16-Yr. Lyricist

NATURAL HISTORY--Raymond Holden --Holt ($2).

Postdating Poet Holden's previous book of poems (Granite and Alabaster) by 16 years, Natural History, though a far more proficient book, is still alabastrine in its often semiopaque, semiprecious imagery, granitic in its acceptance of the chiseling that life seems to have handed its author:

0 heart, let earth go whirling, and never wonder why.

Motion can teach but little to the breast that holds your grief.

The tree that stands most rooted is the tree least like to die.

Cling to your flesh and bone, 0 heart, and bear your bitter leaf.

Bitter but sensitive and attractive foliage, Poet Holden's 77 new lyrics are written in a choosy, pressed-flower language that ensures entrance into many poetical anthologies, few human lives. But in spite of Natural History's, painstakingly sterilized language, the book has several narrow escapes--as in The Linden Boughs Are Bare, Proud, Unhoped-for Light--from being contagiously good.

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