New Verse

. 20 francs.)

Branwen. By Ll. Wyn-Griffith. (Dent. 2s. 6d.)

Parton Bookshop. 3s. :6d.) .

Miss Mmti.t.N.NE Moop.E:is a writer less known in this country than many other American poets with smaller claims on our attention. A single .yolturre, jn .1921, is all that has been -Previously published here of her work, and those of us to whom her name is not entirely new are probably familiar with it only through the pages of The Dial or, more recently, of Mr. Pound's Active Anjhotogy Xp that collection, it seemed to me, Miss Moore stood out as the single contributor of import- ance whose reputatiort -wits-thiralready recognized on either side of the Atlantic. And this impression is confirmed by the present -volume Of Selected Poems, which comprises all that Miss Moore is-willing-to haverpublished, or re-published, of her work up to the present time. For-whatever else one may think about Miss Moore's poetry, its genuineness is not to be ques-

tioned ; and few readers wilLdispute Mr, Eliot's contention

that genuineness, as distinct from greatness, is a quality that may sometimes be recognized during- a writer's lifetime. Mr. Eliot himself, in his Introduction, is ready to go considerably furt her in praise of Miss Moore. He speaks of her as one of the

few who have performed some service to the English, tongue " by carrying on that struggle for the maintenance of a living language, for the maintenance of its strength, its subtlety, for the preservation of quality of feeling, which must be kept up in every generation." Those who take the trouble to read Miss Moore's poems with attention will surely agree. For

the bane of so lunch contemporary poetry is its diffuseness, its Itiek of identification between feeling and expression, either- through too vague and indeterminate, or, in an effort to avoid the commonplace, too self-conscious and eccentric a use of language. Whereas Miss Moore'uses English precisely, with a

terse austerity which is the first step towards poetic intensity. And if the majority of readers (of Whom I must count myself one) find that their chief pleasure in Miss Moore's work springs from her exact and searching eye, her intricate pattern of observation, rather than from any profound revelation of an internal truth, they will still find her one of the few contem- porary writers with a sensibility keen enough and a technique accomplished enough to justify the pleasurable effect of con- tinued reading.

The same cannot be said, I think, of any other of the five poets whose . works are here reviewed. • Certainly not of Mr. Roditi, whose Poems, for all their bi-ehroniatie dress and lack of capitals, enshrine the most commonplace of sentiments pretentiously expressed. Nor yet, I should ,have said, of Mr. LI. Wyn Griffith, whose narrative poem Branwen has received the approbation of Mr. Michael Roberts and Mr. Herbert Read. Mr. Griffith chooses a difficult theme—the invocation of the spirit of a legendary Celtic Queen, whose

counsel is sought by the poet on behalf of his country Wales. The result is a respectable but curiously ineffective piece of academic- verse in which the discrepancy between .contem-

porary modes of experience and those traditionally associated with romantic legend is continually in the reader's way.

" Quietly, quietly. There are armed men crossing the rim against the sky and I know them not. Their spears are bright there are silks, a maid walks like Spring upon the meadowland."

No, this is altogether too loose and unfelt : a worthy piece of versification, but not poetry.

There remain Mr. Barker and Mr. Dylan Thomas, two more young poets now published in book form for the first time,

though known, like Mr. Griffith, to readers of contemporary verse through recent anthologies and the pages of the weekly reviews. Both are what I should call " difficult " poets, in

the sense that the point d'apponi, the emotional objective of their poetry, is a little hard to grasp. In Mr. Barker. this has nothing to do with obscurity, either of language or syntax ; it is a question of the directness or indirectness with which the poet communicates his experience. Mr. Barker, though linguistically simple, is at times so indirect that all trace of an emotional experience is lost in the intricate maze of his obliquities. Yet when the communication is_ more direct an unSatisfactOry " thinness." sometimes appears, which makes

one a little suspicious of so much peripheral elaboration. Tithe alone; will show how far this is justifiable experimenta- tion, but a poet who can write anything as good as The Amazons or The Web of Action should not let lines like.:. - • - " A creation insulate

From the corrosive breath Of death ; prohibiting the Collision of internecine states As two elements conflagrate End in ashes, we _emulate."

pass into, print. •

Mr. Dylan Thomas is another sort of poet altogether. In exact contrast to Mr. Barker, who is elaborate and oblique in intention though relatiVely simple in language, Mr.:Thomas uses a complex and exotic vocabulary for the direct communi- cation of simple, uncomplicated modes of feeling. So that where he is "difficult" it is a purely verbal difficulty—a matter of finding any precise interpretation for the favourite

images, the high-keyed epithets which characterize his verse. Indeed, Mr. Thomas's danger, or so it seems to me, is that he is interested in the sound-pattern of words to the exclusion of

other, and equally important values. Thus, for all its sonorous- ness, his poetry is always a little overloaded, a shade bom- bastic. This is generally an early fault, and easy to cure. Certainly Mr. Thomas has something in him, a . spirited vertebrateness which is invigorating, and a technical assurance which may yet develop into a true authoritativeness of manner. Much modern verse by older poets lacks the accom- plishment of :

" The force that through- the green fuse drives the flower Drives my green age ; that blasts the roots of trees Is my destroyer.

And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose

My youth is bent by the same wintry fever."

But Mr. Thomas must cultivate a tougher, sparer use of language; must make himself more of an ascetic in words, or

the austerity which his poetry so much needs will be lost in