NEW POETRY

Calamiterrar. By George Barker. (Faber and Faber. 5s.) Straight or Curly ? By Clifford Dyment. (Dint. 23. 6d.) THERE seem to be two Mr. Dyments, one whimsical and one with a touch of mysticism. The former perhaps owes some-

thing to Mr. W. H. Davies, and in a manner not unlike that of some of the lesser Georgian poets of twenty years ago is given to producing slight " general observations " (as he calls them) and flat rural statements like

" The swallow flies on nimble wings, And has small use for legs—

But it's the farmer's slow brown hen That lays the breakfast eggs ! "

or, " I think if I were five feet something shorter I might have been a duck upon the water."

This is the Mr. Dyment who even attributes to the centre of the solar system something of the benevolence of Mr. Beverley

Nichols, for the sun, he tells us, " smiles upon each scarlet roof And pats each flower with kindly hand."

But just as there are two Mr. Dyments, so there are two suns— and the other sun is discerned by the other Mr. Dyment " swarming Upon the rock like hot And angry warriors."

Everyone to his taste. Some may prefer to join the playful Mr. Dyment in admiring " the irrational charm of a little pig's tail," others to follow the serious Mr. Dyment who understands " the longing of a holy man To touch the crystal rod that has no end,"

the religious-minded Mr. Dyment who has written, in A Christmas Poem, " I see him burning in a flame

White as a narcissus Upon the pointed tree with silver lights In the jolly house."

In any case I think we may say that Mr. Dyment tends to write in the Georgian tradition, whereas Mr. George Barker belongs to a later school. Calamiterror, described as " a long poem, or the first ten cantos of a longer poem," is evidently the out- come of a tragic personal experience which has brought the poet to an intense contemplation of the mysteries of birth and death and an intense realisation of the mingled horrOr and

beauty of human existence. A work of art may well result from an urgent need to transmute some such haunting experience, at arm's length so to speak, into notes of music or plastic shapes or words.

" Down what escarpments can the man escape,"

asks Mr. Barker, " Consigned to profounds of his mind's abysms ?

None till his spirit like the thermometer climbs Out of his own abdominal abysms."

If only by reason of that answer, Calamiterror, with its flow of imagery " from the unconscious," its free association of images,

may be said to belong to the convention of surrealism. In this kind of poetry, as in the paintings, for example, of Chirico, there is no barrier between the indoor and outdoor worlds or between the past and the present ; a face may have no features ; a train may enter a piazza at sunset ; a torso may be composed of architectural fragments. The surrealist continually estab- lishes new relationships between an external and an imaginary world.

" The eye-shaped leaf, the topmost of the tree,

Examines heaven, the leaf-shaped eye examines _ The'eye-shaped leaf, and each observes in each Heaven and heaven."

Readers of Mr. Barker's earlier work will be aware of his powers.

Here they will find them ripening : the thought is more concen- trated, the order of the thought more easily followed, and the incidental beauties more striking. Though Calamiterror may not altogether please those who make the mistake of seeking

even in poetry what Mr. Dyment calls

' ." a ruler that will slide

Sharp pencil on an edge of reason,"

they can remind themselves that the poet is writing

"When a dark time in a dark time

Inundates and annihilates the mind," .

and they may find, if they will surrender themselves to the flow of his imagination, that any apparent difficUlty in his writing is only the difficulty of the unfamiliar, which, once mastered and experienced, ceases to be unfhmiliar, . and leads to that enrichment that comes from appreciation..

WILLIAM ELMER._