THE POET AND SOCIETY
SIR,—Mr. Stephen Spender, in his review of my book The Poet and Society, says that I can only offer a " mousey solu- tion" for the difficulties that confront the poet today. But what solution does he himself offer in the course of his criti- cism? It is a mistake, he says, to suppose that it matters whether poets return to tradition, join the Church or Interna- tional Brigade, or build up private fantasies from sheer frustration, for one line of a poem like Ash Wednesday or The Waste Land justifies any attitude that Mr. Eliot may adopt. But if we are not to judge poetry by the quality of experience it expresses, what are we to judge it by? The attitude of the poet to the world of his time being irrelevant to his poetry, it follows that it is also a mistake to suppose that it matters whether he is on the side of truth and justice or wt. Why, then, is Mr. Spender angry with Roy Campbell for his Flowering Rifle? Surely it could be justified by at least one good line.—Yours, &c., PHILIP HENDERSON. Marlow, Bucks.
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