Living in an age when the poet's first duty has been to find an appropriate language, [Mrs. Daryush] has avoided the problem by using a language that is dead. Her accomplishments have been chiefly technical, and these in themselves are not enough. (p. 306)

[In her Selected Poems] Mrs. Daryush has tacitly acknowledged the necessity of shifting to a more current idiom. Even here, however, her touch is not sure. So a poem like March 21 begins well:

               The wood's alive today—
                    Warm power all round
               Breathes like a beast of prey
                    Ready to bound….

but ends with a warning

               Of bliss that will not bide,

and the mixture of live and dead words is its own reproach.

What one remembers from Mrs. Daryush's work are its compression and occasional images like "Eyes that queenly sit" and "Anger lay by me all night long." Many of the poems included in...