POEMS THAT LIVE FOREVER

Poems that live forever sometimes equate longevity with familiarity, and Robert Service's Dan McGrow, Kipling's Danny Deever, Browning's Duchess, Noyes' Highwayman are among the inevitables with Kilmer's Roofs instead of Trees as one of the few surprises. The poetry is arranged thematically (love, patriotism and war, home and family, etc.) and along with the immortals, there are some of the worser versifiers-- Dr. Wilfrid J. Funk, Grace Noll Crowell, Edgar Guest, and an Unknown's Growing Smiles. The collection runs to close to 500 pages and the modern temper has certainly been overlooked-- there's one Dylan Thomas and one Richard Wilbur, and no Eliot who defined poetry as ""the intolerable wrestle with words and meanings."" There is obviously no exertion of this kind involved here, and the perch known as the household bookshelf is the only designation though Van Doren's World Poetry or Oscar Williams' Little Treasuries are still more valid choices.