Charles Sisson belongs to the last generation of English poets I managed to read with enthusiasm. This says nothing about the value of those poets nor of those who succeeded them, but merely indicates my age. Around 1950, when I was sixteen, I finally caught up with the present (a decade or so out of date, naturally) and discovered Thomas, Watkins, Barker, the 'New Apocalypse', Alun Lewis, Sidney Keyes, and one or two anthologies printed on paper with that brownish tinge which I thought suggested some expensive 'art publication', rather than any wartime economy measure. The passion with which I was able to read Keyes' 'The Red Rock Wilderness' and Watkins' 'Ballad of the Mari Llwyd' (I am certain of neither title), even to the extent of spending one New Year's Eve over the latter when I could have gone out and enjoyed myself, is now as mysterious and lugubrious as any distant love affair; as also are my feelings towards Dylan Thomas, which were so acute I would go cold all over when his name was mentioned (a condition to be repeated twenty years later with a modern Japanese writer on whom I was writing a doctorate, for immaturity can remain with us all our lives). By 1955, however, I had discarded these gods, and the new 'Movement' poets, although much admired in two cases (Larkin and Davie) were read in an attitude of cautious sizing up with no generous outgoings of enthusiasm. On reflection that response now ...