BOO KS
509
These poems deal, by and large, with the subject of love among the
ruins, where "Outside, a verandah gives upon a court / Full of tin
cans and whistles. Over hill / The noise of nubile screaming shreds the
night." They are best when they are most compact, as in "Memoranda,"
a geograph ical survey of the poet's own bodily scars, which, despite
some posturing modernism at the beginning, concludes quite powerfully
and authentically:
Like hasty marks on an explorer's chart:
This white stream bed, this blue lake on my knee
Are an angry doctor at midnight, or a girl
Looking at the blood and trying not to see
What we both have seen. Most of my body lives,
But the scars ar,e dead like the grooving of a frown,
Cannot be changed, and ceaselessly record
How much of me is already written down.
Besides this poem, I like very much "One Incident of Many," "G. F.
Died 1954, Aged 27" and "Lesson of the Master." Mr. Dickey's obvious
technical abilities sustain him quite well through his first volume, and
perhaps the one trouble with what he has done so far results from his
not having set himself sufficiently hard poetic tasks. I think that his
major concerns vacillate between essayistic reflection and the more
personal "speaking" of which W. D. Snodgrass is such a master; per–
haps he shall have to choose one or another of these modes to strengthen
somewhat. Or perhaps he will, in his next book, modulate his interests
and his subjects. But in any case, his ear and his insight can bear the
weight of many new challenges.
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