Clear and Simple

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 771, 30 April 1954, Page 10

Clear and Simple

EW people could be more convincing than Professor C. Day Lewis in his four talks on Modern Poetry broadcast from 3YC. Models of clarity and simplicity, the talks threw a light even on familiar paths. Apart from the work of Owen, Spender and Dylan Thomas, I was delighted to have picked out MacNeice’s rollicking satire on today’s materialistic world. But a man convinced against his will is a man unconvinced still. A subsequent reading in Eliot of Prufrock’s love song left me as cold as ever. A few passages in that melancholy, listless testament rise above the general level, the rest is tied down to

@ cultivated commonplace. Dante saw such indecisive souls drifting in a midregion between Heaven and Hell, and in so doing gave them a dramatic significance lacking to Prufrock. Professor Day Lewis suggested that there was still some confusion as to what constitutes poetry, and that even when interpreting disintegration the poet is obliged to impose order within the world of his own. fantasy. Following a similar line of reasoning we might also consider that trivialities must be unmistakably riveted to grand values before they qualify as poetry. A net of sardines needs to be held at one end by Peter himself to have any apocalyptic significance.