Reviewed in Brief

What we continue to call “modern art” has had far too many apologists, denigrators, interlopers and miscellaneous “pundits” like Mr. Soby getting into its act. Painting, after all, is just another language. As Picasso once observed, either you read it, or you don’t. The relatively small amount of “modern art” which is viable has always been legible to the relatively small number of people who read the language of painting. Others should go their way. Certainly, they do themselves no good at all by listening to the fourth-hand, “let’s-all-get-acquainted” type chitchat which this collection of Saturday Review articles brings together.

In fairness to the Pan-academy which today owns a controlling interest in literature, the publishers should have put some sort of colored band around this book, pointing out that it is just another one of those personal digressions which all Serious Quarterlies, Quarterly Critics and Critical Readers can ignore. For without batting an eyelash, these 37 short, discursive essays on the poetry and conversation of Robert Frost keep presuming that poems are not, after all, just little gadgets made with words and rhythms. They even go so far as to act as though our truest poetry has always been just another way of telling the truth. Worst of all, Robert Frost, who writes the preface, seems to agree.

RP

About the Author

Robert Phelps

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What we continue to call “modern art” has had far too many apologists, denigrators, interlopers and miscellaneous “pundits” like Mr. Soby getting into its act. Painting, after all, is just another language. As Picasso once observed, either you read it, or you don’t. The relatively small amount of “modern art” which is viable has always been legible to the relatively small number of people who read the language of painting. Others should go their way. Certainly, they do themselves no good at all by listening to the fourth-hand, “let’s-all-get-acquainted” type chitchat which this collection of Saturday Review articles brings together.

In fairness to the Pan-academy which today owns a controlling interest in literature, the publishers should have put some sort of colored band around this book, pointing out that it is just another one of those personal digressions which all Serious Quarterlies, Quarterly Critics and Critical Readers can ignore. For without batting an eyelash, these 37 short, discursive essays on the poetry and conversation of Robert Frost keep presuming that poems are not, after all, just little gadgets made with words and rhythms. They even go so far as to act as though our truest poetry has always been just another way of telling the truth. Worst of all, Robert Frost, who writes the preface, seems to agree.