June 23rd, 1938Enclosure – Letter from RG to Richard Church
Page from Robert Graves diary manuscript. The diary includes 1,546 pages with 117 enclosures: letters, clippings, photographs post cards, notes, games.
- In Collection:
- 1 page : 12 x 19.5 cm or smaller
- The diary is written on quarto sheets, folded horizontally to form octavo booklets, one recto page devoted to each day.
- Robert Graves Diary, 1935-1939
- Accession Number: 1969-003, Item: Gr-1-1222
- Special Collection finding aid: https://search.archives.uvic.ca/robert-graves-collection
- Robert Graves Diary project URL: http://graves.uvic.ca/diary_1938-06-23_01_enc.html
- July 19, 2002
- Enclosure – Letter from RG to Richard Church June 23rd, 1938 Dear Richard Church, I am preparing my Collected Poems for publication in the Autumn with Misters Cassell, and was going to include a poem called Largesse to the Poor written in 1930, first published in a limited edition To Whom Else? ( Seizin Press ) in 1931, reprinted in Poems 1930-1933 ( Barker ). Now I have just for the first time read your Secret Service in Gwendolen Murphy's Modern Poet anthology and am so struck by the resemblance of the two that if it should happen that yours was published first I should consider it my duty to suppress mine in favour of yours. That both are irregular blank verse accentuates the points of verbal and metaphorical similarity: the discontented pilgrim getting a room at the guest-house, flinging away the bunch of keys from his pocket to those who are to occupy the places he has left. The solution of the poetic problem, of course, is different; but though it is perhaps a perfect coincidence, nobody who has read the two poems, (both of which have circulated widely , ) I am afraid) will, I am afraid, doubt that one of us has drawn from the other. A nd since I do not believe (as do many poets, W.H.Auden for instance) that poetry is the communal property of poets to be borrowed without acknowledgement , s each from each; I prefer, as I say, to suppress my poem unless it has the priority of publication. Please regard this asi in all friendliness with nothing held back. Yours sincerely, R.G
- 300 dpi TIFF. Migration metadata by MT.
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