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PARTISAN REVIEW
bright, rather thrilling logic, the air of judicious deportment combined
with inner life, remind one a little of, say, Marvell's "Definition of
Love." But this tautness is uriusual, and more frequently the echoes are
merely imitative without the success represented by these two stanzas.
Naturally Mr. Kunitz is not attempting simple imitation of an earlier
mode in the manner of a Beddoes. Nevertheless, certain questions are
raised. We sometimes like to imagine similarities between ourselves and
the seventeenth century, but it is doubtful if this borrowed inflection
from the past is quite as relevant to our sensibility as we pretend.
To foster this imitative quality in words is to give them the wrong
kind of attention. The experience in many of these poems seems rooted
in ingenious but shallow verbalism; only occasionally do the words well
up from a deeper level. The result is an imperfect union that can pro–
duce a tedious obscurity- the experience remote and unfocused, the
words showy but artificial. "As Flowers Are" is a fairly representative
poem. The poet tells his lover, as they sit in a summer landscape, that
she has brought fulfillment to him: a highly conventional theme and
situation. Yet repeated readings of the poem leave the exact shade of
meaning Mr. Kunitz wishes to communicate curiously vague. This is
because he is not as interested in what he is talking about as in how
he is saying it, and when a gap occurs between meaning and expression,
the poem is lost. I quote here only the opening verse:
As flowers have wars that the philosophic eye
Stoops to behold, broils of the golden age
When honey dropped from the trees, and the bees perform
Their educated dance, we find our skins
In whichl to parable the act of love,
Contending, as at first, that the world might move.
The verbal texture appears deceptively tight, almost bursting with
meaning. But the pickings end up by being a little meagre. Unless there
is some esoteric reference of which I am not aware, the flowers' wars
are virtually meaningless. "The philosophic eye" seems to be mainly
a space filler, but even so, it requires some elucidation that is not forth–
coming. Presumably it belongs to a natural scientist who is interested
in this botanical warfare (whatever it is; the last three verses clarify
nothing), but why he should be stooping to observe what could surely
be better viewed panoramically by a survey of the whole battling field
or flower garden is not clear. The golden age is no doubt introduced
because the poem is about happy love, but it looks a little uncom–
fortable among all this vegetal bloodshed. The educated dance of the
