The Diver

ALTHOUGH this is his first book, E. L. Mayo is no newcomer to those who keep track of the few good poetry magazines. Many of these pieces have spoken forth impressively in separate publications. Gathered together they acquire the new dimension of the author’s personality. It is a genuinely attractive personality: pessimistically sane, warm, sensitive, intellectual, and honest.

I suppose Mayo is one of the few remaining poets who would accept the label “Metaphysical.” Which, aside from a technical inheritance from the seventeenth century, is meant to indicate that his mind moves most naturally against a backdrop of the Absolutes. Whether or not this is the best scenery available in our times is a question every man must answer for himself. What remains unquestionable is the honesty and observation with which Mayo captures each poem.

There are fifty-three poems in this selection, every one of them a sure performance in its own quiet way. I find myself especially moved by such pieces as “ The Dance of the Feather,” “El Greco I,” “The Iron Gate,” and “I Had Seen Death Come Down.” I certainly am not prepared to embark on a definition of what makes a good poem, but these four seem especially unchallengeable candidates. Without eccentricity; with, in fact, a happy insistence on honest communication, Mayo can make effects that are sometimes stunning. The use of ten monosyllabic words in the last line of “ El Greco I ” is as effective a device as I have met for pounding at an intensely passionate question. The carefully understated irony of the last line of “I Had Seen Death Come Down” is another movingly felicitous effect. Taken as a whole, The Diver presents a poet who should be read.

JOHN CIARDI