A DARTMOUTH POET
"New Signatures, Poems by Several Hands" collected by Michael Roberts has been published as No. 24 of Hogarth Living Poets at the Hogarth Press, London. This volume contains five poems by Richard Eberhart '26: "Necessity," "Fragments," "Cellar," "Request for Offering," and "Cynic Song." Mr. Eberhart is the only American represented in this collection of nine poets. A review of this volume in TheListener, London, for April 13, 1932, is as follows:
"The preface with which Mr. Michael Roberts (who has assembled the nine contributing poets) introduces this anthology will win for it a sympathetic reading. He sees that, if poetry is to matter, it must be written by intelligent persons who are fully alive in the modern world. On the other hand, he is uneasy at the difficulty that has characterised such significant contemporary poetry as there is. 'But to be effective,' he says, 'a poem must first be comprehensible: a leader, though he may sometimes be compelled to go ahead to reconnoitre, must not go out of sight of his followers. The poems in this book show, I think, that we have just passed through such a period of reconnaissance. The solution of some not too insistent problems may make it possible to write "popular" poetry again. . . . '
"To judge the work above, the New Signatures, by the standards that Mr. Roberts suggests is to pay him the compliment of taking him seriously; and to make some adverse comment is not to condemn the enterprise. Such an enterprise is to be welcomed because of the critical stocktaking it invites. Moreover, New Signatures does contain two poets (the proportion, it must be insisted, is remarkably high) of indubitable achievement: William Empson and Richard Eberhart, whose work made Cambridge Poetry 1929 memorable. But neither of these answers to Mr. Roberts' specifications. Mr. Empson's contributions to this book are certainly not less difficult than 'Arachne' or 'To An Old Lady,' and do not by an immediate richness encourage one to effort of elucidation as those poems did. Mr. Empson will have to find something more than an interest in ideas and technical problems if he is to continue to be a poet. Nevertheless everyone seriously interested in modern poetry would buy the book for his part alone. Mr. Eberhart is the antithesis of Mr. Empson. He is a poet of a kind one would have pronounced to be impossible today. He is a naive and magnificently single-minded Romantic. Only America could have produced him; and one wonders for how long he can go on drawing strength from innocence. This is an occasion to call attention to his remarkable long poem, 'A Bravery of Earth.' . . .
The May 7th issue of School and Society contains an article by W. H. Cowley '24 "Who Produces Student Personnel Literature?"
"A Group of Parisian Sketches" by Hubert G. Ripley '21 appears in the May issue of Pencil Points.
Charles S. Tippetts and Shaw Livermore '22 are the authors of "Business Organization and Control" published by the" Van Nostrand Company. This book will be reviewed in a later issue of the magazine.
"The International Court" by Judge Edward Lindsey '94 published by Thomas Y. Crowell Company will be reviewed in a later issue of the magazine.
