Books: Disguised Poets

WHETHER A DOVE OR SEAGULL—Sylvia Townsend Warner and Valentine Ackland—Viking ($1.75).

Sylvia Townsend Warner (Lolly Willowes, Mr. Fortune's Maggot) and Valentine Ackland, a new writer, protest "against the frame of mind, too common, which judges the poem by the poet." By lumping 109 poems together in Whether a Dove or Seagull without specifying which are by Poet Warner, which by Poet Ackland, they conspire to baffle lazy readers, force them to take or leave each verse on its own merits.

Dwelling on an English Parnassus which has a traditionally bucolic landscape, Authors Warner & Ackland have a modern liking for slow, casual...