201 CHRONICLESnDAVID JONES: THE LAST LITURGICALnPOET by Thomas P. McDonnellnThe Welsh poet David Jones (1895-1974) wrote two ofnthis century’s outstanding literary works, and yet neitherna single line of his writing nor any mention of his namenis included in so recent a collechon as The Harper Anthologynof Poetry (1981), an otherwise excellent volume ofnEnglish and American verse edited by the poet-translatornJohn Frederick Nims. Anthologies of poetry, like the socialnregister, are useful chiefly as practical guides of who may bencurrently “in” or “out” of favor among the suitors of thenMuse. No matter how excellent, on the whole, we maynadmit the critical discretion of the compiler to be, we arensure to be more irritated by a certain and unaccountablenomission than one or two queshonable inclusions.nIn the case of David Jones and The Harper Anthology,none is left muttering for what we have failed to see innit—the prominent inclusion of the man and artist whonwrote In Parenthesis (1937) and The Anathemata (1952),nboth well-known in Great Britain, but hardly taken note ofnin this country and remaining unpublished here until manynyears later. T.S. Eliot wrote the introduction for thenAmerican edition of In Parenthesis (1961) and called it anwork of genius which “uses the language in a new way”;nwhile Kathleen Raine considered it “one of the enduringnworks that came out of the First World War.” W.H. Audennthought The Anathemata “very probably the finest longnThomas McDonnell is a free-lance writer living nearnBoston.nnnpoem written in English in this century.” It was one of thenachievements of Dame Edith Sitwell’s much earlier anthology,nThe Atlantic Book of British and American Poetryn(1958), that it almost single-handedly brought to the attentionnof at least some American readers the name and worknof David Jones, an Eric Gill sort of Christian artist, skillednin painting, copper engraving, calligraphy, and of coursenthe superlative writing of poetry and prose.nWhy, then, the unaccountable lapse in the Nims anthology?nDid the anthologist simply determine, in the interestsnof competitive space, that Jones’s poetry demands too muchnof its own context? But the editors oiThe Norton Anthologynof Modern Poetry (1973), Richard Ellman and RobertnO’Clair, included generous representations of his poetry,nwith all its necessary footnotes to assist the uninitiated innthis very ancient and perhaps timeless world from which thenvision of David Jones emerges. Another perception of thenworth of David Jones was that of the American poetnWinfield Townley Scott, who thanked Edith Sitwell fornbringing to us a freshly rewarding feature, “a selection fromnsomething called The Anathemata by David Jones,” whichnindeed would prove to be the poet’s masterpiece.nAs for In Parenthesis, it is necessary at this point to putnthat work into some kind of brief perspective. It is too muchnnot a novel to be compared with any of the war fiction bynHemingway or even by Ford Madox Ford. It is too unlikenshort poems, on the other hand, to be compared withnanything by Siegfried Sassoon or Wilfred Owen. But it isnnarrative and epic poetry at the same time and all that anwork of art has to know about the human catastrophe thatnwas World War I. It is written in a language which seemsncarved on the faces of rocks blasted by shellfire and whichnwe read like the fragments of letters from the recent dead.nSome critics have insisted on the influence that JamesnJoyce must have had on Jones; but the poet denied this,npointing out that it was not until the I930’s, after he hadnwritten In Parenthesis in 1927-28, that a friend read to himnthe Anna Livia portions from Finnegans Wake. To thatnpoint, Jones considered his ignorance of both Pound andnJoyce to be “disgraceful.” In an age of questionable heroes.nIn Parenthesis is written in an epic style which Jones hadnmastered—or, more likely, which was natural to him as angiven mode of expression. Even his many essays have angnarled and rough-grained honesty about them.nIn any case, not Hemingway nor Norman MaOer nor anynother of the so-called war novelists have described morentruly the explosion of the first shell, the water-filled shellnholes in the dark, the talk of ordinary things among thenfatigued, the faint skittering of the rats in no-man’s-land,nthe aloneness of one’s thoughts even in “following filenfriends,” and always the rain and the searchlights;nAt intervals lights eleganfly curved above his lines,nbut the sheet-rain made little of their radiance. Henheard, his ears incredulous, the nostalgic puffing ofn