January Garden by Melville Cane

antitheses, but she avoids pointing the moral. The cliché

appears in every line with such consistency and innocence

that it may well be overlooked, and the poems read for

their obvious sincerity of purpose and the quietly pains-

taking trimness of their technique. The most admirable

pages in the volume are those devoted to a few sensitive

translations from the French and Spanish.

January Garden, by Melville Cane. Harcourt, Brace & Co.

Mr. Cane's verse, one feels, is hardly more than an ex-

tension of his conversation, or rather of that sort of mental

soliloquy, endless and intelligible, to which many an over-

civilized person succeeds in reducing his consciousness.

Certainly one feels only rarely the force of any such crea-

tive agency in intellect or emotion as might give lyric

meaning or formal direction to the poems. For the most

part, the book is fragmentary and amateurish; but one

is grateful for an initial lyric of real beauty and delicacy.

Lyrics and Meditations, by Philip Becker Goetz. Privately

printed.

This book presents the literary exercises of a gentleman

and a scholar who turns to poetry for an outlet to feeling

and thought without demanding or expecting the excite-

ment of intense inspiration or wide and sympathetic

appeal. One wishes he would use a more modern diction,

and ease off certain other formalities of style, thereby

giving freer play to his sensitive imaginings. This is Mr.

Goetz' fifth book of verse, two of these being plays.