'FEELING CAN BE CONTENT'

ABSE (DANNIE, born 1923, poet) GOOD AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED, as editor of Verse, to the poet Terence Tiller, arguing '(though reverently)' against Tiller's doubts about the 'level of concept' in 'Poem for three Persons' summed up in his statement that '...a poem must mean something - something of hard prosaic logical consistency - as well as making emotive gestures...'; Dannie Abse allows that these particular poems by [John] Manifold and Heath Stubbs are not profound from the point of view of content, but points out that they make no pretence to be ('...In that, they are not charlatan...'); he goes further with a poem that he describes as 'one of the finest lyrical poems...this decade...in a similar category to Dylan Thomas's 'Fern Hill' ('...which...is accepted by very many people to belong to English Literature in its highest sense. I think "Fern Hill" contains no more content than "Poem for three Persons"...'); he also expresses the 'not meant to be derogatory' opinion that some of Tiller's poems in his Unarm Eros have 'Undertones which have not a hard prosaic logical consistency', and, with reference to an interpretation of the Moses of Michelangelo, concludes 'Surely feeling can be content as well as something which is of hard prosaic logical consistency?', before illustrating his point with a four-line quotation from 'Poem to three Persons' ('...a contradiction and synthesis of feelings...'), 2 full pages, quarto, Verse, 38 Aberdare Gardens, London NW6, receipt stamp 10 November 1949

£120