This book contains nearly all the shorter poems I have written since the publication of the second edition of my book of Poems, in September 1934. I have eliminated a few poems which I did not think worth reprinting. Besides which, I have entirely rewritten some of those with which I was not satisfied; notably those appearing here under the titles Exiles from their Land, History their Domicile; An Elemerntary School Class Room in a Slum; and The Uncreating Chaos.
The poems are printed in the order of development, rather than in the exact order in which they were written. To make the stages of development clearer, I have divided the book into four sections. The earliest poems—those in Part One—are for the most part written round subjects, and worked out with considerable elaboration. The poems in the Second and Third Parts, written for the most part during a time when I was preoccupied with various kinds of political activity, are more occasional, and written directly and fairly quickly from the experiences which suggested them.
I have printed the Third Part separately, instead of including it in the Second Part, because all these poems are concerned with the Spanish War. As I have decidedly supported one side—the Republican —in that conflict, perhaps I should explain why I do not strike a more heroic note. My reason is that a poet can only write about what is true to his own experience, not about what he would like to be true to his experience.
Poetry does not state truth, it states the conditions within which something felt is true. Even while he is writing about the little portion of reality which is part of his experience, the poet may be conscious of a different reality outside. His problem is to relate the small truth to the sense of a wider, perhaps theoretically known, truth outside his experience. Poems exist within their own limits, they do not exclude the possibility of other things, which might also be subjects of poetry, being different. They remain true to experience and they establish the proportions of that experience. One day a poet will write truthfully about the heroism as well as the fears and anxiety of today; but such a poetry will be very different from the utilitarian heroics of the moment.
I think that there is a certain pressure of external events on poets today, making them tend to write about what is outside their own limited experience. The violence of the times we are living in, the necessity of sweeping and general and immediate action, tend to dwarf the experience of the individual, and to make his immediate environment and occupations perhaps something that he is even ashamed of. For this reason, in my most recent poems, I have deliberately turned back to a kind of writing which is more personal, and I have included within my subjects weakness and fantasy and illusion.
Versions of many of these poems have appeared before, in The Listener, Spectator, New Statesman and Nation, New Verse, New Writing, The London Mercury, Poetry, The Year's Poetry, and The Faber Book of Modern Verse. I make the usual acknowledge. meets to the editors concerned; and to Mr John Lehmann, my fellow editor of Poems of Spain.