“The poem is, I think, the best I’ve written.”

A rare moment of youthful confidence in his own craftsmanship · Letter to Pamela Hansford Johnson, 30 April 1934

• Art
• Poetry

“Don’t expect too much of me (it’s conceit to suppose that you would); I’m an odd little person.”

A characteristically comic and self-deprecating self-portrait · Letter to Pamela Hansford Johnson, 15 October 1933

• Solitude
• Truth

“I can give you a very rough idea of the ‘plot’, because the ‘plot’ is told in images, & the images are what they say, not what they stand for.”

Insisting that poetic images possess meaning in themselves rather than merely representing ideas · Letter to Hermann Peschmann, 1 February 1938

• Art
• Poetry
• Truth