THE LONDON ZOO

This is a thin addition-in both quality and quantity- to ""The Abelard New Poets Series"". The author is an Englishman with some periodical publication to his credit. The purely narrative title poem in this collection, The London Zoo, reads less as poetry than as if it were a reasonably clever prose vignette about a rather dull, stereotyped group of London commuters. In his shorter lyrics (of despair)-all very intellectualized- Mr. Sisson reveals a kind of pastoral nostalgia for a Wordsworthian-type of country man, a dim view of modern man, and a penchant for deer and sport in his use of metaphorical language. With a very few exceptions, this is mediocre verse.