Books: Poet's Play

PANIC, A PLAY IN VERSE—Archibald MacLeish—Houghton Mifflin ($2).

In Elizabethan days every dramatist was a poet, every playgoer a poetry lover. But nowadays poets generally leave their Muse behind when they go to town. To most moderns, poetic drama means selfconscious, little-theatre stuff-&-nonsense. Ambitious Poet Archibald MacLeish (Conquistador), seeing no good reason for the modern notion that Poetry is by nature a bad actor, has tried his hand at a verse-play. His first attempt. Panic, took him 16 months to write.* Playgoing readers will find it an exciting experiment, will hope Author MacLeish's...