Laing, Alexander, 1963 Apr 18

Regarding the death of his wife, the poet Dilys Laing. Also gives his response to Sestina for a Far-Off Summer, comments on RL's original poetry versus translations, and writes of his own poetic program. TLS. 2p. Also includes a copy of a program of his wife's poems, assembled after her death, and with a note in his hand to RL.

"It's unwary of me to trust my judgment in matters springing out of my own experience as well as out of yours, yet I should tell you that your poems of simple recollection of your own emotional experience seem to be your very best. Nothing odd about that, is there, now that it's stated? I suppose I've had to get over my memory of most of the Lattimore I've read, for many years, as having been translation that I was moved to trust..."

"...Your devotion to Greece has acted somewhat in the same fashion, hasn't it? Instead of the long middle period of grinding it out, you've dealt all the way with first rate material and have kept your skill sharp in translating it so freshly. Am I permitted to think that now the just rewards are arriving...that the high inner experience of Lattimore himself will be more and more the subject?"