BOO KS
551
and a deeper tribute to the best of Thomas than the first, his way
seems cleared. His writing is quite unlike (to say the least) poets of
the
New Yorker
school; how far unlike it is in the lines of his ballad
"0 My Poor Darling":
o
my poor darling
Legs arms and round backside
Flanks and thighs hotly eyed
Pawed at and then devoured
Chawed, masticated in
The fiery lion's inside
A sad end for a bride
o
my poor darling
It is an excellent ballad and mock epithalamium, not the best poem in
the book, but a good introduction to Watson's promise. So far he has
more concern with discovering language which conveys direct emotion–
the sensuous image, however he may find it-than any poet of his
generation. It is casy enough to find his flaws and to speak of his lack
of ease, to say that Wilbur's lines are smoother, and are, which is true,
more gracefully turned. His inspiration, still youthful, and charged
with the spirit of Romantic verse, may burn itself out, but for the
moment, it runs closer to what I know as poetry than the skills of
writing "magazine verse."
Since
Friday's Child
is Watson's first book, it is best not to embalm
it with praise, and then five years later, kick the book that follows it
into the gutter. The great probability is that he will outgrow his debts
to Thomas and Yeats and his direction is pointed in his "Lines: I Praise
God's Mankind in an Old Woman."
"To hell with cookie-pushers who think poetry is a bun shop and
are busy making eclairs." The quotation is from the jacket of Ezra
Pound's new book of cantos:
Section: Rock-Drill
85-95
de los cantares.
In
that instruction I hear the sound of Pound's voice, and I also read
it as a warning, more perceptive than praise, to younger poets of the
present season. The language of the warning has the ring, the associations
of Pound's earlier days in London, but its meaning is timely and con–
vincing. For the moment it applies to the writing of verse that is made
for suburban readers and their children. Pound himself has always
written poetry (however charming some of his early lyrics were and are)
that should be placed at an opposite extreme from "magazine verse."
