, perhaps, the ability to take a revolutionary tone
while moving steadily backward, the triumph of strategic withdrawal.
Both these poets, perhaps in the largest part of their production, seem
deliberately to invite a discourse in those terms, a discourse which, ex–
cept for a feeble protest at one point, I do not feel drawn to give,
preferring for the most part instead simply to record something of my
impression of the poetry.
Archibald MacLeish, for a very few poems, is one of the finest
