(2 of 2)
Champagne for supper, murder for breakfast, romance for lunch and terror for tea,
This is not the first time, nor will it be the last time the world has gone to hell.
(Some can take it and some cannot.)
Something of a prophetic Voice in 1929, Fearing sounds more like a shavetail Jeremiah today. But there is an honor in these Collected Poems that is honor still. The Biblical and Whitmanesque views of life, which are in Fearing's blood as well as in his style, can bear repetition. As long, at least, as Tom, Dick & Harry are free to guess that human life, in their quarter of the planet, is far less decent than it has the inalienable right, and the bounden obligation, to be. Fearing's book, in spite of its often bombastic bitterness, can give to readers some feeling of that right, and sense of that obligation.