"TO A JET PILOT"
Sir,-It seems that David R. Watson has summed up these obscurantist poets quite adequately. I am of normal intelligence (I hope) and have written éms, and had them published, too, but r the life of me I see no gem-like transparency-or that beauty of broad flowing sounds we expect to see in poetry -in many of these obscurantist poets. Nor, should I say, do the vast majority of your readers, If this should be the real thing, appreciated only by a small coterie of intellectuals (mostly James Agate’s cor-duroy-trouser brigade, no doubt) then their publications should be kept to journals which cater for this group. No
amount ‘of general publiedtige Ia make readers appreciate poems with such phrases as "shop. girls’. or "mene, mene, tekel.’’ ; This may sound a smug letter from the pen of an envious Philistine. But I know the modern poets, and when we read such lines as + tg TO, the tose and ‘the stapep end the ~ fish in the tide. And the mystery sf ‘ Sang alive Still in the water and singing birds’ a hee who wants to read of the sky as an "amorous vault" or the ees tions of shop girls! This 't even "pseudo-intellectual," as David "Watson suggests, but vulgar and distasteful.
FLUSH
(Auckland),
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19520111.2.12.7
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 653, 11 January 1952, Page 5
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215"TO A JET PILOT" New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 653, 11 January 1952, Page 5
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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