Poet and Artist
THE fashion for illustrating books of verse, which is strongly revived this Christmas, is an excellent one so long as artists can be found who are able to resign themselves, as it were, to be intelligibly complementary to the poets whose work they seek to embellish : too commonly the artist, drawing perhaps his initial inspiration from the verse, abandons interpretation altogether and simply lets his own fancy have its way. In the result his woodcuts or whatever they are may be delightful, but as book illustrations they fail, for unless the artist helps to explain the poet to us he might as well have published his work in a separate volume.
In vivid contrast with such meaningless combinations, this year we have the rare partnership of Mr. W. H. Davies and Miss Jacynth Parsons, whose Forty-nine Poems (The Medici Society, 8s. 6d) is quite the best illustrated book of already well-known poetry we, have seen. The title alone is not attractive ; the interpretations of Mr. Davies' lyrics are masterly, sympathetic and charming. Of new poetry, Mr. Padraic Colum's Creatures (Macmillan, 10s. 6d.), illustrated by M. Boris Artzybasheff, is also quite out of the ordinary. With Mr. Colum's lively poetic imagination and Irish whimsicality is interwoven in this book the philosophy of one to whom every living creature—crow, otter, swallow, snake, hornet—is as fit to be apostrophized as the various Phyllises and Chloes and nightingales of the seventeenth century were, in the fashion of the times. Opinions may differ as to whether the following passage is poetry or prose, but there is no denying its truth and the free, original swing of its cadences : " Pigeons that have flown down from the courts behind the orchards ! Pigeons that run along the beach to take sand into your crops ! What contrast there is between you, birds of a rare stock, and the waves that know only the buccaneer sea-gulls and the sand-marten emigrants ! And what contrast there is between your momentary wildness here and your graces in the courtyards behind the orchards ! " The illus- trations in black and white are fanciful and strongly reflective of the poet's themes : and finally the publishers have done their share of the busineis outstandingly well.
A third book of poetry illustrated which may be reconl' mended (all three have, so to speak, a Cluistmassy flavour) i8 Skelton's The Tunning of Elynour Bumming (Fanfrolico Press, 15s.), with decorations in colour and line by Miss Pearl Bander. Most of these little decorations are horribly ugly, and undecorative, but, then, so was Elynour Rumming—" For her vysage, It would aswage A mannes courage." The old
lady seated in the barrel, with a• face " like a lost pygges care," and a pint pot in her hand, is as clever and repulsive a thumbnail sketch as one could wish to see.
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