Evening star., 1927-08-30
NEW BOOKS
AT RANDOM
/. G.. NJ.

CYCLOP'S EYE. BY Joseph Aus
lander. Harper & Bros.
A wedge of sheer life stuff-"Steel."
Added to it, however. is a poet. Un-
der the poet Is a certain man and
inside the man a rebel. The rebel
started the rumpus. That's his regu-
lar job. Primarily. he was mad at
Adam because he didn't stick it out
against the awful pronouncement, I'm
the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat
bread till thou return into the
ground But nobody can forever
keep a srudge alive and healthy
against one so far out of reach as
Adam is. And so this incorriGible
malcontent turned himself loose
against the curse laid upon the first
man--against work itself. This, too.
by reason of the impartial spread of
the universal blight, proved to be an
untenable point. Then the rebel, cast
ing about still farther for cause to
support revolt, found one that fitted
like his own skin in the fact that a
few wise ones had made the best of
Adams dilemma by turning labor into
great movements of material success.
Now here was a cause that was a
cause indeed. 1t opened wide for all
men to see the split between success
and failure; between intelligence, acu-
men, ability, on the one hand, and
their direct opposites. on the other,
when the two we're facing opportunity
1t separated the world into the lucky
ICW and the unlucky many: it made
standing place for champion of the
doWn-trodden; it gave Il voice to right
Gousness laundering against oppres-
sion. Having found a situation so in
Wit h in - 81
the rebel then hunted up his poet and
turned the whole matter over to him.
The poet proved to be the rebels twin
brother. Like as two peas they were,
save that where one of them could
only rave. the other was able to work
his protest into drama--into a rounded
body of action, marked by high points
of emotion, by seconds of deep sus.
pense, by a culmina ton bursting con.
clusively out of the substance Of the
whole. And this one-the poet-had
besides a Turing way with words, un.
der the spell of which they marched
together in cadenced company, their
feet tapping here in soft agreements
of sound or laundering there in
stamping clamor Of rhythmic con-
demnatiOn.
steel" is a poem. 1t is about a
he worked in a steel mill, the way our
Secretary of Labor used to do before
he was a Secretary. This man is a
foreigner, toC-Slavic. James Davis
is Welsh. But no matter. It's Just
the funeral at first. the poem is.
Rather boisterous at the funeral, this
rebel-making poetry seems to be. But
you can't leave the place-not now
right while he is talking, half to him.
self and half to you:
Just a hunky in a steel mill. Why.
then, fuss
Because his heavy Slavic face went
yellow
With the roaring furnace dust? Now
that he is in
The cool. sweet crush Of dirt, to hell
with your
Sobbing violin, your sanctimonious
cello.
Let the mill below.
IF you ever had to do with steel,
The open hearth, the blooming mill.
the cranes
Howling under a fifty-ton load, trains
Yowling in the black pits where you
Groggly across a sluice of orange fire,
a sheet
Tongued from the cOnduits that bub-
BILE blue grees; if
Ever you got a single whiff
out of the Bessemer's belly, felt the
drag
And drip and curdlc of steel spit
Kissing against hot Stag;
If ever you had to eat
One hundred and thirty degrees of
solid heat
Then screwed the hose to the spigot.
drowned in steam,
Darted back when tho rods kicked
up stream
OF fluid steel and had to duck the
ladle that slobbered over, and
scream
Your throat raw to get your Cod
dam through
Then I'm talking to YOU"
Steve did that for ten years"
This man is dead.
Everything you can say
Is now quite definitely said"
Tremendous? You bet. And as pol
ished. too, as the finished steel is or
the cut diamond.
I'm looking for something soft and
lyric in this book, just for bit of
easement. No. there's nothing of the
sort here. Yet this man is now and
then lyric poet. Better look him I'D
in that role, merely to give yourself
the pleasure of some of his softer
moods and manners.
X X X \
ON ApNYTcrrcL- nav A., an,
Poems. By Ernest E. Davies. The
Four Seas Co.
Sonnets and lyrics give body to the
wide range cf poetic thought and i'm
agery contained in this book of verse.
the singing company. Why bother
about the mold in which poetry is
cast? Yet the form is so much part
OF the spirit of song that one cannot
completely seize the one while letting
the other go. One recalls this all over
again through the perfection of the
sonnet in the handling of Ernest
Davies. Here is one Of them-a boy
Of today signing for the romantic
glamour of ancient knight errantry:
II would that I had lived when men
ne'er knew
That this round. small earth of
ours was round:
When men ne'er knew what mvs.
teries might abound
Beyond where ocean merged with
Heavens blue:
When ships came home with plumber.
laden crew,
With gold, and spice, and captives
feather-gowned:
When miracles each day made holy
ground
And tyrants DER the earth their