The Wind, the Sea, and I

Ramsing spent the last nine years of his life in psychiatric hospitals, from which he frequently escaped. He died in 1977 at the age of 24. His poems, pieced together from diaries, deal in predictable ways with typical adolescent concerns of love, awakening sexuality and self-identity. All too often the verses sound pretty but lack depth or resonance. Getting behond the mawkish love poems and confused lines, the genuine voice of a poet sometimes breaks through when Ramsing describes his loneliness and desperation as a mental patient, his longing for freedom from confinement and the severe testing of his faith in God. A few lyrics echo the stark, vitriolic imagery of Stephen Crane's verse; other lines roll with a Whitmanesque love of the open road. Benziger fails to adequately explain what Ramsing's problems were or how he developed as a writer. (October)