The Hours Press is doing courageous work by printing, in
delightful format, several of the more abstruse of the modern poets. These people are deliberately divorced from the general reader by reason of their literary arsenal and their avoidance of normal life as a source of supply. They throw over the known measures and all possibility of variants there- from, substituting highly formalized word-patterns that may be compared with the geometric designs of the ultra- modern school of painters. We have yet to see what will result from this encroachment of the arts of poetry, painting, and music each into the province of the others. Lessing prophesied that such conduct in the arts could laid only to their extinction; but then he was bred in the Classico-Renais- sance tradition. New standards may be rising. If so, Mr. John Rodker, the most recent poet printed by the Hours Press (Collected Poems, 30s.) may yet discover a devout following for his highly sensitized experiments in forms designed to represent his very unique reaction to the world, He sees that world rather pathologically, but is thereby only the more representative of the modern nerve-racked generation living under an obsession of street accidents. Here is an example of his skill in its more orthodox moments :— " The sky broods over the river— The waves tumble and flee. And down go the dead things ever Down to the sea."
* * * *
Previous page
