A MODERN POET

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25458, 12 February 1944, Page 2

A MODERN POET

The Motionless Dancer. By Peter Yates (Chatto and Windus), 8s 6d. This poet is a poet. His poems have that quality of calm withdrawal which is in so many great lyrics. There is indeed almost a hardness in them, a sculptural hardness, classic, limiting scope of subject and imagery. Thus it is not strange that the most powerful poem in the book has the title “The Motionless Dancer.” Here and there is the startling and excellent phrase which one finds most frequently in the best of poetry—such words as “A statue resting in time. “The restless, flowering clouds. There is no amateurism in this bpok, nor real obscurity, save for the necessary obscurity of complex poetic thought. The poetry is not human but abstract, recalling sculpture recalling the Platonic Forms Mr. Yates reaches the essential poetry in his theme, then strums on that string as a recurring note. In this dwells his music and his peculiar charm •.also the sense of tautness, modern nerviness,” underlying it. He does not express the obvious emotion. His faults lie mainly in repetition of the same word, such as “flowering,’ and in the overpowering of sense by „ f °ym and phrase. But he is not a difficult poet, for the thread of- poetry once caught, leads one surely through each poem. None need hesitate to read him. — J. K. B.'\