(no subject)

I've never participated in Poetry Friday (though I enjoy reading other people's contributions), and am not really doing so now, but have had the words of this poem going through my head for the last little while, so will spill them out before giving my last word on the Green Man Review debacle. (Unless GMR decides to sue us next for daring to protest publicly!)

To a Child Dancing in the Wind (by W.B. Yeats)

Dance there upon the shore;
What need have you to care
For wind or water's roar?
And tumble out your hair
That the salt drops have wet;
Being young you have not known
The fool's triumph, nor yet
Love lost as soon as won,
Nor the best labourer dead
And all the sheaves to bind.
What need have you to dread
The monstrous crying of wind?


Rather amazing, now I think of it, that I learned this when I was - yikes, this was Inter Cert - so, I was no more than 14. We did a big chunk of Yeats' poetry for Inter and Leaving Certs and there were plenty of the bitter old man poems, and I even loved those.

Also found this though, which I would possibly have to take as advice to me, were I to buy it as valid advice to anyone!

An intellectual hatred is the worst,
So let her think opinions are accursed.


(That's from 'A Prayer for my Daughter'.)

Anyway, the last word(s):

1. In the interests of being (possibly excessively) scrupulous, I will say that I did not use the email address given for submitting letters to GMR. I addressed my letter to a senior member of staff (at the GMR address) as I knew his name from another source. I can't remember now if it was only letters for publication which were to be addressed to a specific email, but there was definitely an invitation to send letters not for publication as well.

2. What steepholm has quoted is the entire reply I received, not the reply with the 'Dear ...' or any other gesture at politeness removed. I hope I hardly need say that my letter was polite, but I'll do so anyway. (It was also less emotional than my post on the review.)

3. Steepholm made the point that I was not questioning the fact that it was a negative review in my letter. I'd also like to say as clearly as I can that he is the last person on earth to get nasty about getting a negative review. But this is my LJ so I'm going to do it by telling a story.

A few years ago, when I'd only known him a short time, I sent a copy of Charlie's Calypso Dreaming off on a BookCrossing Ray. The first reader (living in a town called Butler, which still tickles me) loved it, as did her son. Not everyone did, as happens. I rather hoped he wouldn't see the negative journal entry but of course he did. At the same time, he'd received word that both Susan Cooper and Diana Wynne Jones had provided wonderful quotes for the cover of his The Fetch of Mardy Watt, and had written telling me about it. This was what he wrote in response to my saying how fantastic it was, after agreeing that he was indeed thrilled:

Meanwhile my feet are kept firmly on the ground by [BookCrosser] - yes, I've been looking in your bookray from time to time - calling Calypso 'weird and disjointed'. Like that was a bad thing? :-)

Had the GMR been negative but fair and competent, I can absolutely guarantee that there would never have been the slightest murmur of protest in public from him.