A True Poet
SONG AT THE YEAR'S TURNING. By R, S. Thomas. (Hart-Davis, 12s. 6d.)
WHEN so much criticism of modern verse takes the form of the erection or sapping of generalisation and category, the poet who is indifferent to poetic schools is apt to get left out of account. None of the posher reviewers is going to hang round his neck a garland labelled 'Significant Trend,' and, although it may be true-that such garlands often turn into millstones, the admirers of an unfashionable poet are subject to bursts of indignation. I am at any rate, whenever I survey the resolute, and discreditable non-recognition of what I take to be an obvious fact : that Mr. R. S. Thomas is one of the half-dozen best poets now writing in English. To be sure, we now have a handsome selection of his work available in Song at the Year's Turping, which carries a valuable and self-effacing introduction by Mr. John Betjeman, and critical attention has been respectful. But why, when clever young men are throwing contemporary verse about, do they never seem to mention Mr. Thomas? I cannot understand .it; or rather I can—there are some for whom merit is never enough.
Although Mr. Thomas is not a derivative writer, it may save time to suggest that he has something in common with two other underrated poets, Edward Thomas and Andrew Young. He shares with them a fondness for rural subject-matter and, stylistically, a contempt for modernist shock-tactics, whether emotional or intel- lectual. He has also preoccupations that evoke none of theirs : a blend of respect, exasperation and love for the Welsh hill-farmers of Montgomeryshire where he was a country rector, and a similar feeling, voiced always with unmistakable intensity, for Wales itself, though it would be quite wrong, as Mr. Betjeman observes, to call him a merely local poet. His imagery, thickly clustered as it frequently is, and made to proliferate and interconnect with great brilliance, is built upon a simple foundation of earth, trees, snow, stars and wild creatures. To describe the effect of his work it is enough to say that he often moves to tears, and that certain lines of his impress themselves instantly, and perhaps ineradicably, upon the mind. His example reduces most modern verse to footling whimsy.
KINGSLEY AMIS
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