Two Books of Poetry

'TWOULD be like pointing a brutal, misunderstanding finger at a youth in his first long trousers to criticise this small book of poems from a Conrad Aikenian standard. Gently they must be handled, delicately discerned to have appreciated the sensitive, self-conscious moods, the awkward, almost blushing moments.

Donald Fay Robinson, young Harvard poet, presents a short collection of extravagant naivetes with, now and then, a youthful trumpet ful of sophistication. The book contains about forty poems dating from 1914 and the pre-college days of the poet. Among them can be seen the fragile pattern of a young man's philosophy.

The title poem, "Out of the East" is "a dramatic monologue with stage directions in verse." One is lost in poetic reveries during the stage directions. But the gong sounds, the curtain rises tonight and enchanting woman awaiting love and a lover by the sea. For a man "large and lovely and strong," she gasps. Man comes large and strong. His lovely quality is never revealed, however, for he stayed not long enough. He was too deaf to be lovely and heard not the final gasps of a child-bearing woman smothered in a comforting sea.

With rhythm suited to the thought and spots of soft lyric and charm this poem squeezes through the fence, however, not without groans and short monosyllabic cries, most masculine in volume and tone but emitted from poet-made woman's lips.

The other poems are an interesting group of songs and sighs; some awkward and untamed like children at their first party; some cool and keenly expressive of a poised and brave linguist. For great audacity is revealed in the fact that the book contains not only self-expression in English but reveries and sighs in Latin and German.

In all, the poems urge the readers to be reminiscent and see in the face of them the delightful pains and shudders of growing youth. D. M. H.