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I do not advocate that we should all put on sackcloth and ashes. But I think it reasonable and necessary that poetry should contain moral truth and that every poet should be a prophet according to his lights. In our time there has been a dangerous split between the moral and aesthetic factors in art – on one side doctrinaire expression, on the other side so-called pure art. The position of the Romantic poet inclines to that of the pure artist. His social aim, if expressed, is that every City should become a Wilderness. The aim of the doctrinaire artist, Christian or Communist, is that every Wilderness should be contained in the Just City. My sympathy is with the former, as I consider conformity a great deal more dangerous than non-conformity. But while Romantics refuse to speak in terms of any relationship but the sexual one, we must take our lead from the doctrinaire philosophers.

The typical dilemma of the modern poet is one of divided aims. A man who is working as a schoolteacher, a tradesman, or a Government official in a society which he knows to be unjust, cannot dare to think clearly on moral issues; for the society is part of his physical and even psychological security. If he breaks with the society and departs into the Wilderness in customary Romantic style, then he loses brotherhood with all but similar outcasts. What Justice demands is something more difficult – that he should remain as a cell of good living in a corrupt society and in this situation by writing and example attempt to change it. He will thus and only thus escape the isolation of the Romantic.

– James K. Baxter, Recent Trends in New Zealand Poetry

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