Sin,—Mr. Kingsley Amis recently told us that in poetry 'verbal
music is of no importance in itself,' as near as I can remember, and now Mr. Hartley tells us that the poets of the Fifties are so good that they have hauled poetry out of the mire of the Thirties which produced men like Auden and Spender, and the Forties when Barker, Thomas, Graham. Goodsir Smith, Gascoync and Kathleen Raine got into their stride. Here are four lines which, for sheer poetry. are worth everything I have seen of the new university wits put together: 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabc; All mimsy were the borogroves, And the momeraths outgrabc.
Your readers will recognise them. They are sheer nonsense, and sheer poetry. Let me make another quote, from one S. T. Coleridge:
But the sense of musical delight, with the power of producing it, is a gift of imagina- tion; and this together with the power of reducing multitude to unity of effect, and modifying a series of thoughts by some one predominant thought or feeling, may be cultivated and improved, but can never be learned. It is in these that poeta nascitur non fit.
The poets of the Fifties should now let it rip? I would like to see them try.—Yours faithfully,
TOM SCOTT
5 Mackenzie Place, Edinburgh
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