FOUR INFINITIVES

by Thomas Whitbread ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 21, 1964

Whitbread is the sort of poet usually scorned in hip circles as either academic or suburban. According to the publisher he teaches English at the University of Texas; judging by references in his poems, he's in his 30's was educated at Amherst, and probably Harvard. His work is quite polished, rather formal in a mostly unaffected way, almost always sunny (i.e. positive), and sometimes statement-simple to the point of flatness. His technical resources are as decorous as his apparently antibardic aspirations, a mixture of The New Yorker style and the more sedate specimens of the little magazines. His diction suggests his contemporaries, e.g., Richard Howard and Robert Pack, along with occasional tune-ins from Graves, Auden, Wilbur and Phyllis McGinley. The four infinitives of the title refer to the four dimensions of the book: To Observe, To Remember, To Enjoy, To Be; he is equally in all realms in fact, a more homogeneous first collection would be hard to find, as would indeed a less pulsating, less engage one. Perhaps, however, you enjoy songs of innocence and experience which never sweet or strain, which tell of landscapes and railway incidents, childhood, the CCC and college, motorcycles, basketball games and ""Why I Eat at Carus's, all with a clear uncontorted coolness (or charm); or enjoy subdued wisdom: ""But absurd all the falling of leaves, and absurd/Life, like any single, stared-at word."" If so, he's your man. Obviously editors do: every one of the poems here has been published in periodicals of one form or another.

Pub Date: Oct. 21, 1964

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Harper & Row

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1964

Categories: NONFICTION