M. ROLAND BARTHES, the French critic and semiologist, died on 26 March, a month after receiving serious injuries in a road accident. He was 64. An example of the quality of his reception in Britain is the obituary which The Times published. It included the sentence: 'But his influence was stimulating and influential and his work could claim a relevance in the modern critical ethos strong enough for the Times Literary Supplement to declare in a burst of enthusiasm in a leading article in 1966 that he was "the critic of the moment".' This sentence follows on one criticising Barthes for 'abstraction' and 'wrong-headedness'. Barthes' death coincided with the publication of what one critic profoundly friendly to his oeuvre describes as his most mystical work, La Chambre claire. In PNR, Michael Grant is writing on some of the problems raised by Barthes' evolving work. Grant's essay is entitled 'The Mystique of Hell'. PNR 8 included Stephen Bann's essay, 'Barthes Britannicus'.

ROBERT E. HAYDEN, the first black American to be named consultant in poetry to the Library of Congress, died on 18 February in University Hospital, Ann Arbor, Michigan. Born in Detroit, Hayden was for many years associated with Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. Hayden declared: 'We talk about black and American poetry, when we should just talk about American poetry or just poetry. I'm not so interested in pointing out what is singularly black or Afro-American as in pointing out something about the way people live and the humanity people share with everyone else'. He was as good as his word; and for instance his last collection, American Journal, includes a brilliantly skilful and poignant translation, into the terms and images of black America, of Villon's 'Ballade des Dames du Temps Jadis'.
(DD)

On 21 February the distinguished German novelist, story-writer, essayist and poet ALFRED ANDERSCH died at Berzona in Switzerland, at the age of 66. After two arrests on political grounds, imprisonment at Dachau, and military service, Andersch deserted from the German army on the Italian front in 1943, and was a prisoner of war in America. After the war he was active as an editor of important periodicals and as a founder member of the Gruppe 47. An autobiographical work of 1952 was followed by his novels Zanzibar and The Red Girl, books of short stories and travel books. His later novels were Efraim (1968) and Winterspelt (1974). A book of his poems and verse translations appeared in 1977. A translation of Winterspelt has recently been published in Britain by Peter Owen (£8.95).

The centenary of the birth of GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE (and that of his English muse, Annie Playden) occurs this year. The main celebrations will take place at Stavelot, Belgium, on 4, 5 and 6 September, when many famous writers will be gathering to pay tribute to the great French poet. The local hotel in Stavelot bears a plaque in remembrance of Apollinaire's visits there at an early stage in his career. (But what it does not call attention to is the fact that he made a moonlight flit without paying the bill.) David Arkell will illuminate this and other episodes from Apollinaire's life in his centenary article to be published in PNR.

The POETRY BOOK SOCIETY CHOICE for Spring is Summer Palaces by Peter Scupham (OUP £3.00), a fact which will please many PNR readers. The Spring recommendations are Anthony Hecht's The Venetian Vespers (OUP £3.95) and The Strange Museum by Tom Paulin (Faber £3.00). The PBS SUMMER CHOICE is Death Valley by Alan Ross (London Magazine Publications), and the Summer recommendations are Constantly Singing by James Simmons (Blackstaff Press) and The Man I Killed by Laurence Lerner (Secker & Warburg).

This year's W. H. SMITH AWARD has gone to THOM GUNN for his Selected Poems 1950-1975, published by Faber.

FIVE HUNGARIAN POETS visited Britain and gave three group readings-in Glasgow, Bangor and London. The group was an especially distinguished one. It included Janos Pilinszky (whose poems-in Peter Jay's translations-have been featured in PNR), Ferenc Juhasz, Amy Karolyi, Istvan Vas and Sandor Weores. Juhasz and Weores have had work published by Penguin Books. Vas has translated British literature (including Thackeray and Shakespeare), American (O'Neill) and French; Weores, too, has translated widely from the European classics. The tour is reported to have been a great success. The English readers included Edwin Morgan (who has translated much of these poets' work), George MacBeth, Andrew Greig, Gavin Ewart and Patrick Garland. The promoters were the British Council and the Poetry Association.

The announcement by the government of the 1980-81 grant to the ARTS COUNCIL (£70 million) coincided with criticism of the Council in the media for its support of various 'subversive' arts projects. In particular, the Sunday Telegraph has been assiduously 'uncovering' alarming evidence that money has gone to bookshops and theatre groups with political and-what is worse-ideological commitments. The Sunday Telegraph in particular raises the question of whether Arts Councils and Associations should develop definite policies towards the political complexion of their 'clients' in future. Up until now, the Council and Associations have operated with what has, in effect, been an unstated 'value judgement' policy, though with the growth in the number of applications and the consequent strain in the resources of judgement, errors are more likely to be made. Artistic and human errors, not political errors.

