VERSE OR PROSE?

New Zealand Listener, Volume 8, Issue 202, 7 May 1943, Page 3

VERSE OR PROSE?

Sir-In your April 9 issue you published a picture of the New Zealand writer, Robert Solway, and quoted some lines from his poem entitled "A Memory of the Late Prime Minister." I have not read the poem in its entirety, but presume that you have taken the best lines for quotation, and thus have shown us the standard of the poem as a wholea journalistic eulogy chopped up, sprinkled with capitals, and called

verse. I wrote out the lines given without any breaks, and found this: "So bow your heads not in sorrow, but rather in joy, for his life was spent in the service of his fellowmen. And what greater memorial could there be than written on his tomb these few humble words, ‘He loved his fellowmen.’" Isn’t this just what everybody else said, in almost as many words? I tried this interesting technique with a typical passage from the same issue, You will recognise it as part of an address for the BBC by H. G. Wells. "And what stands in the way of these Achievements? Fear. When I say fear I mean Fear of Lite. Great multitudes Fear Life more than Death. .. . Multitudes of people have their minds deliberately Crippled trom Birth, They are told They must not read; they must not Listen. Down the ages there is a long Record of Book-burning and the Persecution Of Victims who have had No right to Reply ... ." Any offers by publishers?

DENNIS

HARTLEY

(Waiouru).