In this island [Hispaniola] are certain glow worms that shine in the night , as doe ours . . . but give a greater light , so much that when the man of the Iland goe any journeys in the night, they beare some of these wormes made fast about their feet and head, in such sort that he should see them afarre. By the light of these also , the women worke in their houses in the night. —GONZALO DE ORVIEDO
A poet whose perception and generous encouragement have meant so much to younger writers in this country and in England, DR. EDITH SITWELLstood in a special relationship toward Dylan Thomas. She sprang to his defense when, a poet of twenty-two, he was under heavy attack by the London critics. They met and became friends that winter; and from the first she believed that he was one of the rarest and most gifted of our time. To support his wife and three children, Dylan Thomas made occasional ventures into broadcasting, scenario writing, and storytelling. But his Collector Poems, published by New Directions in 1953, is his enduring monument. We are grateful to Dr. Sitwell for this authoritative and affectionate appraisal of his work.
In The Canticle of the Rose, Poems: 1917 to 1949, we see the development of EDITH SITWKLL, England’s foremost woman poet. We feel the excitement of her early poems with their strange compelling rhythm, and we feel the power and penetration of her later work with its splendid sweep and color. On her visit to America last year, Dr. Sitwell showed the Atlantic her Notebook on William Shakespeare, from which we have drawn two papers, the first on Macbeth, the second on King Lear — each remarkable for its interpretation and scholarship.
“At the time I began to write,” says EDITH SITWELL, “a change in the direction, imagery, and rhythms in poetry had become necessary, awing to the rhythmical flaccidity, the verbal deadness, the dead and expected patterns, oj some oj the poetry immediately preceding us.” In The Canticle of the Rose, Poems: 1917 to 1949, ice see the development oj England’s foremost woman poet. We feel the excitement of her early poems with their strange compelling rhythm, of which “Facade" is the perfect example, and we feel the power and penetration of her later work with its splendid sweep and color. On her visit to America last year, Dr. Sitwell showed the Atlantic her Notebook on William Shakespeare, from which we have drawn two papers, the first on Macbeth, the second on King Lear — each remarkable for its interpretation and scholarship.