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PARTI SA N REVIEW
I taly; the first poem in the book, "Altitudes," is among the best of
written tributes to Emily Dickinson. His adaptation of Paul Valery's
"Helen" is written with excellent taste, restraint, and firmness; on second
reading, more than half the poems
in
the book retain their charm.
A second reading assures me that none of the poems would disturb the
self-confidence of the young and smartly dressed suburban matron step–
ping from her station wagon on a sunny morning. She would probably
enjoy most, wrinkling her forehead slightly-in the effort to recall
her
trips to Europe (on vacation from Radcliffe) -"The Beacon," with its
images of deep sea water, and "Piazza Di Spagna, Early Morning";
the girl in that poem must have been the way
she
looked when
she
spent three days in Rome. And since she has, of course, read Robert
Frost, she would be delighted at hearing familiar Frostian accents in
Wilbur's "Digging for China." She might even imagine that her own
J unior, age three, would enjoy digging for China in New Jersey, and
hope that h e, twenty-five years later, would recall the scene as memor–
ably as Richard Wilbur does.
But if one has a long memory for verse, which unfortunately I
possess, further rereadings of Wilbur's verse bring doubts to mind.
"Piazza Di Spagna" becomes a reduced, less memorable flutter of lines
that recreate Eliot's
"La Figlia Che Piange."
There is also much pleasure
in reading Wilbur's "A Voice from Under the T able"-until one re–
members Phelps Putnam's "Hasbrouck and the Rose." Both the re–
semblance and the contrast between the two poems bring up embar–
rassing questions: Putnam's poem is direct; passionate young fools are
drunk and talking aloud. In contrast to Putnam's, Wilbur's poem is
overdressed and a shade pretentious-and his phrase, "God keep me a
damned fool," rings false, fal se because Wilbur seems so expert at
contriving certain of his lines. It well may be that he feels a necessity
to reiterate his adaptation of Francis J ammes' "A Prayer to Go to
Paradise with the Donkeys"-but one gains no other evidence from
Wilbur's writing that he is foolish. These are my
doubts~but
I am
also convinced that
Things of T his World
will be regarded by many
as the best single book of poems published this year; and I believe that
Wilbur's charm should not be underrated.
Like Richard Wilbur, but with less caution, Adrienne Rich in her
new book,
The Diamond Cutters,
though of the
New Yorker
circle of
poets, reaches beyond it. She is less professionally at ease than Richard
Wilbur; her book leaves the unfortunate impression that she is writing
too many verses too hastily, and that she has followed too closely
