Commuters' Special

A SHORT WALK FROM THE STATION (175 pp.)--Phyllis McGinley--Viking ($2.75).

Phyllis McGinley comes right out and admits it: she likes living in "a middle-class house on a middle-class street in a middle-class village full of middle-class people" (i.e., Westchester County's Larchmont). She even writes poetry about it two or three mornings a week after her two young daughters (13 and 11) scoot off for school.

A Short Walk from the Station is Versifier McGinley's sixth book in praise of normal things, and it is disarmingly pleasant reading. Up to now, she has spoken for all the loving but distracted parents who know as well as she does that:

In bandying words with progeny There's no percentage I can see . ..

And then, when childish wails begin We don't debate. We just give in.

And she has shown a streak of lively malice toward such suburban intellectuals as

Lug home the current choices of the Guild (Commended by the press to flourish of trumpets), Or rent a costume piece adroitly filled With goings on of Restoration strumpets-- And thus, well read, join in without arrears The literary prattle of her peers.

But in A Short Walk there is a new McGinley, not only warmer but better, a suburban Frost who shows all the signs of trying to slip unobtrusively from light verse into homely poetry:

The streets are named for trees. They edge Past random houses, safely fenced With paling or with privet hedge That bicycles can lean against.

And when the roots of maples heave The solid pavements up that bound them,

Strollers on sidewalks give them leave To thrust, and pick a way around them.

The little boats in harbor wear Sails whiter than a summer wedding.

One fountain splashes in a Square.

In winter there's a hill for sledding; While through October afternoons Horse chestnuts dribble on the grass, Prized above diamonds or doubloons By miser children, shrill from class . . .

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