Mr. Kilmer furnishes the following prose account of his convictions: “I am catholic in my tastes and Catholic in religion, am socially a democrat and politically a Democrat. I am a special writer on the staff of the New York Times Sunday Magazine, the Times Review of Books and the Literary Digest. I am bored by Feminism, Futurism, Free Love.” This is perhaps a more succinct expression of his facility of faith than can be found in his verse. Readers should thank him for it, because it renders unnecessary any further attempt to discover what he believes.
At the opening of the volume, Mr. Kilmer quotes the following stanza from Coventry Patmore:
Mine is no horse with wings, to gain
The region of the Spheral chime
He does but drag a rumbling wain,
Cheered by the coupled bells of rhyme.
This, too, is useful, because it frankly warns us against looking in his verse for anything which is not there.
Within his self-imposed limitations, Mr. Kilmer has done good work. The amusing couplets about Servant Girl and Grocer’s Boy have pleased countless newspaper readers, The Twelve-Forty-Five is a graphic description of the feeling produced by a late suburban train, To a Young Poet Who Killed Himself is an obvious rebuke to the small-hearted versifier, and Old Poets is a comfortable exposition of the philosophy of comfort. The religious poems will probably not be moving to anyone who does not share Mr. Kilmer’s creed.
Mr. Kilmer’s work is glossy with a simplicity more easy-going than profound. Though he is young himself, he obviously does not sympathize with young poets, of whom he writes:
There is no peace to be taken