A DISAPPOINTMENT

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 758, 29 January 1954, Page 14

A DISAPPOINTMENT

THE FABER BOOK OF 20th CENTURY VERSE, edited by John Heath-Stubbs and David Wright; Faber and Faber, English price 12/6. T is difficult to know what to make of this new Faber anthology. By comparison with The Faber Book of Modern Verse, now pretty well established as a classic, it is something of a let-down. Its attempt "to represent the English verse of the last half-century-from Thomas Hardy down to the present day," is neither happy nor even very interesting. It is perhaps symptomatic of the change in the literary climate of the times that the "social and political realists" of the ‘thirties should have been reduced to a minimum. But the result is an anthology of lesser density and weight than its predecessor. The trouble as I see it is the lack of any real purpose behind the selection (or if there is the editors have been at great pains to conceal it) other than a wish to do well by as many poets as possible from the different poetic generations irrespective of their stature and Significance in’ the pattern of recent verse. So that many threadbare favourites or schoolboy aversions (Newbolt, Brooke, etc.), are as likely to be given as much space as the major names. There are, furthermore, some surprising omissions. I can think of at least 10 poets who have as strong a claim to a place in this anthology as a good third of those included, e.g., Roy Fuller, Henry Reed, etc. But none'of these objections would have mattered if the anthology was successful in other ways. Unfortunately, there are few compensations in the way, say, of recent finds, and there are few poems of outstanding interest (with the exception of some im-

pressive freaks such.as C. M. Doughty) which are not already well known or easily accessible either in the poets themselves or in better anthologies. Having said much that is disparaging it remains to add a little by way of restitution. It. contains some excellent things. I haven't seen, for instance, better selections from Vernon Watkins, W. S. Graham or David Gascoyne; and there are a number of slight but lovely lyrics by relatively obscure poets which are not to be found in any other collection. But all in all and considering the wonderful anthology that might have been compiled it’s a disappointment and something of a bore.

Alistair

Campbell