Sirs: Stephen Fredman sent me a copy of his 'The New American Poetry' essay (PNR 28) last spring, and I immediately pointed out to him how erroneous its assumptions were in regard to Sulfur magazine. I am shocked that he did not take my clearly factual corrections to heart when he published the essay.

Before looking at Sulfur 2, Fredman had of course seen Sulfur 1, which contains 118 pages of poetry by twenty-four poets. Several months after the appearance of 2, 3 appeared, with 94 pages of poetry by twenty poets. If we add the 49 pages of poetry (by eight poets) in 2, we come up with, for Sulfur's first year, 261 pages of poetry by fifty-two poets, at least a dozen of whom are under 30 years old and the majority of whom are in their 30s and early 40s. In other words, Sulfur averaged 88 pages of poetry per issue for its first year. Since an 88-page issue is above the average for the total number of pages for the majority of literary magazines, this represents a real commitment to very contemporary poetry (for the record, I notice that the issue of PNR in which Fredman's essay appears has 21 pages of poetry and 59 pages of prose).

What Fredman slyly leaves out is the fact that Sulfur expanded to accommodate the Olson/Dahlberg correspondence, the extant entirety of which, all 243 pages of it, were spread out, by periods, over Sulfur's first three issues. This correspondence represents the fullest treatment I know of the labyrinthine complications that occur when the apprentice writer becomes the equal of his former master. For Fredman to pass such writing off as 'scholarly and critical work', or to dub it the 'latest extension of the agnostic will to power of projective poets', is simply nonsense.

Other than book reviews and Hayden Carruth's column, the only major piece of criticism that has appeared in Sulfur is Rothenberg's attack on Bloom, which is clearly an attack on the kind of criticism that would occupy the place of new poetry! Fredman apparently would prefer that Rothenberg shut up and write poetry. Perhaps I should take Fredman by the hand and lead him to the bookshelf where he will find the forty or fifty books of poetry that Rothenberg has published since the late 1950s.

Since Robert Bertholf is a librarian and a scholar, it makes sense that the new series of his magazine, Credences, devotes more attention to these activities than to publishing poetry. There is always a place for such a magazine, especially as this century draws to its end and millennial summations begin to haunt the imaginative mind.

Fredman is, however, again all wet in regard to Montemora. The eighth and final issue contains the contents he describes. However, the first seven issues are, other than a short book review section in most, given over to poetry! Besides containing some of the most reliable translations of poetry offered anywhere in the late 1970s, Montemora discovered and featured Karin Lessing, Gustaf Sobin, Rachel Blau DuPlessis and Mark Kirschen. This is the most valuable service a poetry magazine can render.

Since he begins his essay with the question, 'Where is the new poetry?' and since, without explanation, he has decided to keep silent about the continuing almost year by year appearance of books of poetry by many of the poets featured in origin, Caterpillar and now Sulfur, Fredman ends his essay by mentioning several American poets now engaged in the prose poem. As usual, what he leaves out is much more important than what he puts in. David Antin's 'form' is predated by several immense oral prose poems by Jack Hirschman, written in the early 1960s! Caterpillar 10 contains a big section from one of them. Possibly the greatest group attention to the prose poem ever has, for the past eight years, been taking place in the bay area and New York City, by the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets. If Fredman were really concerned about the current state of the American prose poem, surely he would have mentioned Clark Coolidge, and Ron Silliman and, if he wanted to indicate the real scope and roots of such a form, Gertrude Stein. My point here is that Fredman characteristically offers a scattering of poets who have published collections of prose poems over the last decade rather than acknowledging a movement with complex roots that has made the prose poem its main preoccupation.

So how might we explain this quirky, irresponsible attack on American magazines and poetry? I suspect that Fredman, at heart, respects the established poetic and critical forces of his time, and would prefer that avant-garde activity be confined to writing poetry. In my view, one of the tragic weaknesses of the past several generations of strong and original American poets is that they have been willing to let the establishment take care of criticism and reviewing (and by extension, most of the important readings, prizes and university posts, all of which mean little to the soul, but something quite real regarding the time one has to write and the conditions under which one writes). It is high time that those who seek to codify and limit the range of what is possible in poetry (Bloom's more than full-time activity for decades) be taken to task not by their critic friends (see the Donoghue piece on Bloom in the Times Literary Supplement, 30 July 1982, for five yards of description), but by the very poets such critics would exclude. And, that the poets of Fredman's generation (surely the most timorous generation since the turn of the century) start speaking out for what they do believe in, start locating those poets of the past several generations who have given them anything to believe in.
Los Angeles, California CLAYTON ESHLEMAN

THE WORST WRITER OF ENGLISH PROSE?

