POETRY

Press, Volume C, Issue 29536, 10 June 1961, Page 3

POETRY

Poems. By Dom Moraes. Eyre and Spottiswoode. 48 pp. Mr Moraes is an Indian poet who writes in English. His latest volume is a Poetry Book Society choice, and this distinction is no doubt merited, for Mr Moraes is clearly a writer with unusual and original ideas. The bracket of related poems. “The Island.” provides a good example of his farranging imagination. But Mr Moraes is a very self-con-scious writer and his work also shows the influence of many of his contemporaries or near-contemporaries. The shade of W. B. Yeats, for instance, is never far away. Sometimes, however, a poem otherwise distinguished by its sophistication falls into a surprisingly simple romantic vein. For instance, in “Queen,” “The fallen rain glitters like stars, In the dark river 'of her hair." Another example occurs in the last part of ‘The Final Word." Though the effect is sometimes not what the poet would have desired, his work is already memorable and gives promise of further growth.