Unversified Verse

JAMES SHORE'S DAUGHTER--Stephen Vincent Benet--Doubleday, Doran ($2.50).

Had he lived in the 18th Century, Poet Stephen Vincent Benet would almost certainly not have written in verse. Many a reader of his Pulitzer-Prizewinning poem, John Brown's Body, had an uneasy feeling that it was about time "poetry" was redefined. But many a reader of James Shore's Daughter will wish that Poet Benet had not taken a vacation in prose. What Lewis Mumford (see below) would call "fatally readable," James Shore's Daughter has the faint odor of a Richard Harding Davis novel that has survived a little too long. Those who never expected much from Author Benet will take the book for what it is--a pleasantly nostalgic romance; but those who thought John Brown's Body promised even higher flights may be offended.

Violet Shore was the independent only child of a hard-bitten millionaire who had made his pile in the West and gone to Manhattan to raid the other corsairs. Gareth was one of a family of impoverished but socially correct little exiles who had been brought up to believe that they were all prodigies. Gareth's and Violet's childhood friendship might have developed into marriage, but Gareth had no money. Old Man Shore got his daughter the finest husband money could buy, and she spent the rest of her life making the best of the bargain. When she and Gareth met again, he had become a successful European art dealer. They tried being lovers, but without success. Years later, though he admitted himself contented, middle-aged and married, Gareth was still in love with James Shore's daughter.

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