Poems, by William Empson (Chatto & Windus)

Publishers in recent years have been generous towards poets. The young aspirant has hardly finished his apprenticeship before he is encouraged to come before the public with a collection of poems. It has been peculiarly exasperating that the work of one of the most interesting of contemporary poets has remained hidden in the comparative obscurity of the 1928 files of the Cambridge Review and in undergraduate journals of that period now extinct. Messrs Chatto & Windus have done the public a service in making these poems generally accessible. It is now possible to see on what evidence the general high estimate rests. We have the greater part of these earlier poems revised and polished, together with those written more recently.

Great things have been said of Mr Empson. The dust-cover reminds one that in New Bearings he was singled out with one other as the most promising of the younger writers. And in that painfully condensed work he received the most convincing account of his importance that the present reviewer has seen. One can only repeat and paraphrase what is said once and for all in New Bearings. But the present volume enables us to state that the number of poems which justify his high reputation is extremely small and almost wholly confined to poems written before 1929. The lesser poems throw light on the successes and reveal the bent which seems to have prevented any further development on the lines of the early good poems.