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122 LETTERS IN CANADA 1987 Ihave only one major criticism: Kirkham makes no sustained attempt to place Thomas in any literary context other than that of post-Romantic poetry. In particular he hardly tries to link Thomas with - or to distinguish Thomas from - his contemporaries. Thomas's relations with the Georgians are almost casually dismissed, his friendship with de la Mare is not mentioned at all, and his obvious affinities with Hardy receive parenthetical treatment, never systematic analysis. The book is weakest of all, I think, in its handling of Thomas's relations with Frost. Kirkham seems defensive, almost territorial, in his desire to minimize Frost's influence over Thomas or likeness to him. Kirkham asserts that Frost's 'characteristic mode' in North of Boston was 'long blank verse poems' and that after Thomas wrote a couple of these, 'he went his own way.' But Frost's volume also contains some short poems which sound very much like Thomas: consider, just to take well-known examples, 'The Road Not Taken' and 'The Oven Bird.' A more hospitable attitude to Thomas's contemporaries would have done much to enliven the later, somewhat reiterative parts of this book. But such quibbling is undeserved; this is a wise, sensitive, and interesting treatment of a wise, sensitive, and interesting writer. (ALAN HERTZ) John Baglow. Hugh MacDiarmid: The Poetry of Self McGill-Queen's University Press. 258. $30.00 The poet Hugh MacDiarmid (who in his personal life was named Christopher Grieve) is regarded by Scots as having been an influential if controversial figure in the literary and political life ofScotland throughout the twentieth century, up to his death in 1978. John Baglow, a Canadian, invites readers outside Scotland to recognize in MacDiarmid 'more than a modern Scottish poet. He is a modern poet' (219) who responded to the same crisis-ridden environment as Yeats, Eliot, or Pound. Baglow considers MacDiarmid's work 'invaluable as an introduction to modern poetry in general' (208), first, because he is typical, or so Baglow argues, of modern poets in his aspirations, frustrations, and ultimate 'failure' (x) to achieve an ordered but accurate reduplication ofhis cultural experience in his poetry; therefore he could never establish a secure sense of his place in that culture as a poet. Secondly, Baglow finds that the search for this sense (the 'Self' to which Baglow's title refers) is a more persistent and explicit theme in MacDiarmid's poems than it is in the work of his contemporaries. To appreciate MacDiarmid in this broader context, Baglow asserts, is to counteract 'a legacy of condescension which has stifled the aesthetic life of many another culture - English Canada's for one' (ix). Unfortunately, in trying to dispel one kind of condescension, Baglow HUMANITIES 123 indulges in another, that of the critic imposing a simplistic argument on a complex poet. Taking his cue from MacDiarmid's self-criticism, he sets out to prove that MacDiarmid failed to establish his 'self' through his poetry. He goes through the canon chronologically to show how every approach MacDiarmid tried proved inadequate. Any praise he offers merely qualifies this condemnation. Thoughtful readers cannot help but take issue with his poorly substantiated verdicts, having their own opinions on MacDiarmid's strengths and weaknesses. As Robert Graves writes in Poetic Unreason, 'the goodness of a poem is, for the reader, a relative quantity dependent ... on the degree of perception by the reader for the various phases of experience reconciled in terms of each other by the poet' (36). Judgments of success and failure in themselves are a weak basis for critical argument, yet Baglow moves on to make similar judgments about MacDiarmid's contemporaries with virtually no detailed substantiation. He treats richly and diversely productive individuals as a flock of unhappy ostriches, burying their heads in inadequate poetry because they 'crave certainty' (187). Baglow's book reaus like the initial draft of a thesis, not only because of its sloppy writing and organization, but because in its last chapter he seems to get a glimmer of the onerous demands of the rich subject he has chosen. He excuses himself, admitting defensively, for example, that his picture of modern culture is 'necessarily and...

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