Survival of poetry
From the Rev. D. G. Davies Sir: My heart leapt up when I beheld and read (part of) the article, The Survival of Poetry.' How excellent to say, "over the last twenty years the role of the typically English poet has been that of the outsider looking in . . . even, God help us, at poetry itself. The late Mr Auden started the rot with a showy social rhetoric", and, "even our younger poets have been imitating their elders (thus getting to be published by them)" and "the modest lyrics of Mr Larkin . . . hailed in the Sunday newspapers as great poetry," and "the poetry itself? Gone. All gone. Utterly gone and vanished," and, 'The dead hand of the Times Literary Supplement . . ." and much else.
But, sir, you go on to name three who do write real poetry; and you quote three extracts from Mr J. H. Prynne, twenty-five lines in all, and you say it will be recognised and will endure. What I want to say is perhaps too simple for you to print. It is that I do not understand any of it, or what it carries for mind or heart; that I have read Homer, Virgil, Dante (most of the poetry), Shakespeare, in the original; that they all have one quality in common — clarity, they are all immediately intelligible to educated minds (you would call me one I suppose, for the present purpose, with a First in Honour Mods., Classics, at Oxford). And all deal with the red stuff of life, themes and material which all recognise as in the daily run, to put it very roughly for brevity's sake. It was put better by an Oxford don on Dylan Thomas (often, I hold, truly inspired). He is, he wrote (Oxford Magazine, April 30, 1953), "desperately obscure. Doubtless posterity will Select one or two of the difficult poets of our time .. but which ? . . . To rely so much on expression to the poet's own self, and come so near to abandoning communication is a haughty line to take and a risky one, which for most such poets must mean ultimate oblivion."
May I add that (apart from certain writings in poetry) I have long known, and liked and understood, much of the most modern work in the sister art of painting; and that I — and, I am sure many others — would sincerely welcome a further piece, from the same hand perhaps, clarifying the angle, within the area of the fine arts, from which one should approach the kinds of poetry you finally praise. Dudley G. Davies 49 Trinity Church Square, London SE1 Sir: Your thoughtful editorial on The Survival of Poetry' (Spectator, October 5) lays open the inimical influence of metropolitan literary conformism; what is equally interesting is the response of self-styled 'progressive' academics to the valuable writing you so surely indicate. 'Radical' teachers of English gape uncomprehendingly at the phenomenon of 'progressive form' allied with 'reactionary content', swallowing on their declaration of form's identity with content. In universities the practice of poetry breaks to the Scylla of wellturned ironical lyricism or the Carybdis of loosely colloquial realism, but alas the latter is doomed to obscurity even amongst its perpetrators, as poetry is ipso facto a roguishly 'individualist' pursuit, and considerably less reliable sociologically than the nineteenth century novel. The lack of interest in comtemporary writing which is a frightening feature of our age is justified by such remarks as "well actually poetry doesn't seem relevant any longer." There is also a feeling, occasioned by the instalment into classical status of literature in our own language, that recent writing is somehow different in kind from that which preceded Eliot, unless it adheres to an immediately recognisable form and weltartschauung. It has therefore no • place in the study of English.
Your rather easy jibe at experimental poetry does require comment; whilst undisciplined experiment may result in "incomplete" poetry, careful exploration of a calculatedly limited lexicon can produce a satisfying corpus of work — in, for example, Ian Hamilton Finlay and Thomas A. Clark, J. L. Wilkinson Jesus College, Cambridge.
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