MINDSCAPES

From the editor of Sounds and Silences (1970, p. 750, J-292) another absorbing collection. Although many of the poets are known, most of the poems are not on juvenile shelves — but they should be. Ronald Koertge's "Modifications" is a seemingly simple account of following the rules — to a freaky finish. Robert Hayden also depicts a strangely terrifying scene in "The Whipping" as an old woman, beating a boy, is "avenged in part for lifelong hidings/ She has had to bear." In "Horror Movies" Howard Moss suggests, "There's a little death in every body" and Ferlinghetti deals in irony: "The world is a beautiful place/ to be born into/ if you don't mind some people dying/ all the time/ or maybe only starving/ some of the time/ which isn't half so bad/ if it isn't you." Not all are so hard-minded but they do share a concern with the realities of everyday life. Marcie Hans draws a contrast between the thrust of a rocket and a seedling ("no one even clapped") and Karl Shapiro looks at the "cryptic American. . . beauty" of a manhole cover. Good anthologies of modern poetry are no longer hard to find — there's been a flock since Watermelon Pickel; this is better than most, fresh and uncompromising.