Word: mclane
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...industrialist or Yukon noses, and we feel a sudden pessimism for the future of poetry. When we are in this state of mind it is, we repeat, more than refreshing to find a young poet who professes no field but the field of art. Such a one is Mr. McLane, if we can judge from his latest book of poems-"Shafts of Song". If he must have a little we suggest that of "a poety of beauty...
...McLane is not bound, either by ignorance or inclination, to any one time or place or subject, and the best proof of this is in the excellent balance of his book. It contains one long poem, "Cassandra". a rather shorter one entitled "The Fig Tree", and many sonnets and miscellaneous poems of varying length. At the end of the volume is a sequence of poems some of which appeared in his previous work "Spindrift, forming an elegy...
...whom Homer certainly did not over-much respect. Greek too is the feeling, dimly sensed throughout the whole poem, of impending tragedy-the distant, silent, but steady approach of the Achaean ships. And it is in a Greek way, without the aid of short lines or expletive that Mr. McLane attains the dramatic, when Apollo, gazing on the priestess' beauty are he leaves, and sure of her love for him, hears her child...
...Tree" Mr. McLane retells the famous story of Christ's anger from the Fig Tree's point of view, as it were. No interpretation can ever rob the legend of its unfairness and its pettiness, and those who accept it must do so with blinded or winking eyes. Mr. McLane is the first to reject it openly and convincingly, but of course the logical answer to his poem is that the legend from its very incompatibility is patently a lie, and reproach should be directed not against the victim but against the fabricators of it. As a piece...
...shorter poems Mr. McLane writes in a more subjective vein, yet all of them have an interest for the reader. This is chiefly because he touches other themes than personality, and always has something to say. This is true of Brooke's verses; but it is true of the work of few other younger writers. One definite feeling that might be considered almost a message, can be traced throughout the whole book; it is the sad acknowledgement of the power of winter, death and darkness, coupled with an absolute assurance in the eventual victory of spring and new love...