SIR,—Surely Mr. Dan Jacobson, in making a very timely criticism
of certain esoteric tendencies in recent little magazine writing, has gone a bit too far in suggesting that politics, traffic problems and such are the only 'real' pressures? The question of the poet's relation to society is obviously incapable of final solution (for this reason perhaps it will always be of absorbing interest to those concerned with writing as a profession), but 1 cannot think it is necessary to fall back on the Spanish Civil War to express our concern with this impossibility. That Mr. Jacobson should find this a more interesting subject than the discussion of the poet's social position and artistic responsibility may merely be a reflection of his own preoccupations. Mr. Philip Larkin, for instance, is a poet who can write about reality without recourse to such large public matters and his verse is none the worse for this.
Mr. Jacobson was perhaps being more honest with himself when he said that the poet was simply an ordinary man who happened to write verses. No theory of poetry has absolute validity and Mr. Barker and his associates of X magazine are en- titled to believe what they like, but anything, I should have thought, was better than attempting to revive the old bones of the Thirties—now surely discredited.—Yours faithfully,
ROBERT HARDY 3 Eccleston Square, SWI
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