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PARTISAN REVIEW
POETRY CHRONICLE
HOWL. By Allen Ginsberg. The City Lights Bookshop. $.75.
IN DEFENSE OF THE EARTH. By Kenneth Rexroth . New Directions. $3.00.
NEW AND SELECTED POEMS. By Kenneth Feoring. Indio no University
Press. $3.95.
COLLECTED POEMS. By Kothleen Roine. Rondom House. $3.50.
IN THE ROSE OF TIM E. By Robert Fitzgerold. New Directions. $3.00.
LEDER FROM A DISTANT LAND. By Philip Booth. Viking. $3.00.
GREEN WITH BEASTS. By W. S. Merwin. Knopf. $3.50.
There is so much prefatory and dedicatory fuss and bother
attached to all but the three nicest and best of these books that it
is
tempting to dive right into the churning manifestoes, leaving the poems
to the passing mention that might be afforded to a landscape. In the
case of Messrs. Rexroth, Fearing and Ginsberg, however, the poems
themselves bring us very close to the brink of the bald polemic that
heralds their appearance. Miss Raine's Thoughts on Being Collected
amount to little more than special pleading on behalf of her etherealized
Oh-So-Universal Muse, our actual acquaintance with whom, in the
poems which follow, adds little to what was known of her from the
description preceding. Perhaps this is only to say that all the above–
mentioned poets know exactly what they are doing, and what they
want to
po.
Leaving Miss Raine out of
it
for the moment (she is
English and a lady, and the controversy I am thinking of seems to
be peculiar to domestic males), it might be observed that the other
three all line up fairly well against polite and academic poetry, that
lifeless and conformist style of the '50s now falling into disgrace wherever
barricades seem wanting. To say that they are all writing in dispraise
of respectability would be a little misleading. Mr. Fearing
is
deeply
concerned with Integrity and Honesty and resisting the demoralizing
power of the Investigators. This is surely a respectable position. Mr.
Rexroth tries a little harder to
be
conventionally unrespectable, abusing
the shade of Martial, whom he invokes in justification of some not
very funny epigrams that self-consciously call attention to their own
use of dirty words. But for all Rexroth's introductory disavowals of
professors and neo-conservatives, "com belt metaphysicals and country
gentlemen," he seems willing enough to pay homage to academicism
and literary and social decorum as long as
it
occurs in another language
(preferably Japanese).
It
is
only fair to Allen Ginsberg, however, to remark on the uttor
