"Of undesired love, to quiet a boy
Who wept inanely for his favorite toy."
Sometimes the facture of his verses is impeccable, as if he were T. S. Eliot. One would allow ten years between the two quotations, and yet they may have been written on the same day:
"Above the sprightly insolence of plates
Men sit and feign industrious respect,
With eye-brows often slightly ill at ease—
Cats in an argument are more erect."
No poem attains a lyrical perfection (he has a contempt for lyricists) and no poem is without its excellences:
"Take your cocaine. It leaves a blistering stain,
But phantom diamonds are immune from greed.
You pluck them from the buttons of your vest,
Wildly apologizing for your need."
"Two figures on a subway platform
Pieced together by an old complaint."
"If one mutters, 'I shall go to Euston Road,'
Imagination is relieved of all errands
And, decently ticketed, enters the omnibus."
Evidently there is no consistency to his work; it cannot be catalogued under any of the epithets which he so abuses; there is no place for him in the files. He is good and bad at once; brilliant and boring; awkward and skilful. He has all the insufferability of genius, and a very little of the genius which alone can justify it. He will be known some day wherever an adjective meets a strange adverb and where they bow distantly to each other; that is, he will be known in the literary circles where such introductions are made. Elsewhere he will never need to be forgotten.
