Poet's corner
Sir: One of the aims of X magazine (1959-62) was to put the cat among the pigeons. As is evident from Mr William Scammell's review of the X anthology (26 November), it performs this function as efficiently as ever. The enemy was, and is, mediocrity — not, as Mr Scammell would have it, success, by which one supposes he means fame or money; irrelevant desir- ables that many if not most of the contribu- tors to X have since achieved. Au reste, though pleased to see one of the best poems of the last two decades quoted in full, I am not clear what C. H. Sisson's 'The Nature of Man' has to do with Yeats's eulogy of the Easter Rising. One factual untruth: where did Mr Scammell, who must have been in short pants when the poet Brian Higgins died in 1965, get the idea that that formidable logician and Rugby League fullback was disfigured by acne?
As for the magazine's attitude to Arts Council handouts and similar activities, Mr Scammell 'longs to call in Flann O'Brien' — well, here he is, on Costello's proposed Irish Arts Bill more than 30 years ago: I am unaware of any artistic activity which has survived the enrotment conferred by public subsidy. The Abbey Theatre is a case in paint. (Yes — paint!)....
I refrain from quoting more: what fol- lows is too strong meat for Mr Scammell.
David Wright
Torre de Alfanzina, 8400 Lagoa, Algarve, Portugal
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