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THE WAR OF THE SECRET AGENTS and Other Poems by Henri Coulette

THE WAR OF THE SECRET AGENTS and Other Poems

By

Pub Date: March 17th, 1965
Publisher: Scribners

The poems in this collection are a mixed lot. Those in the first section are early ""in time or manner,"" and fairly traditionally poetic in language and feeling. Some of the others are semi-translations, or derived from other poems; the long title poem, full of various characters and voices, is ""based on Jean O. Fuller's Double Webs."" The tone of this poem, and the final poems, is colloquial and conversational, but deceptively so, for the images and meanings through the book are surreal, disjointed, private, although some poems stand clear and convey their intentions. This obscurity and borrowing is presumably deliberate--a quotation at the beginning reads"" ...I learned that by these words I hid my thought,""--but it is apt to irritate those who believe poetry should clarify thought.