HAVING conducted commination services over She last two PEN anthologies,
I do not think there is any need for me to say more about this one than that, although not worse than its predecessors. it is certainly not better. Indeed, it even puts the critic in a slightly worse temper by the idiotic trick of not supplying the poets' 'names above the poems. I suppose this is. in some way or other, intended to be crafty, but poetry and its criticism are rather too serious things to he used as the raw material for party games. On this evidence one might think the editors had no interest in what they were do- ing beyond that of scoring off the reader. There are, however, one or two compensa-
tions. Thom Gunn's poem 'Earthborn' is very good, and I liked Alan Brownjobn's 'The Animals' and G. Rostrevor Hamilton's poem on M. Teste or, rather, Mme. Teste. Good poems are also supplied by such tried cam- paigners as Edwin Muir and C. Day Lewis. Much of the rest illustrates all too clearly the fallacy behind the editors' clever scheme. Even with the names many of these poems would he indistinguishable one from another, draped in the grey anonymity of all bad verse.
ANTHONY HARTLEY
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