THE MOVEMENT AND THE GROUP SIR,—I feel rather like Princip
the assassin after being beaten up at Sarajevo! Several large boots have been directed at my head, and now I lie in a pool of apostate's blood. The steel-tipped edge of Mr. Hill's boot was particularly painful. (As Mr. Lucie-Smith said, the mere mention of associations of poets sends Mr. Hill 'into a tizzy.) Naturally my . assailants wish this correspondence to be closed. They opened the attack on the Group, Hobsbaum and Lucie-Smith, but when they themselves are criticised, they become exceedingly touchy.
My intention on entering this debate was simply to see a bit of justice done, to 'correct the balance,' so to speak. It seemed to me that Lucie-Smith and his allies were being outnumbered by another kind of group, and so I tried to come to their aid. What does it really matter that the members of the Group meet to discuss and criticise, and create 'elsewhere'? If they create well, who cares what they do with the rest of their time? They can discuss as much as they like, and cut each other's work to ribbons, if this helps their own creative efforts to prosper. It is not my way of doing things, nor, obviously, Mr. Robson's or Mr. Hill's, but if others gain from gathering in enthusiastic little bands in a house in Chelsea, good luck to them.
This whole argument over the Group is a sad example of what has been called 'poet's paranoia.' The Group has constituted, for some time, one of the most maligned aspects of contemporary English poetry, and is regarded by many aspiring . poets—especially those who are not as successful as they would love to be—as some sort of con- scious conspiracy aimed at keeping their work from the publishers. They have to explain their own failure, and something like the Group presents a heaven-sent target, very easy to blame, for it pro- vides a kind of 'visible focus' for their own un- generous feelings.
Personally, I have had enough of the disappointed
snipers who pot-shot from their own ivory towers at other poets huddling together for warmth.
8 Howley House, W2
JOHN TRIPP
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