TIME OF YEAR

by Samuel French Morse '36.The Cummington Press, 1943. 52 pp. $2.75.

In recording my impressions of this first volume of poems I can hardly do better than hang them on one or two phrases from Mr. Wallace Stevens's introduction. I find some of them "a little obstinate," as Mr. Stevens puts it. But I also find in them fresh perceptions of the "particulars of experience" and especially of "New England experience." (We both, I am sure, use the phrase "New England" descriptively; the time has long gon by when it could be used patronizingly as a synonym for provincial.) The poems show a complete integrity. There is nothing soft or shoddy or pretentious or second-hand about them. They have a sureness of form to match the integrity of content. You have to accept them as the perceptions of the poet's own experience, not another's. And if the experience hasn't wide range it has depth and variety: the flowers, animals, weather, landscape of New England; children at night, a fire, a man waking, a sulky race, the compressed history of a New England family. Commonplace experience, but recorded in images that are hard and clear, like facts; precise not precious; neither esoteric nor conventional, but true. For want of space to better illustrate my impressions, I will close with Mr. Morse's own perception of his poems as expressed in the dedicatory lines;

but spare, inadequate, And sometimes grim, the poems stand. Take them for what they are, and wait.

His friends can take them gratefully for what they are: not only as promise but as performance.

South Sea Lore, by Kenneth P. Emory '20, a pamphlet of 75 pages, has been published as "Special Publication 36" of the Bernice P. Bishop Museum. This little volume, which has already gone into the second printing, bears an introduction by Major General Ralph C. Smith. It is intended as an aid to any man who may have to live and fight in the Islands of the Pacific. Descriptions are given of various edible plants, of birds and fish and animals that may be used for food in case of an emergency. A valuable little section is that devoted to treatment of the natives. All in all it seems to be a most valuable publication.

Professor Isaac Joslin Cox '96, Professor Emeritus of History at Northwestern University, is the author of Desarrollo de la Democracia Norteamericana. This book of 178 pages was published by the University of Chile in 1943.