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Hilltop: A Literary Paper. Volume 1 Number 3

Poetic Struggle

Poetic Struggle

Sirs: I am a young writer still at the stage known as 'struggling.' I am married and earn my living in what Mr. Baxter so feelingly calls "the dismal swamp of journalism." While I agree with what this writer says about our "inability to find meaning in a world either dead or disastrous," I think that too often it is our own fault.

If we agree that no section of the community, no department of experience, should page 38 miss the writer's scrutiny, then surely we will all have something to say, all the time, if we really are writers.

Mr. Baxter uses a determinist argument to show that although when they are young, writers can sometimes solve their problems by living off their parents, later, "social and economic pressure forces them to the wall."

I believe, however, that such people never are writers in the true sense of the word. A writer qua writer never does stop writing. He uses every trick of fate, be it good or ill, solely as a portal to new experience.

"Those who can, do," is a determinist illustration of what I mean.

O. E. Middleton.