THE MICHIGAN DAILY -AINDAV, TviNE..cit i, __IN TH Youthful Poet Hangs Hat With Leftists In Fine First Volume E WORLD OF BOKS BEFORE THE BRAVE, by Kenneth Patchen. Random House. $2.00. By ROBERT HAKKEN The average adherent to a revolu- tionary cause is often marked by an emotional state whose symptoms do not range far from those common to hysteria. He appears to be contin- ually on the defensive and expresses his attitude through what is collo- quially known as "griping." In our midst some of these "gripers" have filled news columns and student ears with frantic cries of "oppression," "fascism" and that overworked epi- thet "reactionary." Most of these young people who have attained the public eye do not seem to find in their radical tenets any integrating strength to make for stability, with- out which they are unable to view their position with perspective and are consequently unaware of the aes- thetic appeal their principles might offer to a confused and bewildered generation. Kenneth Patchen, as revealed by his poetry of the leftward movement, is scarcely one of these. He has found a certain dignity in his political con- victions which gives validity to hs subtle expresson of their meaning to humankind. His first group of poems, each titled by a phrase from Lincoln's Gettysburg address, convey a thoughtful and prophetic compre- hension of the responsibilities that might fall upon the shoulders of a successful revolutionist. In the poem, "when in the course of human events," he warns: "Do not destroy. They built a world we could not use; They planned a course that ended in disaster. Their time is up. The curtain's down. We take power. We're sorry they left so little." Although the thought is expressed by means of an idiom more native to the English left-wing poet, W. H. Au- den, its statement reveals the in-,r tegrity of the artistic perception more!I originally expressed in the other' poems of the volume. HIS nEU S URGICAL Et L SE So soft and pliable and thin is this light weight surgical hose that it can be worn under sheer chiffon without embarrassment ... brings comfort to tired aching limbs. In "Leaflet (One)" Patchen stands as no "party" Communist, though a reading of his poems indicates that his sympathy lies with that group and that his insistence upon the need for a complete revolution is based on its principles. Too frequently contemporary poets and novelists have despaired of a be- lief in humanity. Often, too, one is likely to assume that radicals think only in terms of masses to be fed and employed, implying thereby that at best all talk of human grandeur and individual courage is sheer nonsense in the twentieth century. It is good to find Patchen, in "A Letter to Young Men," writing against war and con- cluding his statement by reaffirming the old belief in the endurance of hu- man values: "When the bayonets are dearer than sunflowers In all the stalls of earth; when your country Needs you asking Why do naked good bodies Go up like stale rockets O proud bloody flowers Growing up in History's garden Break it up young men their guns are pointed At you are pointed at all the mad flaming Grandeur which killers can never make die." * * * A reading of this volume will reveal poems more markedly personal al- though never devoid of the social implications oi numan experience in our time. Patchen possesses a dis- tinctive lyric sense through which he is able to evoke the mood and in- tensity of beauty without ever sac- rificing truth to achieve an illusion of what he writes about. Not yet twenty-five years old his work in- dicates a mature outlook gained through the years since he was forced by economic circumstance to leave the University of Wisconsin as an under- graduate. His skill as a poet is rep- resented at present not so much by its success as the ambition to master difficult and varied methods. The vi'dlity of these poems piomises that full achievement of his poetic technique will not find the sensitiv- ity and spirit of the poet dwindled or exhausted. TCHERN f4VI N Soviet World Is Seen Through Eyes Of Ex-Aristocrat WE SOVIET WOMEN. By Tatiana Tchernavin, translated by N. Alex- ander, New York, Dutton. $2.50. By PROF. C. L. MEADER (Dept. of Russian Literature) Whew! The resentment against the Soviets stored up in this book! For example "-The G.P.U.* car 'the Black Crow' hoots hideously outside the prison gates bringing new vic- tims." "I wanted to go abroad, I wanted to escape, never to return to this misery, squalor, filth, horror --" p. 252. The book vividly pictures the psychology of a member of a so- cial class that in Russia at least has had its day and is passing into oblivion. If one wished to learn how adherents of that class think and feel, here is the place to find it. The old Russian world in which wealth and pedigree dominated and the new world in which labor domi- nates are utterly incompatible. Their ideals are leagues apart, and it is quite impossible for a person brought up in either class to write an ob- jective account of contemporary Rus- sian society. The title of the book seems misleading. We should expect a general account of the obligations, opportunities and activities of women under the Soviets. What we find is an account of the experiences of about a dozen women. Some are de- scribed vaguely as hypocritical, dis- honest, haughty, or slovenly Soviet officials, while the rest are women who, being unable to adjust their activities to the changed conditions, lived unhappily or miserably. The book is superficial. There is no attempt to discuss the powerful economic forces that have almost completed the destruction of one form of social organization and are rapidly building a new one. There is no dis- cussion of the fact that the revolu- tion was an elemental uprising of a people who had been for centuries starved, frozen, imprisoned, flogged and slain - an uprising against the class which oppressed them and which1 is now bitterly complaining because it in turn is suffering in consequence' of the sufferings which it itself in- flicted upon the proletariat. It hasj been said that "Though the mills of1 the Gods grind slowly, yet they grind1 exceeding small." If there is occa- sional mention of the self-sacrifices of many Soviet women who even gave up their lives in their efforts to achieve their ideals, occasion is also taken to disparage their actions. In short the book presents a very one-sided picture. Of course the de- struction of an entire class in society is a sad sight, but a revolution is not a bridge party, and the losers always suffer intenselyl. "Time marches