BOOKS
507
through history / And thank heaven they lived, continually. / I praise
the overdogs from Alexander / To those who would not play with
Stephen Spender." Again, other poems in the book which I liked very
much seemed to sort strangely with each other; a central line looks
to be that of "The Inherited Estate," "Thoughts on Unpacking," "The
Corridor," and the more playful sidings of "Autumn Chapter in a
Novel" and "Puss in Boots to the Giant." These are all what one
could come to expect from Mr. Gunn's first book, and they are the
work of one of the two or three best young poets in England. But what
appeared to be the blatantly Audenesque "Vox Humana" (I thought
it an almost direct imitation of the "Let our Weakness speak" section
of "Memorial for the City" in
Nones),
"The Unsettled Motorcyclist's
Vision of His Death," "Market at Turk" and others were quite disap–
pointing. Mr. Gunn is much better being essayistic or narrative than
in attempting to be expressive in more dire ways, when a confusion be–
tween his possible roles as participant in, and observer of, the scene be–
fore him seems to lead more to rhetoric than to the poetry that Yeats
claimed was made out of other sorts of internal strife.
William Dickey's careful glimpses into moments and scenes of
T
here is nothing quite like it anywhere else:
Poetry
has had imitators, but has so far survived them all. It is an
Ameri–
can Institution. To poetry-readers abroad it is still the magazine to
which we look first, to make us aware of whatever new poetic talent
appears in the U.S.A...."
T. S. ELIOT
Unique among all magazines which have supported
poets, in being representative over a great many years of the best,
and simply the best, poems being written."
-STEPHEN SPENDER
I
ts vitality is as great, and its usefulness is greater than
it has ever been...."
-
ALL EN TAT E
~~OETRY
"18 N STATS ST., CHICAGO
'Yf"
EDITED BY HENRY RAGO •
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