Frost

wing or regional, eclectic or experimental programs and by their

unorthodox formats (flamboyant as Broom, which was printed on

luxurious Fabriane paper, or amateurish as Yvor Winters' Gyro-

scope, which came out in mimeograph form), and again recog-

nizable by their eccentric nameplates (such as Laughing Horse,

Dill Pickle, Fifth Floor Window, Harkness Hoot); but also the

better known critical reviews like Kenyon, Partisan, Sewanee.

The chief difference is that the primary function of the so-called

"little" magazines, the lesser known ones, is to discover and to

coach the apprentice while providing him with his first readers.

They are identical, however, in their non-monetary motivation and

in their restricted range of readers-a limited public of intelli-

° gent readers. They aim to publish the best writing that comes

their way: the work of advanced technical or artistic merit and,

of course, the work of intrinsic quality. And the best comes

their way because the best is not acceptable to commercial period-

icals and money-minded publishing houses-it does not con-

form to their stock formulas prescribed for popular reader-

response.

Robert Wooster Stallman.

while enjoying them, I was forced to revise my estimate of the

others. I found the section of Blues slightly monotonous. The

repetitions appeared suitable, perhaps, with music, but on paper

totally unsatisfactory. I even rebelled at the line:

Built big and pretty like a sloop boat in the

weather eye.

on the grounds that it was an incongruous mixture of Cape Cod

and Deep South. The fault is not in the line, however, but in

ourselves:

To many Americans, the notion of the intellect at the service of the

whole sensibility is not merely a strange concept. It is one they actively

resist, having a European preconception about the detatchment and hier-

archic authority of the intellect. These people will not like the blues.

Unfortunately the introduction offers no clue to the Source and

Import of

Ah, friendly fair and fondly flowering sun.

Perhaps it's Elizabethan. Perhaps it's just an idiotic alliteration.

On second thought I believe that the unusually courageous

reader should shun the introduction, read the book, and form

his own opinion. It is probable that he will enjoy some of Mr.

McHugh's poems as much as Mr. Untermeyer does in the jacket

blurb.

By contrast, A Wider Arc is less pretentious and more success-

ful. This is minor poetry in the sense that T. S. Eliot has used

the word-discrete conceptions as opposed to a major conception

which unifies a long poem or the entire work of a poet-and, as

minor poetry, it is excellent. Melville Cane is probably at his

best in short lyrical descriptions of nature and places. He avoids