Verse

THE TEMPTATION OF ANTHONY and Other Poems--Isidor Schneider--Boni & Liveright ($2.00).

When the title poem, "a novel in verse" appeared in the first number of The American Caravan, "yearbook of American literature," it was singled out for bold poetic images which justified its existence in poetry rather than prose. Though it is more elaborate and therefore the less effective than Masefield's crystalline novels-in-verse (The Widow in the Bye Street, etc.), its psychological analyses and philosophical comment are nevertheless subordinated to the compelling narrative.

SPRING PLOWING--Charles Malam--Doubleday Doran ($2.50).

Schooled and approved by Robert Frost, a new poet interprets New England hills and fields and gaunt good folk. Spring plowing he has watched as the turning over of old earth that the sun might shine on new surfaces. Such things he wants to share with "those who love new sods," for

Out of earth comes everything, Back to earth returns--. . . .

POEMS--Clinch Calkins--Knopf ($2.00).

Miss Calkins reflects a keen curiosity in human reactions. "Queens weep like simple women"--but why, what have queens to weep?. Yet she knows

The arms of grief are very strong,

His vigor swift, his passion long.

A woman tired in heart and limb

Should not lie down to rest with him.

Paradoxically, she does a maudlin song to the tune of jazz, with lines from Horace chanted as chorus.

SUNSET GUN--Dorothy Parker--Boni & Liveright ($2.00).

Rhymster Parker has a reputation for brittle cynicism, ingenious parlor games, and Enough Rope, last year's best selling book of verse. This year's is more of the same, gleaned from the original settings--mostly smart or pink magazines, but also the Yale Review.

STREETS IN THE MOON--Archibald MacLeish--Houghton Mifflm ($2.00).

In a week of jingles, Poet MacLeish remembers the poet's lay, to keep it lyric. The wind in the grass is still, as in his earliest writings, a spiritual phenomenon. But he has since found power in harsh words--"an oak screams in the wind . . . the wet wood smoke blinds. . . ."

BURNING BUSH--Louis Untermeyer--Harcourt Brace ($2.00).

Prolific author of critical essays on poetry, Poet Untermeyer sticks to conventional rhythms in his own verse, but experiments with new rhymes: "fronds--bronze, millions--brilliance, color--duller, cardboard--hard, bored,"--studied inaccuracies which emphasize a lack of spontaneity. Indeed, this poet is at his best in historical comment, or in one satiric sonnet that is an anthology of Georgian poetry, complete with bucolic landscape where "immemorial lambs keep moonlit trysts with deathless nightingales."