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PARTISAN REVIEW
ject, the sculpture the subject, in their encounter.
If
Ferber has ex–
erted artistic influence, it has been to define sculpture and site as
protagonists in man's environment, and outsized minimalist works
produced in the sixties owe a debt to Ferber's ambitions for the reach
of solids and emptiness.
MARJORIE WELISH
THE PROSAIC PRINCIPLE
THE MAN IN THE BLACK COAT TURNS. By Robert Bly. The Dial
Press. $10.95.
TAR. By C. K. WIlliams. Random House. $10.00.
THE KINGFISHER. By Amy Clampitt. Alfred A. Knopf. $6.95.
THE SACRIFICE. By Frank Bldart. Random House. $10.00
Marianne Moore recommended that we read poetry
"with a perfect contempt for it." Sensible advice, especially these
days when, from the swelling ranks of MFA poetry programs, every
Tom, Dick, and Harry-not to mention Jane, Judy, and Janice–
seems to have a volume in the offing. To these competitors for our
attention, we would be wise to offer strenuous resistance, at least
initially, and as much in self-defense as in the earnest desire to
distinguish the genuine from the spurious article. Perhaps no period
before ours has set such great store by originality and authenticity as
values; and how, except by an act of nerve, are we to evaluate the
putatively original, the assertedly authentic? In the absence of any
kind of objective criterion - it being generally conceded that com–
mand of the old techniques of verse reveals a reactionary tempera–
ment - what else can the reader rely on but his impatience with van–
ity, his truculence in the face of so many assertions put forth on the
basis of so little evidence?
In one important respect, the contemporary critic's task has
been simplified by contemporary poetic trends. T. S. Eliot stated the
case in "Reflections on Vers Libre": "When the comforting echo of
rhyme is removed, success or failure in the choice of words, in the
sentence structure, in the order, is at once more apparent. Rhyme
removed, the poet is at once held up to the standards of prose.
Rhyme removed, much ethereal music leaps up from the word,
