Current Literature
POEMS OF TOMORROW
Compiled by Janet Adam Smith
This well printed and 'carefully produced book (Chatto and Windus, 5s.) is an anthology compiled from poems printed in The Listener during the laSt five years. Miss Adam Smith who has made the selection and chose them for' publication in the first instance modestly says that 't being thus compiled from the restricted field of one paper, this collection makes no claims, to completeness..; it does not aim at presenting the Work of every Writer of importance of our time," but astonishingly few important names are missing from the list of contribirtors, arid-they-are without exception of older and established writers. The publishers curiously reverse the prevailing tendency among those who sponsor literary pro- ductions of finding a swan in every poetic goose by asserzing that " the reputations of the 39. (poets) here represented are still very much in the making," which does not seem a very apt comment on a list which, to go no further, includes Mr. Edwin Muir, Mr.' Herbert Read, Mr. L. A. G. Strong, and Mr. Roy Campbell, but it is true that most of those who contribute to this collection are writers who have only recently become well known. The Listener has always shown itself commendably ready to proVide an audience for new writers who seemed to have a contribution worth making to' poetry, it has done a considerable service in regularly faMiliarizing the reading public with interesting new work, and many of these writers must have it and Miss Adam Smith largely to thank for their reputations. There will, of course, be differences of opinion about the merit of some of these- poems, and a few of the most recent contributions certainly seem little more than common-place, second-hand ciploitations of a ' modern ' technique. But as a whole the standard of achievement and integrity is high, and much of the material included is unquestionably representative of the best poetry that has been written in recent years.
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