Although this year's government grant is larger than last year's, the difference is not enough-according to the Secretary General-to keep pace with the needs of established and new clients; inflation and the rise in administrative costs have further eroded the value of what, on the face of it, seems a jolly large sum of money. In view of the pinch, it is rumoured that value will be more carefully judged, grants monitored, the rewards more justly allocated. Where this will leave those perilous enterprises which espouse political causes through their artistic endeavours remains to be seen. If the Arts Council's sensitivity to its image as a bourgeois quango is greater than its commitment to art (and by 'art' one does not mean 'education' or 'play' or 'community arts' but literature, music, dance, theatre, painting, sculpture, etc.), then the 'subversives'-anarchists, pro-IRA theatre groups or bookshops, and the various liberationist groups with artistic programmes-may end up receiving the fattest cheques of all. Not very likely-but possible?

Further criticism of public subsidy of the arts in the USA has appeared recently in several eminent American journals. Poetry published an article last winter by its former editor, Karl Shapiro, called 'Creative Glut', in which he traces the rise of 'Mass Poetry' and the bureaucratization of culture in the sixties and seventies, the erosion of standards brought about by an indiscriminate governmental showering of gold upon numerous infertile Danaes, and the use of 'Creative Writing' in the American educational system as 'therapy (or medicine), hedonism (or entertainment), and egalitarianism (or politics)'. Shapiro is aware especially of the risks of bureaucratization: 'The hand of government on art is generally a cold, dead hand and we would do well to avoid its grasp. The entire governmental effort in this direction regardless of its goodwill, seems directed toward the creation of a mass amateur audience, a levelling of aesthetic sensibility with the hidden premise that the pool of assent will be politically useful when it is needed.' Writer's Digest has published a somewhat lighter piece by Judson Jerome, 'A Plague of Poets', concerned with the same phenomenon. Jerome traces the growth of the personality cult among poets back to Dylan Thomas's readings in the fifties and comments on some of the effects on standards in poetry which the fashion for 'performance' has brought about. In addition to these articles, the case against 'Mass Poetry' is strengthened once again by Felix Stefanile, whose article 'The Little Magazine Today', published in TriQuarterly and in PNR 12, was given wider circulation in a condensed form in the New York Times Book Review. So far, no reasoned response has been offered

THE POETRY BOOKSHOP, Hay-on-Wye, is the latest recipient of a grant from West Midlands Arts to develop its stock of contemporary literature and extend its services to a wider public. The bookshop specializes in twentieth-century poetry, criticism, biography, essays and poetry in translation. It stocks a variety of poetry magazines, maintains a comprehensive catalogue and mailing list and also houses a large selection of secondhand books. The shop, now open at new premises: 22 Broad Street, Hay-on-Wye, is run by Anne Stevenson and Michael Farley. Further details are available from them. Alan Halsey works in association with them and issues his own catalogues (15 Church Terrace, Hay-on-Wye).

Readers of the New Manchester Review were recently informed that the paper had ceased production until the autumn, due to 'what is becoming a familiar scourge to almost all arts-related projects up and down the country-a government-inspired contraction in the arts sector' (our italics). It is alarming how easily journalists succumb to using such terms, drawn often from the very systems they find distasteful and accepting as given the centrality of state patronage in an 'arts sector' conceived in consumerist terms. The New Manchester Review is a co-operative. All the same, it blames 'national trends', 'government-inspired contractions' and 'reductions in consumer spending' while, at the same time, admitting that the majority of its contributors are unpaid, many of its workers work gratis, and it attracts, on its own account, many local advertisers. We hope the NMR will soon be back on the streets: it fulfils a useful function. But its return will be the more likely if its analysis of the causes for its recent difficulties becomes less confused.

A Scottish radio broadcast, monitored in Lanarkshire recently, featured a sociologist talking about 'need satisfaction profiles' (sic) which were being compiled by interviewing people about their 'needs'-including 'aesthetic needs', which are to be dealt with by the Arts Council. The sociologist might have saved time and money by reflecting that people's 'needs' would be related to what they had been defined as by their education, the media, and so forth. The Scottish Arts Council, in turn, might save itself time and money by reflecting that its task is not to provide 'what people want' but to support the best artistic work proposed to them, to deal honourably with 'clients', and thus to serve the 'aesthetic' 'needs' of its parish by setting standards of conduct vis-a-vis artists and maintaining standards of discriminating perception vis-a-vis the 'public'. The tendency to confuse educational and artistic objectives is common among arts-subsidising bodies. A distrust of 'value-judgements' is endemic in such a confusion; and such distrust finally can lead to damaging conduct on the part of the moneyed arts bureaucracy-conduct damaging to clients, to definition and to fact.

