Persons, Places and Things 2. [antikvár]

Whilst compiling the prose anthology Persons, Places and Things, it became increasingly apparent to me that there existed a number of poems and verses which explored practically the same kind of humán experience that the prose centred upon. Sometimes the similarity was extraordinarily close as in 'Wind and Mist' and 'The new house at Steep', where husband and wife dealt with the same subject, one in poetry and the other in prose. Though so close a parallel as this was something of a rarity, it remains remarkable that most of the poems have sufficient similarity to the prose fór a meaningful comparison to be made between them. The first section opens with poems about an individual anxiously seeking identity; and moves out from this situation to that of an individual in a relationship of lőve or antagonism with another person. Connected with these poems of personal relationships are those that take fór theme the tensions and attractions between members of a family, especially those which exist between parent and child. 'Portraits' of other members of the family have been added. There follows a group of 'character studies' of those other people-famous or unknown, fantastic or commonplace, 'types' or 'individuals'-who touch upon the life of the developing person from time to time and enrich the lives of the ordinary by their otherness. The first section ends with poems prompted by an event, either trivial or significant: a picnic, a funeral, a wedding or a political meeting. In the second section, the poems start with the theme of home and extend outwards, beyond home, to unfamiliar landscapes, finally encompassing the landscape of dream and the creatures and places of vision and nightmare. The third and last section is about creatures '... and things' the former observed, marvelled at and in somé instances utilized by mán in his work, the latter 'discovered' by mán in the world about him or created fór his use or pleasure. The relationship between 'persons, places and things', gives a meaning and purpose to humán existence and it is this which the anthology attempts to present. The poems chosen are mainly from the work of twentieth-century English and American poets. I have made additions from the poems of the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. Two passages from the Authorized Version of the Bibié and a ballad have been included as well. Bút the búik of poetry is of our time because this poetry is nearest to our condition which it can minister to in an immediate and powerful way. If