New Verse
Life Arboreal. By Ewart Milne. (Peter Russell. 9s. 6d.) longing falter. Consider this verse: • When first he rose to see the sun He pricked his cars with leafy grace
And ran twelve months around its rim, Yet never did his hoof displace One buttercup in the solar field: But the foal of the world is an old horse now.
a, Mask"; but it is one thing to like masks, it is quite another not v l " have a face.
etif ter this, it is a relief to come upon two young poets with person- es of their own. Kingsley Amis is already well known as a velist, and the tone of many of his poems recalls the satire of Lucky dfl• Yet the word 'satire' is not entirely accurate: the poems it2end for their effect on a delicate balance between self-assertion self-criticism. In 'A Dream of Fair Women' (one of the best poen,s i ariai in these two lots) Mr. Amis, starting on a tough sex-note, pat YSCS masculine vanity in a way that makes of it something rather st lietic and lost. Similarly 'Something Nasty in the Bookshop' e ars out as a satire on women poets and ends up as an implied
ieism of male superiority:
Deciding this, we can forget those times
We sat up half the night 'dock-full of love, crammed with bright thoughts, names, rhymes,
The And couldn't write. danger of this sort of poetry is that the balance might be dis- r'en, that it might become too tough or not tough enough. So far chr• Anais has avoided the snares, and these collections of poems cis°W that he can manage other. ther moods ash
Previous page
