The Chastening of Narcissus [Poetry]

The poems in this volume were selected from a great mass of manuscript and were arranged chronologically to illustrate, to some extent, one man’s development from an original narcissism toward an attitude both more objective and more compassionately inclusive of other human lives, and toward a clearer conviction of the Reality that encompasses us all. “Religion and reading and flowers” blend in Dr. McCurdy’s recollection of his childhood, and they are a part of his poetry. So is his long-standing interest in the classics, in art, and in science. He wrote his first poem at the age of nine and developed thereafter an intense appreciation of poetry. The title poem of this collection was written at his parents’ home in Salisbury, N.C., while he was a graduate student at Duke University, and is, he says, the first he wrote which seemed authentically his own. The places and dates appended to the poems connect them with the author’s personal history. Among the poems are some he wrote during summers at Frederica, Del., in the old house that had been in his wife’s family since about 1820. He met his future wife, Mary Burton Derrickson, while she was doing graduate study in zoology at Duke, and they were married in 1937, the year before they received Ph.D. degrees in their respective fields. Their son John, born in 1940, showed an early interest in graphic art and became a serious painter. The poems in this volume which were done in the port village of Woods Hole, Mass., a favorite family retreat, were written in the summer following the death of their fifteen-year-old daughter Anne.