Sir John Gielgud has received the 1980 'Grammy' award for his Ages of Man, readings from Shakespeare (Caedmon Records).

I. A. Richards-whose poetry will be celebrated in a 'critical mosaic' in a forthcoming issue of PNR-once vividly recalled visiting T. S. Eliot in the bowels of the Lloyds Bank Colonial and Foreign Department. Reecently we made a little investigation of our own. We found that Stafford House, 20 King William Street, though no longer part of the Lloyds empire, remained very much as it was when Eliot began work there on 17 March 1917. It was not difficult to discover a row of basement rooms similar to the one described by Richards as very small, with the glass squares in the pavement only a few feet from Eliot's head as he worked. Knowing the interest and pride that Lloyds have always taken in their distinguished ex-employees, we approached the Bank Archivist, Mr M. D. Roberts, with the proposal that he positively identify the workroom and set a plaque above it. Mr Roberts promised to consider the idea. He pointed out difficulties. 'However, we may be lucky,' he said.

His latest report is less encouraging: 'Stafford House is currently empty and the entire site bounded by King William Street, Cannon Street and Nicholas Lane is the subject of a demolition application by the United Kingdom Temperance and General Provident Institution, who wish to erect an eight-storey office building there.' We are tempted to suggest that the new building on this historic corner site of London Bridge be named Eliot House in memory of the poet-but we defer any such suggestion pending an examination of the plans.
(D.A.)

Many publishers 1980 catalogues have reached us. Among the interesting new titles and new editions we note:

ANTHOLOGIES:
The Oxford Book of Contemporary Verse 1945-1980, ed. D. J. Enright, Oxford, £7.50 (£3.50 pb).
A New Book of South African Verse in English, eds. F. G. Butler and Chris Mann, Oxford, £9.50.

NEW POETRY:
Norman MacCaig, The Equal Skies, Chatto, £3.25
Sylvia Townsend Warner, Twelve Poems, Chatto, £3.50
Andrei Vosnesensky, Nostalgia for the Present, tr. Wilbur, etc., Oxford, £3.50
Lawrence Durrell, Collected Poems 1931-74, Faber, £8.95
Tom Paulin, The Strange Museum, Faber, £3.00
Jean Valentine, The Messenger, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, £4.95
Geoffrey Grigson, History of Him, Secker, £3.90
L. E. Sissman, Hello, Darkness: Collected Poems, Secker, £7.95
Laurence Lerner, The Man I Killed, Secker, £3.90
William Peskett, Survivors, Secker, £3.90

AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND BIOGRAPHY:
Jack Clemo, The Marriage of a Rebel, Gollancz, £6.95
Barbara Coulton, Louis MacNeice in the BBC, Faber, £12.50

ESSAYS AND LETTERS:
The Shorter Strachey: Selected Essays, ed. Michael Holroyd and Paul Levy, Oxford, £6.95
Dai Greatcoat: a self-portrait of David Jones in his letters, ed. Rene Hague, Faber, £12.50
The Selected Works of Djuna Barnes, Faber, £5.50
Introducing David Jones: A Selection of his Writing, ed. John Matthias, Faber, £6.50 (£2.95 pb)
Witter Bynner, Letters, ed. James Kraft, Farrar Straus, £11.00

LITERARY CRITICISM:
Blake Morrison, The Movement, Oxford, £8.50
Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference, tr. Alan Bass, Routledge and Kegan Paul, £12.50
Marc Slonim, Soviet Russian Literature: Writers and Problems 1917-1977, Oxford re-issue, £3.25
Ruth Finnegan, Oral Poetry, Cambridge, £4.50

OTHER TITLES OF INTEREST:
F. P. Lock, The Politics of Gulliver's Travels, Clarendon, £7.50
Michael Freeman, Edmund Burke and the Critique of Political Radicalism, Blackwell, £9.95
Richard Wollheim, Art and its Objects, Cambridge new edition with six supplementary essays, £7.50 (£2.95 pb)
Berthold Hinz, Art in the Third Reich, tr. R. R. Kimber, Black-well, £15.00 (£5.95 pb)
David Martin, The Breaking of the Image: The Logic of Dogma and the Practice of Liturgy, Blackwell, £8.95
R. F. Holland, Against Empiricism: On Education, Epistemology and Value, Blackwell, £8.50
Christopher Butler, After the Wake: An Essay on the Contemporary Avant-Garde, Clarendon, £8.50
Geoffrey Sampson, Making Sense, Oxford, £7.95
Dick Netzer, The Subsidized Muse: Public Support for the Arts in the U.S.A., Cambridge, £5.50
Oxford are re-issuing the following books by Edward Thomas in paperback: A Literary Pilgrim in England (£1.95), Collected Poems (£2.50) and (with an introduction by Thomas) Richard Jefferies's The Hills and the Vales (£1.95).