Sm,—Dorian Williams asks for the opinion of an "acknowledged expert
" on poetry. I am not any kind of expert, but I question whether anyone can be an expert on such a thing as poetry. Certainly it is possible to be a mine of information on the mechanics, the tech- nique of poetry-writing, or rather of verse-writing. But it is in extension beyond the limitations of mechanics, in the quality of being truly, literally indefinable, that poetry differs from, say, automobile- engineering.
Dorian Williams, although " not, of course, suggesting that a poem must rhyme or have a regular metre," evidently expects it to have metre of a sort, and cries out that " feeling " should not alone con- stitute poetry. Whereas " feeling " is and has always been the only thing whieh can constitute poetry. Dorian Williams, if she. adheres to her doctrines, must discount the Psalms in the Authorised Version: for she compares prose and poetry—a similar comparison to that between pencils and pictures. She is a kindred spirit with n sergeant- instructor of the Royal Dragoons, who announced that he had made up a bit of poetry to help us remember the components and effects of the different war-gases.—Yours faithfully, KEITH DOUGLAS.
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