POETS' CORNER

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 733, 31 July 1953, Page 5

POETS' CORNER

Sir-In your number of July 10, under the above heading, "Arejay" wrote a letter which I heartily endorse. I have no doubt that if a poll of Listener readers could be arranged, giving their honest opinion of some of the verses you see fit to publish, the result would favour "Arejay" rather than yourself. My point is that you allow the mediocre to crowd out the good. Could you not more often devote some Space to real poetry, and not to a jumble of words seemingly culled at random from a dictionary? Poetry should satisfy and stimulate, but what satisfaction or stimulation is there in many of the modern poems? Luckily, sooner or later, people regain a proper perspective, so Kipling and others of his school will live. when the T. S, Eliots of the world are forgotten, save as a source of amusement. "You can fool some of the pneonle all the

time, etc."

MAC

(Wellington

(A public opinion poll would certainly go against us in this matter. But it would also have gone against poets who today are put forward as good examples. They, too, were rejected by their generation, or came sl ly into favour. Keats and Shelley were ignored or laughed at. The "Lyrical Ballads" of Coleridge and Wordsworth, the most important event in English poetry since Milton; had a hostile reception. And poets who in those days would have headed popularity polls would now be near the bottom, or quite forgotten.-Ed.)