We are told that the author is forty, but the poems seem rather like the reactions of a harried and morbid adolescent to the horrors of the times, -- war, persecution, frustrated love. Often reminiscent of T. S. Eliot in his more negative aspects, the author also indulges in the strong images no commonplace in surrealist painting. He is not wholly lacking in a certain macabre talent and technical skill, but as a whole his work is over-introverted, without sustaining spiritual strength. I doubt that these poems will appeal to more than the narrowest audience, the ultra-urbanites and the despairing. This slim volume, chosen chiefly from American Mercury and Poetry, is apparently the latest collection of the author's work since Doubleday Published his Intellectual Things in 1930. His verse usually appears under the pseudonym Dilly Tante. He is better known as the collator of literary biographical volumes, notably Authors Today and Yesterday, Twentieth Century Authors, etc. etc.