AM I in danger of becoming wearisome in praise? I cannot help it, for it happens that a young poet has just published a first volume that also is distinguished by the quality of simplicity of character. A Map of Verona (Cape, 3s. 6d.), by Henry Reed, introduces a man two poetic generations later than Muir. But already he writes with authority. He appears as a man of wry, almost sly, humour, endowed with a shrewd critical mind that gives his first work a matter-of-factness wholly acceptable to the fastidious reader's palate. In that technique of dry statement, sometimes almost categorical, you discover a highly individual poetic faculty. It gives his work a stillness that is startling, like the skies in Dali's queer pictures.
At present, the structure is based on a sardonic caprice rather than on the symbols of a philosophy. One asks him what is his base of belief as he contemplates the world within and without. He has seen it through a war and a social chaos, a new vulgarity and a dying culture. Of course he cannot answer. At present he is wandering about, looking and commenting. But he is warm and generous, never peevish. And below this stance of humorous commentary there is passion, which he tries to assuage with scholarship. In this young poet's music
The flutes are warm: in to-morrow's cave the music
Trembles and forms inside the musician's mind.
And the reader is already conjured to stop, and listen. We shall hear more of this.