CAGED IN AN ANIMAL'S MIND

Publisher's blurbs are full of fantastic, highfalutin' fanfare, but rarely have phrases such as ""strikingly original"", ""freshness of imagery"", ""masterly control"", ""depth of....emotion"", ""clarity of...insight"", etc., been used to endorse a product totally lacking in them. True, Mr. Burnshaw's second collection of verse has a lot of modern thematic-talk about passion, prayer, psychological prisons, myths, metaphysics and nature- but that's it, it's all talk. There are six or seven lithe, sometimes lofty lyrics (e.g., the title poem and St. Petersburg); the rest are meditative meanderings suggesting much reading in the Europeans George, Spire, Valery, luard. Mr. Burnshaw as translator, critic and anthologist is a ""name""; as a poet he has neither tough-fibred technique nor a telling tone; that most important thing, the individual voice, is almost always absent. Runs the opening section epitaph: "" All thought is clay, and withered song"". Appended is a goodly portion of an earlier volume; oddly enough it has more immediacy than the current one.