Rather Than Ahab Monologue of a Deaf Man. By David
Wright. (Andre Deutsch. 12s. 6d.) PORTRAITS in urbane free verse—one might almost call them vignettes—of the English colony in an Italian Art City before the First World War. The sort of thing which serious-minded verse reviewers nowadays dismiss with a few words of obloquy? One can hold the Geiger-counter of formula to the blurb and listen to it chattering away its warn- ings: Cosmopolitan! Upper-class! Effete! But that would be unfair. A book like this must be read on its own terms, without the comparisons it does not invite with John Donne and Thom Gunn. If it is reviewed with a couple of other books of straight verse, that is just an accident of categorisation, like the railway ruling which allegedly lays down that a tortoise is an insect.
A touch of humane malice points most of these portraits. But some—'Leonora Starmore,' for instance—are entirely admiring, and yet success- ful, a remarkable feat. Right out on the extreme edge of what could possibly be defined as verse at all? Yes, I suppose so. The rhythms and the pauses, on the whole, are simply those imposed by the conversational or dramatic framework. But all except the most analytic of purists might let themselves go along with Sir Osbert on this
Three Steps to Victory
Sir Robert Watson-Watt
The Story of the Italian Resistance
Roberto Battaglia Anthony Richardson
Epic Stories of the Second World War
.Selectedby Guy Ramsey
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Gig Focus on Fame
Antony Beauchamp
Looking Back
The Duke of Sutherland
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