Books: Poets & Untermeyer

FROM ANOTHER WORLD—Louis Untermeyer—Harcourt, Brace ($3).

Though poetry may not be a profession, Louis Untermeyer has seemed to prove that there is a profession in it. His anthologies of modern poetry have sold 478,081 copies in the U. S.* getting stouter with every edition. They are standard in newspaper libraries, as obituary material on poets, and indispensable to teachers of literature, as candy at the end of term.

From Another World is Louis Untermeyer's autobiography at 53. Among other things that readers may be surprised to learn is that for 22 years Poetry's great middleman engaged in a prosperous Manhattan jewelry business. A...