New Poetry
The Dorking Thigh. By William Plomer. (Cape. 3s. 6d.)
Tins collection of Mr. Warner's poetry includes poems selected from an earlier book published in 1937 and a new sonnet sequence. The miscellaneous poems are mostly descriptive in a word-weaving Gerard Manley Hopkins style: " Plover, with under the tail pine-red, dead leafwealth in down displayed,
crested with glancing cre,ts, sheeny with seagreen, mirror of movement . ."
Those not purely descriptive are mostly inspired by reflections on the times, which, in t937, were seldom cheerful.
The sonnet sequence shows new power matched with new simplicity and a sombre deliberateness which sets them apart from the earlier work, for one recognises here that imaginative force which is the core of his novels. Two sonnets are outstanding: the first, describing boyhood which : " Suddenly sees all love lie like an ocean glistering, seen from a headland, sees all good in loving, says 0 sun, let down your hair! Be bare and shining, roads that go to the mountain! Shiver, you fountain trees! My love is kind,
a flashing dove, a wind, a glow on the water, and here is the distant light that flows from the moon," and the second, describing resignation in disillusion:
"1 recognise the stars that are not mine, the important stars, the civilising light by which to steer the boat and mark the day:
I see them beyond the fury of the sky,
shipwrecked and rolled from wave to wave of night,
sinking I see the certain fire and say: There are the useful stars, and here am I.' " These poems by Mr. Warner, good as they are, do not strike one as primarily poet's poetry ; they are poems written by a writer for whom poetry is, however well handled, a second instrument.
-" These satires," says Mr. Plomer in a prefatory note to The Dorking Thigh, "are concerned with points in human experience at which the terrifying coincides with the absurd, the monstrous with the commonplace." There is successful Grand Guignol in The Dorking Thigh and The Self-made Blonde ; successful mockery in reflections on Cannes in 1938
" The rich, how rich they smell!
Their jewels glint like stars, Splendid with plunder, Fragrant like cigars . ."
and real malice in The Philhellene and The Playboy of the Demi- World. Again, not poet's poetry, but some good verse with a sting in it. SHEILA SHANNON.
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