Pied Piper Sobering

YEAR IN, YOU'RE OUT--Samuel Hoffen-stein--Liveright ($2).

From unpoetic, scantly praising Critic Henry Louis Mencken, Poet Hoffenstein's first book, Poems in Praise of Practically Nothing, won the epithet "incomparable." The book was a refreshingly satirical draught from the Plutonian spring. Poet Hoffenstein's second book, Year In, You're Out, contains much the same kind of thing in much the same manner, but here is less satire, more lyric yearning. Again it is Poet Hoffenstein's sourer vein that suits him best:

"A little while to love and rave And fret and sweat and fear and hope in; A little while to bathe and shave And keep the organism open-- Then silence under reeds and roses, And no more blowing of our noses."

Best title: Come Weal, Come Woe, My Status is Quo.

Best phrase:

"The age that walks in Puritan pants With just one crucial button gone."

Poet Hoffenstein, still in his early 30's, went from Wilkes-Barre, Pa., to Manhattan in 1922, was dramatic critic on the Sun, columnist on the Herald-Tribune, press agent for Producer Al Woods. Now poetry supports him. Mild-miened, reg-ular-featured, carapace-bespectacled, Poet Hoffenstein thinks nothing ever happens to him, thinks his experience is common, that others will not admit it. Other books: Life Sings a Song, Poems in Praise of Practically Nothing.

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