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New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 652, 4 January 1952, Page 5

Sir-David Watson’s comments. on _ James K. Baxter’s poem made several telling points re’ pseudo-intellectualism in general among student writets and naive camp followers. Fads dying .out elsewhere can still seduce, local, wits. I have no intention of singling out Baxter -at one time his early efforts revealed a vein of genuine poetry, and no doubt the gift is still there-but it is fatally easy for all with a. facile pen to turn out by the yard material. compounded of conscious wordiness, smart effects, a sort of feeble propaganda muddled, with cynicism and juvenile eroticism. And it is easy to stay in the rut, for the few little literary magazines or the inevit‘able university pamphlets are as ingenuously pleased by such stuff as coteries in England and the. United. States were fifteen years, ago. q One notices, too, that New Zealand _ newspapers gush over local, poets and cry out-for theni to be given a chance, duts how many. local..editers actually. cede that space? What seems necessary

-is a. serious writers’ field, edited by mature minds with a genuine. literary standard, wavering neither towards T. S. Eliot or Mrs. Hemans-ready for clear and original work, and not easily taken ‘in’ by the shallow éxcitements of the hundred novices who find they can string words together. At one time Charles Marris set the authentic note with Art in New Zealand, but since that publicatign assed away, any jingle can ring the bell. Unfortunately,-we have "no critics.

CHRISTOPHER

(Wellington).