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Salient: Victoria University of Wellington Students' Newspaper. Vol. 32, No. 6. 1969.

Letters to the Editor

Letters to the Editor

Arty Arnold

SO it's supergraphics or the bomb, Mr. Harker? I've always been a great man for compromise—so supergraphics are it. Unfortunately that's the way I think, no greys, just bright primary colours when you want to move, easy colours when you want to sit and inbetween colours in toilets where you want to do a bit of both.

Admittedly I don't really go much on R.A.F. blue for the exterior, the thought of dark green does a bit more for me, but this is a specific criticism. The general concept of supergraphics seems to hold something unique in its ability to revitalize the staid and dreary, and it is with this prejudice that I will consider the alternative proposal called for by this year's exec when it comes before Student Union Management Committee.

So if you think my prejudice is ill/well-founded, make a noise so that the majority of us (who haven't read this far) may take a little more interest.

Yours, till you run me put of town.

Simon Arnold

Prating

Some time ago I wrote a letter to your paper concerning the quality of your record reviews, especially the type of records reviewed.

A reply was received the following week, this was both insulting and shallow. The nit who wrote this letter, and I agree with him (Yes, You Definitely Are A Nincompoop) did not have much to say, certainly nothing of value. The letter descended to the level of a personal insult.

Your reference to a certain piece of music by Wagner was in very poor taste, and I do not appreciate being referred to as an hypothesis, and a very bad hypothesis at that.

The attitude of this philistine is unfortunately too prevalent in this country and, no doubt, a bit of culture might do him the world of good.

This Oaf and His Ilk Have Had Their Way Too Long and It's About Time They Were Put Down.

And if the gospel of St. Mike doesn't agree with my sensiments, then he can got and get . . . . chased.

Ron Pretty.

Literary page

I Felt obliged to send you this after reading Mr. Pasley's little offering in the Salients. Let me assure you you have not put Me off, the literary pages of Salient are about the least off-putting literary outlet that I know.

Mr. Pasley must be a member of the New Zealand literary set, judging both from what he says and the way he says it. He complains that he has not heard of you—well, God protect us both, he won't have heard of me either (Rhys Pasley . . . Pasley? . . . I dunno).

At least you have recognised that students didn't invent poetry. You don't have to be a student of English to know that literature has a tradition, the work of a lot of peculiar old folk, for some thousands of years, and remarkably, they seem to have known what they were doing. But these days they don't relate, or something. The literary set suffer from a galloping self-consciousness — they are Contemporary, New Zealand Poets, which seems to impose a certain style, and attitude which would deny the existence of any poetry older than T. S. Eliot.

Mr. P. is happier when he can cell you an academic, it puts him on familiar ground. Fair enough, I know what he is getting at, but it's a shame for his sake that vou really don't SOUND like an academic. You sound to me like someone making an honest attempt to put a READABLE literary page in a scruffy little student paper.

It is no use insisting here that art be always spelt with a capital "A". All you can expect of a young student poet—by any standard a rank amateur—is an attempt to write genuinely about what he knows — death, man's soul, the purpose of life and so on (and So on?). These I really have to think about for a few minutes.

I'm not really surprised someone like Mr. Pasley does not like the literary page. Well, let him go, then, where it's at, and read Argot, or Frontiers, if he can. I believe vou will get a more honest response on your page than any of the fashionable outfits ever will.

So please accept the enclosed poem as a vote of confidence. I don't know how good it is, and its origins may be obvious to some people, but if it is trash I don't expect you will publish it. Any comment would be of interes'.

Grant Thompson.

Potty poetry

With reference to the poetry which I quoted in Salient 2:

Sam Hunt's poem "A Song About Her" should have been divided into five stanzas of four lines and the third line of the poem should have read : "kicked my pillows out of bed".

In Dennis List's "The Camels Are Coming" the fifth line should have read "the wild profustion of Arabia".

Michael Neill's poem, reprinted in Salient 4 from Argot Broadsheet, should have been titled "Crows in December".

I would be grateful if more care could be given to proof reading in future issues.

Further, in the same issue of Salient, Trevor James described one of Dennis List's poems as "superbly said" (with which description I don't altogether agree—it's not bad, but no more) and then wondered whether or not it was "significant" or has meaning"? Does it matter? Trevor confessed that "the poem by Dennis List I cannot really understand". It may be that it's "meaning" is suggested, and that one cannot satisfactorily define what it is that is suggested.

In the same article Trevor wondered whether Peter Bland's "Train Home" is a poem at all. Can he suggest any criteria by which we might determine whether or not it is a poem? He may agree that some attempt at definition is called for if he is prepared to suggest that he can exclude some pieces of writing from a definition of "poetry". If he is prepared to tackle this problem he might in the process, eliminate such nonsense as this :

For example "Hyde Park", by one "Tom Smucker", might just as well be told in prose rather than fool around with the fancy line arrangement" (from Salient 1).

And, with reference to "Train Home", "the same thing (moral) idea could probably be said just as well in a sketch for a story rather than to attempt a poem at that level of style" (from Salient 4).

David Harcourt.

Ka-ka-krap

I Would like to relate to your readers the legend of the Ka-Ka bird.

The male Ka-Ka bird resides at the equator, the female at the South Pole. Each year, in the late spring, the male bird can be heard as he wings northward, uttering his famous cry, which is, incidentally, echoed daily by students leaving E006: "Ka-ka-ka-ka-christ, it's ka-ka-ka-cold".

Mary-Helen Ward.

Correction

I Feel it incumbent upon me to point out one of the mistakes on the front page of Salient 4.

". . . Helen McGrath, who previously voted for the motion, and who was the original seconder, voted against the motion.

"This was a contravention of the constitution which states that nobody who seconds a motion can vote against it."

This statement is erroneous. There is no provision to this effect in the Constitution of the Victoria University of Wellington Students' Association, which I assume is the constitution to which you refer, Neither is any distinction drawn between what is sometimes called a "pro forma" seconding and an ordinary seconding of a motion, Therefore there is nothing to prevent the seconder of a motion voting against it.

Margaret Bryson,

Hon. Sec. V.U.W.S.A.

Note To correspondent: Mervyn P. Judge—Referred to appropriate authority—Ed.