13 MAY 1966, Page 21

From sheeps' eyeballs to goats' testicles—yes, quite literally. Muriel Rukeyser's

The Orgy (Deutsch, 21s.) ends with a poem called 'The Balls of the Goat' and contains a prose eulogy on the same topic on page 72. Every August, it seems, the remote Irish town of Killorglin, on the coast of Kerry, goes Dionysiac. It holds a special festival, of which the main feature in- volves hauling a billy-goat to the top of a tower in the middle of the town and leaving him there for three days while people sell horses and cattle all around and drunken tinkers make whoopee and are kicked out of pubs. It is all very Romaic, too, and if you fancy the idea of it being de- scribed in evocative prose with lots of priapic philosophising by an American poetess, then this is your dish of broth. It is obviously meant to be taken seriously, and not everyone will dislike it as much as I do.