BOO KS
Einstein the Gray Eminence.
You killed him,
Havanahavana, with your Nobel Prize.
299
Too much of the remainder of
In Defense of the Earth
is almost as
idiotic as this. There are some unexciting translations from Japanese
and Classic poets, who fare slightly better than Lorca and Dunbar
in
the murder poem in that they are not summoned up to pass judgment;
there is a bestiary, some travestied Mother Goose pieces, some short
cycles of poems, and perhaps twenty others. The overall effect struck
me as being like that of a do-it-yourself home literature kit, with Mr.
Rexroth's standardized, gratuitously arranged short lines serving as
the prefabricated parts. Even in the sequence of poems "For Marthe,
My Wife," which I tried to like for their genuine homeliness, the arbi–
trary arrangement of sentences into lines disturbed me somewhat, and
I felt that no rearrangement of line structure would either add or
detract from the simple declarative statement of Mr. Rexroth's verse
that
it
is indeed verse that we are reading.
I remember admiring Kenneth Fearing's carefree and sentimental
THE SCHOOL OF LETTERS
INDIANA UNIVERSITY
SUMMER 1957
Courses on the graduate level in the theory and practice of Literary Criticism
Including work toward advanced degrees in
Criticism, English Literature, and Comparative Literature
SENIOR FELLOWS
John Crowe Ransom
Lionel Trilling
Allen Tate
Austin Warren
Philip Rahv
Courses to be given during the Summer of 1957
R. W. B. Lewis,
Aspects of the Contemporary Novel.
Karl Shapiro,
Stylistic Criteria in Modern Poetry.
Leonard Unger,
T.
S.
Eliot's Poetry.
Harold Whitehall,
Metrics and Meaning.
A Few All-Expense Scholarships Available to Qualified Students
Address inquiries to Newton P. Stallknecht,
Director, The School of Letters, Welborn House,
Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana
