WHERE ARE THE POETS ?

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 1, 2 January 1932, Page 17

WHERE ARE THE POETS ?

"Whore, oh,- where, are. all the poets?" asks Mr. Hugh"Walpole, looking at the year's literature. "Why does Siegfried Sassoon, for instance, content himself only with a little parody of Humbert Wolfe? AVhy does Kobert Nichols write, poetry no longer? Is Mr. Masefield going to suffer the customary extinction of all poet laureates? What is Walter de la Marc doing, and where- is W. H. Davies hiding? Very strange, this temporary extinction of . English poetry. There have been collected volumes of Osbert Sitwcll and Martin Armstrong, but ■ the single volume of new poetry that I personally have enjoyed the most has been Sylvia Lynd's 'Yellow Placard,' a beautiful littlo book worth its weight in platinum. There were some fine poems in Humbert Wolfe's 'Snow,' a poet round whom there is always v battle raging because ho is facile, unequal, and confident. Ho is, nevertheless, a genuine poet. Another volume- of real poetry has been Edward Davidson's 'The Heart's Unreason.'■ Aldous Huxloy's 'Cicadas' was dry and disappointing, and of real modernist verse there has been none at all."