Pound revalued
Sir: Strange are the survivals to be found in your Letters column!
Mr John Wareham has resurrected in triumph Ezra Pound's circular definition of poetic criticism, which I had thought extinguished by C. S. Lewis before the last war. For who is to define a " notable" work? Posterity, after the potential critic is dead; alternatively, the authors of other notable works, who can be praised in turn by the new protégé, thereby fortifying their own claim to greatness.
I have seen literary incest praised before, but never so blatantly as this, nor by one who condemns standardisation in the same paragraph. The proposition that a circular definition can beget an infinite regress, and then proceed to synthesise originality rather than paradox, has been disproved in the field often enough for its native inelegance to escape notice, but since want of elegance is a quality most distressful to all lovers of poetry, it deserves to be censored in such a context.
C. N. Gilmore 197 Woodstock Road, Oxford
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