POETRY IN NEW ZEALAND
Sir,-With reference to the recent ree | view of New Zealand Poetry Yearbook, 1953, by J. C. Reid, I would suggest that Mr. Reid’s exception to the sexual, anatomical and associated imagery employed by J. R. Hervey, Anton Vogt, and myself springs from an" acceptance by Mr. Reid of that rather irrational belief that the body is, Symbol and source of all evil. The significant fact that Mr. Reid has been at great pains to list the offending words points to a likely preoccupation at repressed levels. One also suspects that Mr. Reid’s missionary zeal ("New Zealand poets need encouragement less than vigorous criticism") has received an additional fillip from recent contact with American "New World" culture, and that we are about to be subjected to a form of "moral McCarthyism," As for the clever term "Spasmodics," I suppose one label condemns:as well as another; one should not deny the critic his little act of creation-even if it is only the inventing of an ambiguous
term.
ROBERT
THOMPSON
: (Auckland),
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19540430.2.12.8
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 771, 30 April 1954, Page 5
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172POETRY IN NEW ZEALAND New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 771, 30 April 1954, Page 5
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