THE SALT GARDEN

This is a new volume of verse by the author of The Image and the Law, Guide to the Ruins, and the recent urbane novel, Federigo or the Power of Love. Nemerov has a good deal of technical skill. He can control his verse forms, and his poems give a sense of firm crystallization. But they are chilly with his intellectual cynicism and derision. The mood is monotonous and repetitive. One wonders how with so little passion he can go much further than he has. For he seems to have little to express other than a rather wry skepticism.