Though not a great admirer of Kendall, I bought one of these volumes, attracted by the large format and clear type, printed over some rather odd sepia line-drawings.

Poor Kendall! The printer, Ariel Press, has done him a disservice, and the editor has failed the most elementary proofreading. Consider the line:

And an angle that we know not led him to the Land unknown!
               (Christmas Creek)

Even worse is to be found on p.13:

Where Harpur lies, the rainy streams…(Are) horse with sounds of storms unsleeping.’
                  (Charles Harpur)

Well, that is only a couple of slips, though bad ones. But wait: there are thirty-one errors in thirty-one poems! I have read them through only once, and have probably missed some. Usually it is possible to guess the sense –  ‘phatom’ is obviously meant to be phantom, ‘sone’ should be song, and so on; but I cannot hazard a guess at the meaning of ‘haughty goles and lordship of the frost’. I don’t mean there is one error to each poem; in the case of ‘Beyond Kerguelen’ there are five, introducing two marvellous new words to the English language, ‘gree’ and ‘luninous’.

This publisher should stick to books of home-builders’ plans, his only other titles.

Nancy Cato