YOUNG ENGLISH POET DERIDES FORMLESS VERSE

"In Amy Lowell's poetry there is something which always reminds me of mosaic work," Mr. Edward Davison said in an exclusive interview with a CRIMSON reporter yesterday afternoon at a tea which followed the poetry Matinee in the Repertory Theater. Mr. Davison, one of the most talented of the younger English poets, is at present reading and lecturing in this country. On this particular occasion he had read several selections from his latest book, "The Harvest of Youth."

"There is often an epigramatical deftness of expression which is like a delicate fresco. I regret to say that I have not read nearly so much of Miss Lowell's poetry as I might wish to, but in my small acquaintance with it I have found much that is delightful. And it is for the sake of this much that we can overlook the even more which is relatively flat and unpointed. Miss Lowell in the course of her writing has shot a great many shafts, many of which have gone astray, but those that have found the mark have done it with a surpassing nicety and surety."

"Lying in a Ditch"

The CRIMSON reporter asked Mr. Davison what he thought of the extreme tendency in modern poetry toward freedom of form. "I thing I can answer that question best by telling you something I recently heard. 'Modern free verse the remark went, 'is no more a new form of poetry than sleeping in a ditch is a new form of architecture.' I think there is perhaps a great deal in that. In my own work I am inclined to adhere more to the conventional forms of meter and rhyme. I am proud to say that I am not one of those who thinks Tennyson beneath contempt or is bored at mention of the nineteenth century tury.

"The great forerunner of the modern movement in your country was of course, Wait Whitman, I cannot say that I agree with Mr. Untermeyer in calling him the motivating force in modern American Poetry which I am now writing, I have had occasion to study Whitman rather extensively, and I greatly admire his power and spirit. There was a freedom and freshness about his attitude and work which has had a tremendous influence in the liberal and radical movements of this century."