Books: 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...