on.'' *NOTE: G.P.U. ar the secret police. !1 Literary Quarterly Makes Bow: Devoted To Work In Progress cures can choose selections which stand by themselves, apart from the books from which they were taken, it will not be much more than a textbook on directions in modern lit- erature, with examples. It would be, interesting to see iow forthcoming issues meet the problems presented by its policy. Printers City'* Lowest Prices on 308 North Main Street Engraved $ C1 ars&Platesl.65 THE ATHENS PRESS Printing. Dial 2-1013 SIGNATURES, Work in Progress. Volume 1, Number 1. Edited by John H. Thompson and John M. Brinnin, Detroit. By FRANCES CARNEY (Editor of Contemporary) It is significant that the best writ- ing in the first issue of Signatures, "a magazine devoted to work in progress," should be the short stories and the two excerpts from novels which are most like short stories in that they have some degree of unity' and completeness . Obviously a mag- azine publishing selections from forthcoming books, while offering an indication of the trend of contempo- rary writing, would have to meet the difficulty of presenting sections which would be somewhat sufficient in themselves Most of the excerpts in the first issue are too incomplete to be satisfying - some of them too brief to be even tantalizing. The two chapters of Kay Boyle's The Intruders and the chapter from In the Icy Waters, a first novel, by Edward McSorley are fairly complete in themselves. The selection from The Intruders is the best piece of writing in the magazine, and, unlike most of the other portions of novels, I it makes one want to read more. The McSorley piece is rather badly writ- ten, but it presents an amusing and1 farily restrained portrayal of a group of literary pinks. Katherine Anne Porter's unfinished story, Noon Wine, is promising but the sections given are so meagre that it can be judged only on a basis of its promises. The WHISTLER Labored Technique Clouds His Verse FOUR WALLS.By Laurence Whistler. Macmillan. $1.25. By ROBERT S. WARSHOW Laurence Whistler, a young Eng- lishman, has received an award called the King's Medal for his vol- ume of poems, Four Walls. Whether he deserved anything like what is apparently national recognition is very doubtful. He is neither a par- ticularly skillful technician nor has he anything remarkable to offer in the way of content. He is, in the first place, much im- pressed by love. There can be no valid objection to what is, after all, only a healthy interest, but Mr. Whis- tler doesn't have very much to con- tribute on the subject. "I would deny to any other lover That paradise could be in the mere kiss Of lips to lips and heart to heart ' And just bare bodies in a dark- ened room." I am not inclined to say that that is two short stories, by Sean O'Faolain and James T. Farrell, are good, O'Faolain's story of the intrusion of unpleasant realities into the happi- ness of a newly married couple through the conversation of a cyn- ical old priest being perhaps the better. Mr. Farrell's account of the O'Fla- herty family fromA World I Never Made, however, is not worth much; and, while the bits from Dorothy Richardson's Clear Horizon are quite finished, they are trivial and man- nered. The Dahlberg novel Bitch Godless is written in prose that is meant to be vigorous and masculine but succeeds mainly in being affected. It is full of supposedly unprintable words and such sentences as "He phewed up his lips against the slept- in salt perspiring nose which was clubbing the blowsy supine face and swiveled his neck leftwards and up to a shelf." It is hard to judge whether the pieces presented fulfill the purpose of the magazine in representing trends in present-day literature. It is unfortunate that contemporary poetry is not represented - and odd, considering Eda Lou Walton's state- ment in the critical survey, at the back of the magazine -that the !poets are doing better than the prose writers at present. Probably the magazine represents trends in writing pretty well, although it is safe to say that it does not represent the best in those trends. Unless Signa- U I b A enjoy sundayvdinner at the hut roast young tom turkey dinner ...............65c breaded veal tenderloin steak dinner ........... 50c grilled spring lamb chops dinner..............55c grilled small beef tenderloin steak dinner........ 55c broiled new york sirloin steak dinner.'.*. . .*.......60c grilled club sirloin sizzling steak dinner ......... 65c grilled sizzling veal steak dinner ..............55c swift's branded beef used exclusively dancing in the but cellar sunday nite, nine to eleven. no cover charge. the hut fingerle operated the hut 1 When You Think of PRINTING Ii IMM I Call i 7900 THE INTERNATIONAL IKADETT The Quarry Incorporated 317 SOUTH STATE 0 RAMSAY-KERN. Inc. PRI NTERS 205-206 First Nat'l Bk. Bldg. BOOK ON BEARD A twelfth century tr beards has just been publis ing with the subject in r ious ways. It was written tercian abbot and is in 14 BMO KS--Up-to the -Minu FITIC ON either very real or very well put. It is simply pretty, not very original, )S and youthful. eatise on The larger number of Mr. Whis- hed, deal- tler's poems are expressions of the many cur- rather slight and disordered emotional by a cis- reactions of a young man, delivered Latin. with an air of extreme portentous- ness. The poet is only occasionally willing to admit that his pronounce- ments are not of the most tremen- dous importance. When, in several very short pieces, he momentarily forgets that the world is hanging on his words, Mr. Whistler manages to produce some quite pleasing poetry. There is a longish poem, "The Bur- ial," which, by the use of a separate title-page, is set apart from the rest of the volume, possibly to indicate that it possesses a certain amount of significance. It is in this poem that 3.50 Mr. Whistler's style - studied, over- 2.00 loaded, and making up for a lack of 2.50 real originality by the injection at 2.50 frequent and almost regular intervals . 2.50 of strenuous innovations in the use 2.75 or words --gets really seriously in I the way. The poem, striving pain- I fully in the direction of something like epic proportions, is obviously con- cerned with the state of the modern world. That I deduce from a num- ber of references to the communists. I read the poem three times. I don't know what it is about or what Mr. Whistler's opinion is in regard to whatever it is about. I refuse to, concede, at the moment, that the fault lies with me. III! Jewell "Radio's Best Buy" 111 1350 I. 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