NEW AND SELECTED POEMS

A great wealth of language and images pervades this large collection of old and new poems; logical meanings are somewhat scantier. In the poems about nature, the downpour of words often serves its effects well, lending an aura of vague splendor to a countryside full of hills, apples, old people, etc. But this vague splendor is often merely baffling, in the earlier poems about emotions; what is being felt, and about whom, dissolves into subjective impressions. The selections from the latest volume (Country Without Maps, 1964) mark a great leap forward; logic and image reinforce each other, for a change; structure is simplified; the poems get across what they mean to say, in short, without losing their verbal richness and with their imagery made relevant to their scenery, internal and external. The vaguely ""poetic"" suddenly, using very similar means, becomes the genuinely poetic, simply by tightening up its controls and intentions.