LADY ON THE WEB

As you may know if you have chatted with me in the past months, I have not been feeling quite up to the mark since last fall. It is the old problem, the weakness in the lungs. Thus, my reading of serious material has suffered. However, I have been following, with interest, Miss Underwood's study of the major 20th-century poets. She began with Pound, and is now engrossed in the work of John Berryman (1914-1972), an American and a shocking bad actor, though he did attend Cambridge, and dressed well when he could.

She spoke to me today of the concept of "poetry as transparent reality," meaning the achievement of a transparent style in which the information slips directly into the reader's mind, as through a mental telepathy of image, a communication of direct experience. Apparently only the greats are capable of such a style.