THE appearance of a book of poetry is even less likely to produce any stir of interest than the new novel or biography. This insensitiveness on the part of the reading public to contemporary verse is probably due to the innumerable slim, exotic volumes put forth by poetasters and minor aesthetes which offer slight satisfaction for all their fine exteriors and extravagant claims. Even if bad poetry does usually fall more miserably than bad prose, those works which actually reach the heights of true poetry and sustain themselves there are all the more worthy of admiration and attention.

"The Serpent in the Cloud" is in my opinion a work which approaches the ideal of true poetry far more closely than those subjective excrescences to be found among the minor lyricists. This is a long narrative poem comparable in stature if not in epic quality with "John Brown's Body". The story is the simple theme of the love of two young people who are separated by obstacles which are overcome in their consummation. The obstacles this time are self imposed by the young man, Bruce Herrick, who fears that his blood is tainted with insanity. Rose, the girl he loves, by demonstrations of her deep love and faith, in him succeeds in driving out his inhibitions and restoring his self confidence. The plot is not involved nor is it reduced in its simplicity to an entire dependence on the human will. The element of fate plays its own part as expressed by the stroke of the forked serpent from the cloud.

This strong yet simple motif is what gives the piece a backbone and makes of it, a coherent entity. Such long narrative poems must be more than a collection of vivid images to make a lasting impression on the reader. The undiscriminating bunches of images and short imaginative flights so often strung into a narrative of sorts would be much better chopped up into separate lyrics. They need to be strongly and vigorously subordinated to the central motif so that they do not stand out as an occasional flashing jewel on a wire but, as Mr. Morrison succeeds so well in doing, they should appear as integral and inseparable parts of the whole poem. It is true that the finest writing cannot be sustained and that a long poem can only hope to contain intermittent flashes of high lyric poetry. Nevertheless the narrative skill of the poet should lead one as artlessly as possible from one emotional height to the next.

There is an almost Miltonian strength to the book though in depth of perception and vigour of treatment it is perhaps best to be compared to the contemporary poet, Robinson Jeffers. Like Jeffers, Morrison comes to terms with the modern environment. He neither apologizes to the Great God Machine for his place as a poet in the world of science nor does he treat the modern telephone and automobile and cigarette as essentially unpoetic. They merely exist as parts of the setting for his human drama.

Of all the characters Rose Leighton emerges as much the most vivid and alive. A few deft lines of description give an unforgettable picture of her and the portrayal of her thoughts gives one an insight into the sweetness of her character and womanliness.

Bruce also is described in a few apt words which give one a picture which would take paragraphs for a less skillful writer to delineate.

"Bruce, good-natured, blue eyed, light haired, his forehead

Shaped for thought, tall, easy in motion, showing the skeleton in Sensitive hands."

It requires a much higher degree of skill to produce a happy ending, which seems convincing, than a tragic one. Here the plot and characters are convincing enough, but as in so many last acts, there seems to be a faltering and as labored effect to tie together all the loose ends. The action there goes on in retrospect in the mind of Bruce, and as I read this stream of memories I felt that the author was perhaps groping for something that he had not quite found. Also, at the very end the shifting of emphasis to the part fate has played in the life of Bruce's father would seem to be a bit extraneous. Taken as a whole, however, the poem is a superlative production showing a sustained power and maturity in addition to its real poetic beauty.