West Walking Yankee

THIS ‘narrative poem of the American frontier,’ as its subtitle describes it, deserves warm praise for both conception and execution. There is nothing poetry needs more today than to return to sagaor ballad-making, the celebration of that which is memorable in history. Mr. Chapin, by means of ten episodes arranged in time from 1583 to 1838, follows the course of migration from England to America and from Massachusetts to California, concluding with the discovery of gold and the beginning of the gold rush. The whole is given some unity of narrative by using the lives of grandfather, son, and grandson — Adam, Jesse, and Bill Scott — as a thread. Although the ostensible purpose of the poem is, of course, to tell a stirring story of adventure and pioneering, its ulterior purpose is to discover what is meant by ‘the American character,’ the hopeful suggestion being that the same traits that carried our nation beyond the last physical frontier should be able to carry us over new spiritual frontiers still before us. A natural question to ask about any verse narrative of such length is whether there is sufficient reason for its being in verse instead of prose. Of this one it can be said, without trying prematurely to settle its quality, that blank verse is the appropriate medium and that this is handled with speed and beauty, permitting, as verse should, a condensation, vividness, and impressionism hardly native to prose.