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Hugh >We seem to have a sincere disagreement, but also >I'm not someone who reviews books I'm likely to be totally >unsympathetic to. Your review seems intolerant >of non-capital P poetry, maybe you could quote >that part directly on Lauren's work so poetryetc >people can see what we are talking about? What's non-capital P poetry? Take up the cudgels for Lauren by all means, Hugh; but don't impugn my motives. I stand by what I wrote; I wished for a fuller intelligence in the poetry, both feeling-wise and in its technical adventuring, these things being, for me, different aspects of the same being of poems. For me, the poems never grew past their conventional conventions; I found no rupture, no puncture point of cognition. You would have written a different review: vive le difference! I don't write such things lightly, but slowly and reluctantly, especially given the disopprobrium it nearly always gives rise to. You can be sure that I ask the same questions of my own work, and it often fares as well as Lauren's. It should be clear, at least, that I'm not pissing in anybody's pocket. Reviewing work one admires is a much nicer task, but I suspect that one of the reasons that Australian poetry criticism is generally so banal that people are too reluctant to either admire or dislike poetry, or to respond with any passion at all. >Not lie, exactly, What, then? Alison %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%