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James K. Baxter Complete Prose Volume 3

Preface [to The Rock Woman, Selected Poems]

Preface [to The Rock Woman, Selected Poems]

This selection contains several poems unpublished before in any book of mine, and a number which had only been published in periodicals, but its main purpose is to provide a reasonable sampling of my verse of the past twenty years. Such a selection can be regarded perhaps as a milestone. I trust it is not also a tombstone. Though acknowledgements are due to many editors and periodicals, these have already been recorded in the books from which previously published poems have been taken, and I wish only to acknowledge the publishers of my books: Blow, Wind of Fruitfulness (Caxton Press, 1948), The Fallen House (Caxton Press, 1953), In Fires of No Return (O.U.P. 1958), Howrah Bridge and Other Poems (O.U.P. 1961), Pig Island Letters (O.U.P. 1966).

In order to make this selection I have had to go through twenty-seven unedifying manuscript books, and was struck by the evidence they provided of an obsessive industry that led me, as often as not into the cactus. If I have at times written well, it was hardly by natural aptitude; and I must thank the man-killing Muse for the care she has taken of her idiot son.

J.K.B.

1969 (584)