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BOOKS
worst, his
art
from himself, his vision of truth from the lies of
his
adulators." This is, at best, unnecessary; at worst, vulgar, sentimental,
and obtuse. Whether or not they are intentional (and all the worse if
they are not), the viciousness and smugness here bear witness to the
author's gravest and most frequent weakness: a presumption which so
far exceeds bad taste as to become, quite simply, inhumane.
Yet to be sure, and to be fair, he is perceptive. At his best he has
an eye for correspondences which pass unnoticed by most critics. Ex–
amining a passage from Thoreau, for instance, he points out the
duplicities and limitations of the White Man's "dream" of racial re–
conciliation. Similarly, dealing with the "diet-slim" poem now practiced
notably, or at least fashionably, by Robert Creeley, he shows how the
society's most banal aspirations may be operative, covertly, in its
art.
The hazards of this method are, however, obvious; if carried to ex–
tremes it leads to a form of analysis which
is
merely ingenious and
which, more importantly, often confuses the esthetic with the real.
Things tend to become easily symbolic: "That in our time the line
of Emerson has been represented by a great poetic authority on snow
and night actually called Robert
Frost
is one of those astonishingly
VARIOUS POEMS
:1
Groups
Songs and Exercises
Daitokuji Poems
Love's Progress
RUTH STEPHAN
" Reading Ruth Steph&n's poems
is a most lurid experience •••
it would be incredible if they
were more beautiful."-Kenneth
Rexroth
(This excursion into poetry costs $2.00)
ord.r from
GOTHAM BOOK MART
041 West 47th Street
New York, N.Y. 10036
~
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.NEW
Intage
BOOK
Together in a single volume:
THE MALTESE FALCON
and THE THIN MAN
By DASHIELL HAMMETT
$1.95,
now at your bookstore
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