Poetry pleas
From Mr Michael Horowitz Sir: Your editorial of 23 September claimed that The Spectator is reversing its anti-poetry policy', but went on to insist that to be admis- sible, poems 'must scan'. This would rule out the Psalms, Beowulf and most of Whitman, D.H. Lawrence, Ted Hughes and Maya Angelou, to name but a few universally acknowledged 'true voices of feeling', in Keats's phrase for poets.
Keats also held that 'If poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves to a tree it had better not come at all', and Milton rejected rhyme and end-stopped lines for his epic verse because they 'bind and circumscribe the fancy'. Why restrict Elysium-seekers to a sin- gle method of shaping words — let alone in the multiracial Britain of 2000 — to so per- functory a method, virtually unreconstructed as it remains from its origins in the idiosyn- cratic rhythms of ancient Greek and Latin?
Your editorial wagered that none of the `fragments of poems that go around in our heads' is of recent composition. My debt col- lector will be round in the morning. Three of countless examples that continually spring to my mind are: 'even the President of the Unit- ed States/Sometimes must have/To stand naked' (Bob Dylan); 'the moon resting in a broken apple tree,/an ushering wind shakes ash and alder/by the puckered river./Lightly, like boats, the thin leaves rock and spin' (Frances Horovitz); 'I shall vote Labour because I want to shop/in an all-weather precinct stretching from Yeovil to Glasgow/and I shall vote Labour because/deep in my heart/I am a Conserva- tive' (Christopher Logue).
These lines do not scan or rhyme: those distractions would surely have throttled the true voice of feeling in each case.
As to your assumption that 'poetry has decayed' and 'that no one reads poetry any- more', how do you explain the record sales of Ted Hughes's Birthday Letters, Seamus Heaney's Beowulf, Maya Angelou, Bob Dylan et al.? Recent years have been cursed with many blights, but blessed by a boun- teous flowering of poetry, worldwide.
As well as more people writing and read- ing it, in print and on-line, many more are getting their verse live from the horses' mouths on public stages. Hardly any of the poems brought to life at poetry and music gigs will scan, but they are likely none the less to resound in their auditors' heads long after. Remember Blake: 'Poetry fettered fet- ters the Human Race.'
Michael Horovitz London W11
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