DOMESTIC FABLES.

By Barriss Mills '34.New Rochelle (N.Y.): The ElizabethPress, 1971. 96 pp. $8.

The title Domestic Fables puzzles me. The word "domestic" is misleading since most of the poems are about art ("Renoir Girl"), literature ("The 'lntimations Ode' Revisited"), myth ("Unicorn"), and writing ("Portrait of the Artist as a Middle-Aged Man"). A few poems do portray domestic scenes, "Remembering My Father and the Begonias" for instance and "Brother Mouse," but the memorable ones for me are "Pygmalion," "Interlude: Iago Addresses the Audience," "Bastet," and "The Bears in Spring," poems which certainly are not domestic as I interpret the word.

Nor do the poems seem to me to be fables in the sense defined by Mr. Mills in his poem "Fables." They are not tales invented to point a moral, but visual images of inherent significance. The word "fable" may have been chosen in modesty because the verse forms are not striking nor the imagery bold. Precision and economy are the qualities I find most strongly marked. Sentences, stanzas, and poems end decisively. Each word is in its proper place; the energy is charged but controlled. Poetic distinction emerges from language which ranges from every day idiom:

I drink too much coffee and smoke too many cigarettes. (p. 93) to The clean, efficient skull, lightly furred, crisp leaf-ear, unprognathous jaw, functional as a trap, and the cruel mouth eschew the luxury of sentiment. The eye looks out on a world deficient in will. (P. 24)

The chief value for me of these poems is the revelation of their maker. Mr. Mills reveals himself as a literate man with a great variety of cultural interests, a professor who cares for his students, a humane man with a feeling for animals, a poet who respects his art, and an honest human being who can laugh at himself without losing dignity.

I enjoyed reading the poems and recommend them both to those who are interested in contemporary poetry and those who shy away from it thinking it will be either obscure or sentimental. These poems are neither. They are candid statements expressed concisely, vigorously, and imaginatively: they merit respect and reward the alert.

Professor Lever is a member of theDepartment of English, Wellesley College.