[In the following mixed review of The Image and the Law, Golffing questions the dichotomy between images and ideas in the volume.]

Mr. Nemerov tells us—on the dust-jacket [of The Image and the Law], of all places—that he dichotomizes the "poetry of the eye" and the "poetry of the mind," and that he attempts to exhibit in his verse the "ever-present dispute between two ways of looking at the world." Though usually skeptical of programmatic statements, I find this particular one quite serviceable as a clue—a "way in"—to the plexus of Nemerov's poetry.

The dichotomy itself is fashionable, and it is peculiar. It has almost assumed the status of doctrine in the work of Wallace Stevens, who disassociates mind and eye while paying homage to both, and in the work of W. C. Williams, who, while exploiting sensory perception, makes short work of the mind. There are other poets—none of them of comparable rank—who would, on the basis of the same antinomy, dismiss sense-perception for the sake of pure intellection.

What matters here is not the individual emphasis of the poet but the fact that the underlying assumption is unsound. Eye and mind are not two contrary ways of looking at the world but two interdependent modes of prehension, the perceptual mode subserving the conceptual and normative. The poet who tears the two modes asunder and presents them as inimical commits a meaningless act of violence, which is likely to vitiate the intellectual framework of his poetry.

The fact that both Stevens and Williams have written a great deal of excellent verse cannot be regarded as proof of the soundness of their methods: verse as good as theirs or better has been written on principles that are now generally recognized as either flimsy or perverse (vide Shelley, Swinburne, Whitman, Hart Crane). While there is evidently no simple correlation between a writer's doctrine and his poetic practice, it is equally plain that a halfbaked or wrong-headed philosophy will tend to have an ill effect on his manner of composition. I am convinced that most of the failures in the work of both Stevens and Williams must be traced to a defect, not in sensibility or formal mastery, but in envisagement or, as Kenneth Burke might say, poetic strategy.

Being largely under the sway of Wallace Stevens, Mr. Nemerov has appropriated not only the basic dichotomy of that poet but also his special tactics of treating ideas and perceptions severally and oppositionally. About half of his pieces deal with "images," while the other half are concerned with the "law," i.e., the normative function of the mind. I can discern no methodological connection between the two sets, not even the dialectical one of active contrasts moving toward some kind of synthesis. Not a few of the "images"—that is, the strictly descriptive or anecdotal pieces—are quite good in their whimsical way; though rarely witty they have to their credit a certain mordancy, acumen, and lightness of touch. Stylistically they hover between Stevens and K. Rexroth, with occasional sallies—no spoils resulting—into Empson's domain. When Mr. Nemerov deals with ideas he is as a rule less satisfactory; partly through simple lack of style—his identification with Rexroth becomes intolerable at times, especially in his most ambitious attempt, "The Frozen City," which despite several impressive lines is a towering monument to bathos, cf. "Moving, I saw / The murderer staring at his knife, / Unable to understand, and a banker / Regarding a dollar bill with fixed / Incomprehension," etc.—partly through conceptual confusion, as in "The Place of Value," where a plea for relevance is made in the most irrelevant terms: the neurotic individual versus the healthy statistician, fortuitous versus expiatory death, etc. Yet, oddly enough, it is in this category that we must look for Nemerov's best poems: "Warning: Children at Play," "An Old Photograph" and, particularly, "Lot's Wife"—poems which suggest that ideation may after all be this poet's forte and that, by turning division of mind and eye into collaboration, he may yet achieve a fine body of poetry. "Lot's Wife" deserves to be quoted in full; though ostensibly an animadversion on religious and other revivals, the piece rises far above the level of controversy and assumes the grave beauty characterizing all consummate symbolic statements:

I have become a gate
To the ruined city, dry,
Indestructible by fire.
A pillar of salt, a white
Salt boundary stone
On the edge of destruction.

A hard lesson to learn,
A swift punishment; and many
Now seek to escape
But look back, or to escape
By looking back: and they
Too become monuments.

Remember me, Lot's wife,
Standing at the furthest
Commark of lust's county.
Unwilling to enjoy,
Unable to escape, I make
Salt the rain of the world.