When a spirit passed. . .
From Mr Denis Shaw Sir: I greatly enjoyed Paul Johnson's article on what makes a poem (And another thing, 19 May), and was indescribably thankful to see such a subject treated in these bleak times.
But I could have wished that he had recalled the words of A.E. Housman in the Leslie Stephen Lecture in May 1933:
... I received from America a request that I would define poetry. I replied that I could no more define poetry than a terrier can define a rat, but that I thought we both recognised the object by the symptoms which it provokes in us.
He goes on to quote the words of Eliphaz the Temanite: 'A spirit passed before my face; the hair of my flesh stood up.'
I came across Housman's The Name and Nature of Poetry some 60 years ago and have never doubted its profundity.
Denis Shaw
Bridport, Dorset
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