ABSTRACT
Mr Empson seems to shine most brightly perhaps. But such intellectual excitement as he provides is one of the few literary commodities that prove themselves. Sometimes Mr Eberhart's seems to have more sensibility than he can manage, whence a tendency to suck his poetic thumb. He must surely be conscious of most of his quotations from Mr Eliot; but if he is it is hard to see what he is doing with them. Mr Saltmarshe and Mr Sykes, to a less degree, obey this same attraction. Mr Bronowski and Mr Fedden incline to the Imagists, as Mr Lehman and Mr Reeves towards Georgian models, skilful exercises rather than imaginative acts, good or bad. Among the notebook poets Mr Earl and Mr Redgrave show how much more economical and satisfactory verse may be than, for example, the novel as a means of condensing transient experience.