Sirs: I wish to protest about the silly comments made at the expense of Wyndham Lewis by Anthony Quinton in 'T. E. Hulme and Michael Roberts' (PNR 29). When Quinton calls Lewis 'the worst writer of English prose in the twentieth century', it is just as much nonsense as it would be if I called him the greatest. Quinton is entitled to expect us to consider his critically reasoned opinions but not his gratuitously asserted prejudices. It is a pity that the fashion for indulging in irresponsible journalistic rhetoric in critical essays and literary reviews does not appear to its practitioners to be just as out of place there, as it does to its readers. Obviously one now has to doubt the quality of temperament and judgement informing the arguments presented in the rest of Quinton's essay.

He seems to be making a vague and unnecessary point when he contests Lewis's 'incredibly badly written' in favour of his own 'careless', as a description of Hulme's prose. Lewis was, of course, referring to the stylistic quality of the writing, and if we were to look at the same source material as Quinton, we would also find the following impressions of Hulme recorded by Lewis: 'He had not had much time to write much. Even the short time there had been was mostly spent in nervous talk'. . . 'These few rough essays and notes all the same show that he was an able and enlightened man' . . . 'His mind was sensitive and original'. These sentences are from Lewis's autobiography Blasting and Bombardiering, his most sanguine book, written in a relaxed and entertaining style-reminsicences free of the directed polemic of his critical and philosophical works. The book leads us to a different view of the physical upending of Lewis by Hulme from the one Quinton prefers. Lewis sets in the context of the comic rumpus and brawl of the Marinetti Futurist versus Vorticist era. Like the picture of Epstein and Bomberg kissing to seal a truce, it provides an amusing anecdote from the period.
Ilford, Essex R. A. SHEAD

FOR THE DEFENCE

Sir: Ian McMillan's brief comments on David Sutton's book of poems, Absences and Celebrations (PNR 29) just will not do.

It does David Sutton less than justice to suggest that he imitates Philip Larkin's manner, simply because, in a poem called 'Estate', he happens to mention 'T.V. aerials/Cars in the driveway, numbers on the gates'. A catalogue like this shows and proves nothing, except that such things are, of course, found on estates. It is the effect to which the poet puts them that matters, and this poem is celebratory in a quite un-Larkin-like way. It celebrates 'The sacred ground on which are acted out/All rituals of innocence'. The tone of this poem, and of Sutton's poems in general, is more positive than Larkin's. This is not to criticize Larkin, but to point out that Sutton is a different kind of poet.

'When Sutton is overtly personal, he is quite profound', McMillan writes. I'm afraid I find that 'quite' patronising. Neither does Sutton 'try to widen the area of his subject matter'. When he wants to, he does just that. He is, in fact, a poet of great skill and fine sensibility.

One can't, of course, insist on what a reviewer wilfully refuses to see, but let me suggest that readers look out the short poem from Absences and Celebrations, 'The Wave'. I should be sad for Sutton's work to be missed by PNR readers. I had the good fortune to discover Sutton's first book, Out on a Limb, thirteen years ago. I've had to wait far too long for his second.
Wymondham, Norfolk MICHAEL CULLUP

PURIFICATION OF LANGUAGE

Sirs: Your editorial comment in PNR 29 asserts that the 'purification of language is the common purpose to which all good writers contribute'. If this is the case why use half the space available to sneer obliquely at those elitists in our literary history who tried to set standards? The fact that a social system is not egalitarian does not invalidate the understanding its members may have had of certain basic values.

Where are the writers today who value their language? In what effective ways do they seek to defend it against the 'almost overwhelming institutional pressures of our time'? Show me a single writer who is setting an example publically or imaginatively in this battle on behalf of the common sense of language?

Is it not the case that the 'peasants', or ordinary literate folk today, have been completely abandoned by the writers to the absolute official abuse of language employed by the bureaucratic state? Surely it is for this reason that people are so frequently obliged to abandon reasoned argument and make their point of view known by marching with slogans and demonstrating with primitive chants? They have abandoned hope of reasoned communication with the institutions of the state.

The French Revolution has been described by Denis Roche as primarily a dispute about language. Where are the revolutionary leaders today?
Stonypath, Little Sparta, Lanark SUE FINLAY

CORRECTIONS

Sirs: I regret that the review 'Ezra in Italy' (PNR 28) has several mistakes in the printing. My xerox of the typescript of March 1981 shows that the 'la' in line 41 of page 64 before 'genericita' should be 'le' and 'vagueness' should be 'vaguenesses'. In line 1 of page 65 the comma after the second 'blind' has been omitted. As these mistakes vitiate the points I was making, I felt they should be recorded.
Stirling MICHAEL ALEXANDER