SIR,—May I correct one thing of more than personal significance
advanced in your review of my Collected Poems? It was a kind review, but it was surprising that Julian Symons of all reviewers should have picked the word 'image: out of my preface, and then dived into rnisunderstanding. When I wrote that images should retract into themselves, shouldn't be extended too much into explanation, I meant images- in-poems, whereas Mr. Symons took me to have meant images-as-poems, and for a moment (though not so long as others who have made the same mis- reading) reproved me—as if he were a don, which he certainly isn't—with l.nagists and H.D. Images existed many hundreds of poetry-years before H.D. (no Buson certainly, and hardly my preferred read- ing, as Mr. Symons must know); and I was saying that in poems the inclusion of things, the imaging of things, which have their meaning in the context, doesn't degrade those poems either to description or to nature verse, two fairly frequent terms of abuse. I think this needs to be urged when a dry criticism in every direction seems to have begotten, in parallel, a pseudo-poetry as unsensuous, thin-lipped and academic as itself.
Apollo help us when criticism—and pseudo-poetry —of this kind is still more stiflingly enlarged by the new English departments of all the new universities.
Broad Town, Wiltshire
GEOFFREY GRIGSON
Previous page
