Poetry
The Sailing Race and Other Poems. By Patric Dickinson. (Chatt∎ & Windus. 6s.) Visions of Time. By Hal Summers. Hand & Flower Press Words by Request. By Christopher HasSall. (Arthur Barker. 21s.) IT is good to have Mr. Pound's shorter poems virtually complete at last, even though, with one notable exception, this new edition doe$ not add very substantially to Mr. Eliot's famous selection. The exception is " Homage To Sextus Propertius," a poem which ha acquired rather a formidable reputation. It was omitted by Mt Eliot—but published separately latef—on the grounds that it wouli be intelligible only to " the accomplished student of Pound's poetry" if the uninstructed reader were not a classical scholar he would tn„Ic nothing of it, and if he were—well, we may recall the pedantic lint field-day the classical scholars had with it. It would not surprise me to learn that there are howlers in " Cathay" ; what possible difference could they make to that marvellous sequence ? I would not put'' Sextus Propertius " on the level of that, or of " Mauberley", or the early " Cantos." I find the irony tends to be heavy-handed ; whether any of it is in Propertius I cannot judge ; it certainly reads like Mr. Pound's own. But, as an original poem, it can, I am quite sure be approached and appreciated—if not with the fullest response— by anyone who cares for poetry, be he neither Pound scholar nor classical scholar.
For the rest, these poems have influenced the course of English poetry. They make up a document in literary history, and, if Mr. Pound's stature is to rest finally on the " Cantos," they record his search for a style. Personae is an important collection • that is established. But, as Mr. Eliot once said of an earlier reformer of our numbers, " if the prospect of delight be wanting (which alone justifies the perusal of poetry) . . . " The prospect is not wanting ; it embraces " Cathay," " Mauberley," " Provincia Deserta, ' " Near Perigord," " Portrait d'une Femme." These alone (and they are not alone) would be enough.
Wreck at Tidesend is a book of bahtearics : poetic portraits of the inhabitants of that northern watering-place familiar to a host of , readers for whom, so to speak, so much of Sir Osbert Sitwell's life is an open book. Though published twenty-five years later, it is a companion to England Reclaimed : he asks us to " Remember that, last time, I gave you tales Of rustic faces, full of wonder, that I grieved to leave : To form a world, these two books should be read As one."
kis, of course the world of Sir Osbert's own childhood observation and recollection, and that indeed has its fascination. But it is more of a special case, perhaps, than he allows. One would not, at least, care to draw any general conclusions about urban life in " old Pax Britannica, that proud lost isle " from Tidesend and its inhabitants. Sir Osbert casts a cold eye—the acute and rather pitiless eye of childhood—upon these characters. " Watch them," he quotes approvingly from an eminent but mysterious French writer, Roland de Coulancour, " observe, without their seeing you : write, state, but do not comment." Comment is unnecessary where the observa- tion inevitably distorts. The result is exceedingly readable, frequently amusing, startling, sinister, not often moving or compassionate. The people are more memorable than the poetry, though there are a number of admirable descriptive passages and images. But I feel that some of the figures are rather stock—too easy a game for his brilliance—as if they belonged in a revue sketch, or in cam of Mr. Coward's one-act plays.
Readability is, after all, an estimable quality in poetry, and 0 is one of the virtues of Mr. Dickinson's small collection. The others are consistency of tone, a personal vision that avoids pretension and an effective management of a large and flowing stanza-form, notably in "The Sailing Race" itself, "A Nightscape," and "Lament for the Great Yachts." A good many of his poems spring from a very personal nostalgia, which being itself unprecise tends to be expressed in a loose and rather slapdash rhetoric. One cannot be sure some- times whether Mr. Dickinson is just writing carelessly or whether the almost impossibly vague phrase is deliberately chosen. Yet the nostalgia is often most successfully and movingly conveyed. His is by no means a major voice, but I listened to it with a good deal of pleasure.
Poems In Pamphlet, that laudable venture, is now in its second year. But it is no longer confined to poets who have not before published a book, and that is a sensible move. Among the pamphlets that have appeared this year Mr. Summers' is the most attractive. He is a poet of some accomplishment„lively, ingenious and various I he handles the diction and rhythms of common speech very well. But his effects are sometimes rather meretricious. He can be too slick • one notices the influence of Mr. MacNeice, and it is not wholly a good one.
Mr. Hassall is a poet ; I mean, he has written some real poetry. But Words by Request, as the title suggests, does not claim to be that. It consists of a number of genuinely occasional pieces, mostly pro- logues and epilogues. They are skilfully done ; it can't be easy to catch the right tone for this sort of thing. But, of course, they were written to be spoken, by particular actors and actresses, on particular occasions, and something is no doubt lost in print. RALPH ABERCROMBIE.
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