The Art of Restraint: English Poetry from Hardy to Larkin by Richard Hoffpauir (review)

84Rocky Mountain Review the conventions and formulae while creating a special quiddity" (97). Their novels question and challenge the supposed moral order of society and civilization itself. In Simenon's novels, morality is relative, and a recurrent motif of unreality is present. The difficulty of obtaining a mature identity in society is addressed in Millar's works, while Highsmith deals with the ambiguity ofmoral order. OfJim Thompson, Hilfer says, "No one has yet taken the possibilities ofthe crime novel farther" (137). The discussion ofsuch novels eis Pop. 1280 centers eiround the complexity of mored order. Tony Hilfer's probing study ofthe genre ofcrime fiction is at least as thought provoking and intriguing as the novels under consideration. Although I was disappointed with Hilfer's announcement at the end ofchapter five that Edward Grierson's Reputation for a Song (1952), which involves the framing of an innocent character, "is so excruciating that I cannot bring myself to discuss it at any length" (96), it was only because I wanted more ofthis writer's splendid exegesis. Whether one's interest in crime fiction is scholeirly or recreational, this study will provide tremendous insight into the psychosocial implications of this "deviant genre." JOANNE ANDREWS PADDERUD University of Nevada, Las Vegas RICHARD HOFFPAUIR. TAe Art of Restraint: English Poetry from Hardy to Larkin. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1991. 332 p. How do you assist contemporeiry readers in appreciating observant, quiet, English poetry? Richard Hoffpauir uses those adjectives ("his observant, quiet, English best") in his discussion of Edmund Blunden in TAe Art ofRestraint (130), and they fit all of the work Hoffpauir esteems in this volume. This is not to say that in their restraint and their "quiet" the poets Hoffpauir discusses are without ideas, rages, or deep ethiced conviction. Among the reflections on mortality in Edward Thomas, the love lyrics of Graves, and the social commenteiry of Betjeman and Larkin there is plenty to stir the soul. Hoflpauir's point, however, is that euch stirring is done reasonably, with respect for traditional poetic form and social decorum. Though Hoffpauir admires restraint in the art of poetry, he seems to have difficulty in restraining himself when he discusses the poets and poetic movements which have overshadowed the appreciation ofwriters like Thomas or Betjeman. The movements he attacks are Romanticism and modernism, and the poets he tears from their pedestals are Yeats, Eliot, and Auden. He also berates lesser known poets too heavily influenced by these authors. Hoffpauir is blunt about the values behind his readings ofpoems. He states hie aims in the first paragraph ofhis book: to register his disappointment with the canon of modern poetry, to stress the moral function of poetic art, and to argue that the best poems respect traditional forms. His criticism throughout is evaluative, and he bases hisjudgments on the degree to which the poet has shown realistic vision, rational moral judgment, and mastery of traditional Book Reviews85 poetic technique. Still, I cannot help but feel he is ungenerous with poets he does not like, and overly forgiving ofthose with whom he agrees. He criticizes the conclusion ofWilfred Owen's "Dulce Et Decorum Est" by saying, "It simply does not follow that because death in war can be horrible one should not die for one's country" (111). A more sympathetic reader would say that Owen was not making so large a claim, but rather calling Horace a liar for saying that death in war was sweet and beautiful. The true problem Hoffpauir has with this poem seems more likely to be its emotional registration of horror, for he has unqualified praise for a poem like Ivor Gurney's "The Silent One" which also criticizes the unrealisitic ideal of noble death, but which does so with emotional detachment. In deeding with Gurney's poem, however, Hoffpauir makes no mention of its difficult syntax, dismissing this problem at the very beginning of the section on Gurney's work with the baffling excuse that Gurney's style is difficult because of "a failure to revise . . . and not because of a failure of literary or moral understanding" (131). Hoffpauir's charges against Yeats and Romanticism can be similarly irritating. In his first...