When Cecil Day Lewis was appointed Poet Laureate in 1968, he got - within days of the good news - a letter from his bank manager. 'The whole Midland,' it said, 'rejoices with you.' And this, it might be felt, comes close to summing up what's wrong with being Poet Laureate. Since banks began, poets have received many letters from bank managers but few have been at all like Cecil's. To send the Midland into raptures of this kind, a fellow would surely need to have done something rather seriously unpoetic.

LRB 7 January 1999 | PDF Download