Poetry
MR. MACNEICE'S poetry has really changed very little since the mid- thirties, and one has sometimes felt as the years slipped by that it was time for a change. What is interesting about Ten Burnt Offerings is that it does seem to mark a departure, or at least preparations for one. And if one sees it as transitional one is likely to find its faults less disturbing—and, indeed, its merits more significant. The trouble is that he seems to be in two minds, not so much about where to go as about what to take with him. This set of poetic meditations promises a deeper exploration, a greater imaginative range ; there is, too, a notable effort towards a more architectural coherence of form to accommodate' the new and essentially more serious intention. Unfortunately, his tendency to treat poetry as if it were a social occasion where the company is terribly easily bored, and of which he must at all costs be the life and soul, is insufficiently chastened. " The idiom which is only MacNeice's," as the blurb puts it, with its " ability to express the most serious reflections in the most light- hearted manner," here too frequently produces a radical defect of tone. Moreover there is a great deal of factitious dazzle and acrobatics, and the famous idiom degenerates at times into a tiresome and almost obsessional patter. One gets the curious impression of the writer himself fighting against it, as if it were a nervous tic hamper- ing his purpose. Nevertheless, there are good grounds for believing he will win ; in the fine Day of Returning and in the partly successful Areopagus and Didymus, the virtues of expressing serious reflections in a serious manner are clearly recognised and impressively practised.
The poem that gives Mr. Dehn's new book its title is a beautiful success: a valid and moving meditation gravely and gracefully argued, beautiful in texture and organisation, too closely-knit to quote from justly. The Sunken Cathedral also shows him to be a poet of considerable resources. Its theme, of course, allows his gift for vivid imaginative detail full scope (" the cormorant in a shaft of light Descends like a dark angel over the nave .... "). What is most notable is that he succeeds in creating a complete imaginative struc- ture, solving the inherent difficulty of relinquishing such a theme satisfactorily with a fine dramatic stroke-
" In the bronze light Of certain winter dawns too cold for wind, It surfaces
With a sound like thunder and the water streaming From windows open to the terrible sky."
There are some excellent minor pieces (Fern House, Mourne Mountains, The Swimmer), but these two poems are by some way the biggest things in the book. It is strictly a miscellany, containing " straight " poems, songs, verse-sequences for a documentary film, a long and entertaining masque commissioned for the quartercen- tenary of Shrewsbury School, and three translations from Jacques Prevert. Also—unclassifiable—a capital comic invention, Alternative Endings to an Unwritten Ballad (" There, locked in the arms of a Giant Baboon, Rigid and smiling lay MRS. RAVOON ... Chewing a rat's tail and mumbling a rune, Mad in the moat squatted MRS. RAVOON ...."). It displays Mr. Dehn's uncommon talent for verse at different levels, but in a way it doesn't do full justice to his abilities at the higher ones. Occasionally the levels become con- fused : a chi-chi touch, a thread of intimate-revue sentimentality, in poems seriously intended. Nevertheless, he is a poet seriously to be reckoned with ; the danger is, perhaps, that he enjoys being entertaining so much.
Mr. Kirkup's new collection contains over sixty poems ; it is only a year since the last one appeared ; no sign of any poetry-famine here. Clearly he finds it easy to write, which is not necessarily to
say that he writes too easily. But he is almost too ready for any- thing. Here there is a remarkable range of subject, but not enough variety of treatment. Too many of the poems seem to be no more than exercises in the Kirkup manner, lacking in intensity or unity of impact because the subject is insufficiently felt. But if few rise above a certain level of technique and imagination, few fall below it ; and it is a high one. He expends his powers too indiscriminately, I think, for lack of something to seize and sustain them. And what he may do when he finds it is shown by the very striking title-poem. In subject and treatment it is highly original, and it comes off triumph- antly. It describes a delicate heart-operation, in terms of poetic vision and direct record perfectly intertwined. The excitement of the action, the imaginative enlargement of it, the insight, are beautifully sus- tained to the conclusion7 '" For this is imagination's other place, Where only necessary things are done, with the supreme and grave Dexterity that ignores technique ; with proper grace .
Informing a correct compassion, that performs its love, and makes
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