Books: Carrion Ground

THE POT OF EARTH—Archibald MacLeish—Houghton-Mifflin ($1.25). Death is the beginning of creation. Science explains: "The Nitrogen Cycle. . . ." Poet MacLeish says:

I tell you the generations Of man are a ripple of thin fire burning Over a meadow, breeding out of itself; Itself, a momentary incandescence Lasting a long time, and we that blase Now, we are not that fire, for it leaves us.

He sings the changes of the cycle in the life of a woman-one stony, first, as the reluctant earth, fearing the fire that moves, the force that...

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