VALLEY OF THE SHADOW.

MitchellKramer '54- New York: Whittier Books, Inc.1956. 70 pp. $2.50.

I would have all young poets read Robert Graves' The Crowning Privilege, where he delivers a rather successful coup de grace to Pound, Eliot, Auden, and Dylan Thomas, though it is rather in his essay on E. E. Cummings that I found a clue to Mr. Kramer's book of poems: Valley of the Shadow.

Mr. Cummings believes that "poetry and every other art was and is and forever will be strictly a question of individuality." A poet must not be pseudo-Eliot, pseudo-Pound, or even pseudo-Frost: he must be himself.

Mr. Kramer is at times a little too imitative of other's styles, but in the main he does maintain his own individuality. Together with many young poets, he has been a little too ambitious, which is to say, he has tried too hard to be over-original, and now and then seems too anxious to keep up with the prevailing fashion. If one must be at all critical of a friend's book of poems, most of which I enjoyed, I would say that Mr. Kramer's main fault is that he has fallen somewhat into these pitfalls.

Nonetheless, Mr. Kramer reveals a genuine talent, poetic insight, and he often gives to the reader many remarkable images, as, for instance, in his "Song of the Night." I liked, too, his "A Strange Land," "The Eye of Night" (reminiscent of Heine's Ein Fichtenbaum stehteinsam), and "The Old Sit, Thinking." There are a lot of other excellent poems, and I look forward to Mr. Kramer's next book, whether it be his novel or another book of poetry.