West of Midnight

WEST OF MIDNIGHT $2.00 By Paul EngleRANDOM HOUSE

THIS collection marks a great advance on the author’s earlier volumes. His development can be seen in the concentration and control of his medium, his stricter sense of form and clean, clear line. The lyrics waste no words and say something, there is a strengthening of ‘emotion’s muscle,’ and his prayer to his Muse, ‘Let my talk be act,’ has been answered. A long poem based on the letters of a Finnish friend during the RussoFinnish war is a very moving statement of the reactions of intelligent youth to the world of today. Aspects of American tradition are embodied in a series of poems singing of the wisdom and practical sense of Emerson, the lonely intellectual voyages of Melville, the simplicity of Thoreau, the skeptical frugality of Frost, and the intense vision of Emily Dickinson. But perhaps the best poem in the book is called ‘Anonymous,’ and celebrates ‘Men with lives too small For public praise or blame’: —

E. D.