First Awakenings: The Early Poems of Laura Riding

These are poems from a lost cache of Riding's works, written between 1920 and 1926 but rejected by the author for inclusion in her first book. Recovered only in 1979, here they are grouped with a selection of her poems published in the same years in magazines like the Fugitive but uncollected in any of her previous books. So this is the early work of an important poet, one who could conjure the musicality of thought and fit the eccentric orbits of ideas into the taut logic of her verse. However, much of the previously unpublished verse is flawed; one has a sense of Riding's astonishing ear instructing itself (``The Magicians,'' ``Jazz Jubilate''). But in poems like ``Tact,'' ``If a Woman Should Be Messiah,'' ``Presences,'' ``Can Lips Be Laid Aside?'' and ``I Had Such Purposes,'' we find her working in a finished and original idiom; there is nothing dated about about it. The work collected from magazines amounts to one-fifth of the book. These poems are more polished, and the influence of Emily Dickinson--her love of abstraction, and the flutelike beauty of her lines--has been more nearly absorbed. Though this collection is far too long, still there is much to be thankful for: ``You will grieve for me, life. / You will grow dim and unaware / And there will be no other messenger / To bring you tidings of yourself, / Some wistful testimony that you are at all.'' (Oct.)