ANSWER TO CORRESPONDENT

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 372, 9 August 1946, Page 5

ANSWER TO CORRESPONDENT

Angus O’Neil (Dunedin): Thanks, but scatology is not our long suit.

More letters from listeners will be tound on page 28

LETTERS FROM LISTENERS

(continued from page 5) RUPERT BROOKE’S POPULARITY Sir,-A contribution to your ViewsTeel asks sympathetically why the poetry of Rupert Brooke still has an appeal. It is a pertinent question, and ‘I think the answer is both simple and important. Rupert Brooke still goes to the heart of many people for four reasons: (1) He was a genuine poet. (2) He illuminated themes in whieh people are always interested. (3) His verse is easily understood. (4) His verse is easily remembered.. There is, of course, a certain school to which his continued popularity is perplexing and annoying. There was an illuminating discussion on the matter in the English Listener during the seccnd world war. One priest of what may be called the Coterie-verse school denied him more than the slenderest of gifts, and said his sentiments were on a par with "There'll Always be an England." To this gentleman, who enjoys a high reputation as a critic (in some quarters), it might have been replied, first, that a large proportion of the great poetry of the world is simply the transmutation of commonly held ideas by the poet’s art, and second, that, especially England was fighting for her life and very heroically, there was nothing wrong with the sentiments of "There'll Always be an England." But, of course, one of the things critics of this school dislike, and I fear detest, is popular feeling. You must not share the sentiments of a crowd about anything. For a work of art to be popular, or easily understood by the Philistine, is enough to condemn it. But, as one admirer of Rupert Brooke said in this Listener controversy, it is better to be a Philistine than a prig. Good poetry has been written about" the second war, but there has been no Rupert Brooke. That is to say, no one has written with the combination of qualities I have mentioned. This is another reason why Rupert Brooke continues to be read

and valued.

A.

M.

(Wellington).