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PETER PANTHEISM—Robert Haven Schauffler—Macmillan ($2). Mr. Schauffler is an unregenerate word-and-phrase addict, or more politely, a poetic philologist. Give him a simple declarative idea and he will repeat it to you in a dozen new guises, tricked out in quotations, skipping in humor, prone in absurdity or radiant with glamour. It takes erudition, it takes nimbleness; but of both Mr. Schauffler has sufficient to jump over the conversational candlestick with our spryest informal essayists. Among the ideas herein prestidigitated are "Ignorance Is Bliss," "Cupid in Knickerbockers" (on calf love), "Timesquarese" (on alphabetical survival of the fittest) and "Unborn Words." The last named is— to use its own theory illustratively —deluciatingly quippant.*
In Private Capacity
ADVENTURES IN UNDERSTANDING— David Grayson—Doubleday, Page ($2.50). David Grayson is also known as Publicist Ray Stannard Baker, whilom co-editor of McClure's and the American Magazine, U. S. press chief at the Peace Conference, lauder of Woodrow Wilson and professional political commentator. As "David Grayson," he preserves a private personality whose prime characteristic is a genius for wonderment. In some way he has guarded his emotional constitution so that he enjoys life's human minutiae, which is extraordinary when you consider with what bloodless generalities a publicist has to make friends. Friend of Eugene Field, friend of bees and bootblacks, bovines and businessmen, icemen and janitors, iris and blue jays, "David Grayson" is almost always proof against his own sentimentalities. These essays on innocent recklessness in the making of friends reflect an enthusiasm that is as far from wallowing as from warping. They were written for private satisfaction; they should cause public delight.
VERSE
Aiken's Muse
PRIAPUS AND THE POOL AND OTHER POEMS—Conrad Aiken— Boni & Liveright ($2). Here are 21 short poems and one longer one, compounded of dreams, half-thoughts and the stinging lash of passion, running in and out of obscurity, now fading into drifting leaves. Some of them, including the major piece, "Priapus and the Pool," suffer grievously from obscurity. In such the supreme function of poetry seems nearly lost— the function of making thoughts clearer than ever words were meant to make them. The more enjoyable poems are the simpler: the richly oriental "And in the Hanging Gardens"; the ironic "The Wedding" (of Arachne with her prey) ; The vampire in Woman, "Electra" and the brave "Teteléstai": I am no King, have laid no kingdoms waste, Taken no princes captive, led no triumphs Of weeping women through long watts of trumpets; Say, rather, I am no one or an atom. . . . . . . Well, what then? Should I not hear, as I lie down in dust, The horns of glory blowing above my burial?
FICTION
Oddments