THIS WEEK'S BOOKS
POETRY plays the largest part in this week's publications and especially modern poetry. Mr. L. A. G. Strong's anthology, The Best Poems of 1925 (Boston : Small, Maynard and Co.), is selected from periodicals ; his industry must be unusually great, and his taste has not been blinded by his reading. His yearly anthologies are always clear and interesting and
representative. In the 'preface he refers to the fluctuations of the " trend of ideas " in different years : --
" Last year, for example, there was a great number of intellectual and religious poems, the predominant interest seeming to lie in the interpretation of life. This year there has been a mass of poetry concerned with the direct personal relationship of one human being to another."
Of course, any lively-minded reader will think that Mr. Strong has often gone wrong 'in his selections. We may think, for example, that in choosing between two or more examples of a poet's work he has fixed generally' upon the simplest
poem—even the most ordinary ; and that on the whole it is light more than heat that wins his appreciation. Still, it is a more agreeable anthology than Mr. St. John Adeock's The Bookman Treasury of Living Poets (Hodder and Stoughton). Mr. Adcock's hook may be more useful : he has made his
object " a catholic inclusiveness." And, indeed, a reader
who took pleasure in reading verse of every kind and quality and finished the book off from beginning to end would find himself possessed of a very good knowledge of contemporary poets. But we were struck with a horrible suspicion (alas!
`for the supposed harmony in the republic of letters !) that some of the poets represented will be sleepless with rage for a month
when they discover the names of the rest. Lion lies down with lamb, horse with hyena. Which, all said and done,-_ is much to Mr. Adcock's credit.
Previous page
