Books: Having Eaten

EDEN TREE—Witter Bynner—Knopf ($2.50). In the U.S. a poet's lot is not a happy one. Exception: Edgar Albert Guest, whom most of his fellow poets do not regard as a poet at all. Typical modern U.S. poetry does not sell for a good reason: misnamed "lyric," it is actually introspective, exhibitionist, an effort on the poet's part to escape from intellectual nightmare. Witter Bynner's poetic cosmos is top-heavy with intellect but more objective than most; he does not get hysterical about it. His poems are not great but they are masculine. At...