New-York tribune., 1920-10-31

n poetry is anything but soli-
tary art in England to-day. 1t
is group affair, wherein ones friends
and fellow authors gather around and
criticize and cross dedicate and other
wise greet the little stranger at the
first cry. All of which has it's limiting
effect, as Robert Nichols new volume
Aurelia, well illustrates. Here are
poems, "For Robert Graves" "For Sieg-
fried Sassoon,' etc.
There is the technique of highly
professional craft-including skilled
use of the visible world and the easy
richness of line which made Rupert
Brooke seem so much greater than he
really was. There is ever everything
that highly intelligent group of fe-
low craftsmen will admire and appre-
ciate.
But What Does 1t Mean?
But when one asks for meaning,
for that original and personal reaction
which is the essential Of great verse,
ono cannot help doubling. Mr.. Nichols
war verse has earned extravagant
praise, but its we'll bred realism is
neither shocking nor poignant in this
volume. Daffodils, love, blood bring
forth equally felicitous lines. The ques-
ton is as to their worth in world of go
many words and SO few original ideas.
For contrast there is A Miscellany
of American Poetry, 1920. Here are
ninety-four poems, mostly new. by
eleven Of our poets, each Of whom has
been his own editor. The result is not
a group, but an explosion. Vachel
Lindsay and Carl Sandburg detonate ir
somewhat the same direction, but with
quite different notes. Imagine Sara
Teasdalc ani Edwin Arlington Robin
son sharing covers with them-to say
nothing of such disparate figures as
Amy Lowell, Robert Frost and Johr
Gould Fletcher. Yet the result i:
amazingly representative of curren
American verse, its vigorous PERSONAL
ties, its many voices and its short cuts
to effects. Can it be that the American
climate, with its whitening popular
scorn and wide spaces between tn,
oases of sympathy, is more whole
some breeder of inspiration than tht
literariness Of England?
Strength in Vaguencss
Conrad Aiken is present in this mis-
cellany; and there appears also hi.
new volume, The House of Dust.
collection of related poems. That sub
world that floods to the surface II
dreams, by day and by night, is sensi.
lively portrayed in Aiken's rhymec
free verse. For his purpose his vague
ness is his strength. That he can fash
into stark vividness when his dream
calls for such treatment. plenty Of
episodes IN this volume show-"Th,
Fulfilled Dream" for instance.
One turns to Arthur Symons and his
new volume of old verse, Lesbia, writ
ten in the end of a century instead Of
the beginning, expecting to find ones
self world away. Yet an odd hint O.
kinship to the Aiken volume crops out
Here is polished verso and the self
conscious decadence OF Beardsley anc
the Yellow Book. No poem is complete
without lust. Hair is always golden
and bodies always white. The conven-
tions of decadence have become 6
series of tags. Yet there is much love
liness-ample to justify the volume ano
the period.
1t is the lmpness, the fatalistic ~
tude of tired surrender that somehow
suggests Aiken. 1t is sheer accident
but apparently our Freudian poets, in
their resolve to surrender to the sub
conscious stream and let it flow over
them, are headed toward a new kind
of decadence.
With ell the viii based upon an old