LETTER FROM A DISTANT LAND.

Philip Booth '47. New York: The VikingPress Inc., 1957. 87 pp. $3.00.

Purity, clarity, sincerity, ease, and freedom mark the poems of Philip Booth. They are unusually consistent, possessing innate integrity and honesty, and they are true to a close communion between man and nature.

His Adam and Eve poem entitled "Original Sequence" has wisdom and restraint. He exhibits an elegiac depth in a poem like "Baker." There is more in it than meets the eye. Also, Booth can neatly turn the villanelle. Of things natural the hawk and the sea are his most persistent images.

The long title-poem, well experienced at the end of the book, shows whole perceptions, a true grasp of self in relation to situation and also in relation to history, in this case Thoreau's. Its thoroughness (I mean no pun) balances the short lyrics. The unity of tone throughout is admirable.

I was impressed in reading all of these poems together in a book, having seen most of them singly in magazines, at how much the poems of Philip Booth gain from one another; they penetrate and interlock with one another and fortify the impetus; together they present a single impetus of poetry, the purely lyrical.

Booth is not a dramatic poet, not primarily a philosophic poet, not technically a religious poet. He proves that a poet does not need to be any one of these, or any combination of them. Some poets have too much of some one quality imported into their basic intention. Booth has a pure essence of poetry, and the essence is lyrical. He writes with direct, fine, and sometimes deep feeling.

The depth is in "Storm in a Formal Garden" and the feeling, this poetic feeling which I posit as pure, is everywhere throughout the book. The fineness or sheerness impresses with passage of time. Elegance is not quite the word, although his poems are shapely. It is rather the word natural when thought of in terms of essence. He has an essence of the natural in terms of direct lyrical utterance. The tone is consistent, proving the point. He has created a balance of harmonies.

Philip Booth's lyrical power gives delight like a drink of clear foreland water.