Books: Poet's Story

BRIDGING THE YEARS—Cole Young Rice—Appleton-Century ($3).

At 14 Cale Young Rice won a roller-skating championship. At 16 he captained an undefeated baseball team. Says he: "I am sure these small triumphs served to strengthen the muscles of my will for the long climb to poetic goals. . . ." Poet Rice's story of his climb up Parnassus has as many alibis as there were slips on its slopes. Thus his attempts eo crash Broadway with verse dramas were steady failures because of "resentment against the frequently made assertion that I was 'America's foremost poet.'...