Vernon Watkins

It has always been an axiom of mine that a true style cannot be learnt from a contemporary. I am not suggesting that poets living at the same time cannot help each other; they can do this, profoundly, but they cannot teach a style. Style is, I believe, a root thing, and roots do not run along the surface of letters. Although poetry is always, in one sense, revolutionary, because it takes the reader by surprise, it is always its relation to the past that gives it depth. Since a poet is  witness, carrying news of his time to future generations, it would seem that the sharper and clearer his perceptions are, the more acute and lasting will be his findings; and yet if clarity is the only criterion, his function will serve no better than a camera, and his art will be journalism. The perceptions of a poet must be composite, as he is a witness for the living and the dead at the same time. If he observes the two responsibilities, he will begin to see what is ancient in the contemporary scene and what is contemporary in the ancient; and his style will emerge from that collision, from that twofold perception. Only gradually does a poet find and begin to realize his particular task, for the task of each poet is different, and his true affinities in the poetry of past ages are not quickly understood. Style which has depth is recognised at once as it has immediacy, and also the corroboration of past ages; but among contemporaries it is distinction and opposition that foster style. True and different talents may feed each other, but they can only do so by obeying deep-rooted affinities, and by a divergence of style. The most fruitful relationship between contemporary poets is where a fundamental difference of style exists to serve a single truth, which then has more than one manifestation, or different truths which are bound together by affinity and indissoluble respect and affection. If we look back through the centuries of our poetry we shall find many examples of these fruitful oppositions, of two poets innately and fundamentally different in idiom and style, but often bound by friendship and a common theme, whose work has been strengthened, not by competition, but by the assurance and expectation of works from a complementary talent. I think of Hopkins and Bridges, Browning and Landor, Shelley and Byron, Wordsworth and Coleridge, Shakespeare, Marlowe and Ben Jonson, to name only a few; and European poetry is equally rich in these examples. Lyrically every poet is alone, but in the range of his development no poet is alone. Style is a root thing; development is something which unfolds.