Add MS 88998/2/52

22 letters from F. T. Prince to Harwood, and 7 copy letters from Harwood to Prince. The letters are arranged chronologically.

• (1). Southampton, 28 May 1967. Prince to Harwood. Autograph letter (1 sheet), with envelope. 'I found the poems, the book, charming, moving - and of course irritating - but full of life, feeling, cleverness, vividness.'
• (2). London, 19 August 1967. Harwood to Prince. Typed letter (1 sheet, carbon). Asks if Prince would be prepared to write something 'to be printed on the dust-jacket', and asks which poems are 'irritating'.
• (3). Southampton, 30 August 1967. Prince to Harwood. Typed letter (3 sheets). Feels unable to 'contribute a note about the book, such as you had thought of. My position and my reputation are such - so obscure and doubtful - that any remarks of mine would do you no good at all.' Now that Prince has seen a larger selection of Harwood's poetry he can see more clearly what he admires and what he is baffled by: 'and it turns out to be generally the same things that I find in John Ashbery and Frank O'Hara'.
• (4). New York, 17 October 1967. Harwood to Prince. Typed letter (1 sheet, carbon). Prince's letter has provoked Harwood to reassess his work. He has not written any new poems since.
• (5). Brighton (c/o Unicorn Bookshop), 2 February 1968. Harwood to Prince. Typed letter (3 sheets, carbon, including additions by hand). Harwood has been back in England for a month, having now visited New York twice: 'I now realise that I was somewhat dazzled on my first New York visit'. Harwood then takes up again Prince's criticism ('garrulity', a tendency 'to patter on'). Harwood disagrees with Prince's assessment of Ashbery, 'The Skaters'. Ashbery will now write 'the sleeve note' for The White Room. Penguin are to publish Harwood along with Alan Brownjohn and Charles Tomlinson in the 'Penguin Modern Poets' series [the selection would soon be modified], and Harwood is giving a poetry course at the newly-founded Anti-University in London. He is now settled in Brighton 'running a poetry bookshop'. Recently written poems are 'much barer and, I hope, simpler'.
• (6). Southampton, 5 February 1968. Prince to Harwood. Typed letter (2 sheets), with envelope. 'I am probably wrong about The Skaters; I know that the "cancelling out" (if that is the right description) is quite deliberate and probably very brilliant. I have a great opinion of J.A.'s intellect and general power, his originality, sensitivemess, and so on. But the product is mostly alien to me, it all comes from a different planet.' Prince is looking into the possibility of Harwood reading at Southampton.
• (7). Southampton, 11 March 1968. Prince to Harwood. Autograph letter (1 sheet), with envelope. 'I hear you have agreed to come for the experimental music and poetry next Sunday'. Envelope annotated by Harwood: 'repl. 14/III/68 will arrive 3.30-4.00'.
• (8). Brighton, 21 March 1968. Harwood to Prince. Typed letter (1 sheet, carbon). Apologises for 'not coming as promised or contacting you before now'. He has quit his job at the book shop, '& right now don't know which way I'm going'. Harwood may go to Italy in 'late April and stay with an Italian friend' who is translating his poetry.
• (9). Southampton, 25 March 1968. Prince to Harwood. Autograph letter (1 sheet), with envelope. 'I found myself standing in for you, & reading some of Berrigan's Sonnets, which went down very well [....] My term has ended and I am going to work on a poem, so I am happy.'
• (10). Brighton, 21 April 1969. Harwood to Prince. Typed letter (1 sheet, carbon). Originally enclosing a copy of The White Room, and page proofs of Landscapes - 'I guess I'm sending it to you to look at to maybe show I did take in what you said about my earlier work & the whole "slick style" routine.'
• (11). All Souls College, Oxford, 16 May 1969. Prince to Harwood. Autograph letter (3 sheets), with envelope. Comments on Harwood, 'Telescope' (Collected Poems, p. 113). 'You have completely "arrived" in this and many other poems.' Prince reports 'the birth of an autobiographical poem of more than 500 lines' (i.e. Memoirs in Oxford).
• (12). Brighton, 16 June 1969. Harwood to Prince. Typed letter (1 sheet, carbon, including additions by hand). Would like to read Prince's new autobiographical poem, and has mentioned to Stuart Montgomery (Fulcrum Press) that Prince is looking for a publisher.
• (13). Southampton, 26 October 1969. Prince to Harwood. Autograph letter (1 sheet), with envelope. 'I was delighted to be able to talk on Wednesday, and your reading really was a revelation because you read so slowly [...] I shall have to go back and take everything at the right pace. By the way, is this the way one should also read Ashbery?' Prince has sent a revised typescript to Stuart Montgomery.
• (14). Southampton, 10 June 1970. Prince to Harwood. Autograph letter (1 sheet), with envelope. Expresses reservations about 'the American spirit, which can be boring, and defeat itself, by being too strenuous, too insistent'. Encourages Harwood to 'persist with Stendhal - try the non-fiction'.
• (15). Southampton, 16 August 1970. Prince to Harwood. Autograph letter (1 sheet), with envelope. Having just received Memoirs in Oxford (Fulcrum, 1970).
• (16). Southampton, 2 September 1970. Prince to Harwood. Autograph letter (1 sheet), with envelope. Refers to reading with Harwood on 'the 16th', Prince to 'skim through the new poem, omitting this and that, but giving a general idea, with comments.' Prince's 'BBC recording was nursed through with great consideration by G[eorge] MacBeth', although Prince not was reading from his final draft ('Fulcrum had my only final copy').
• (17). Southampton, 12 September 1970. Prince to Harwood. Autograph letter (1 sheet), with envelope. A brief note asking if he can read first: 'I feel my nervousness would build up if I waited until the second half'.
• (18). Southampton, 14 July 1971. Prince to Harwood. Autograph letter (1 sheet), with envelope addressed to Harwood at Better Books. With thanks for 'Penguin 19' (Ashbery, Harwood, Raworth): 'It is an attractive volume with more unity (of some kind - style - or method) than Number 20 can have' (Heath-Stubbs, Prince, Spender).
• (19). Better Books, London, 6 and 9 November 1971. Harwood to Prince. Typed letter (1 sheet, carbon). Letter typed in the book shop. Originally enclosing 'a Tzara pamphlet' (Harwood translations). 'How do you like the new revolutionary(!) POETRY REVIEW?' (under Eric Mottram's new editorship, and including work by Harwood).
• (20). Southampton, 13 November 1971. Prince to Harwood. Autograph letter (2 sheets), with envelope addressed to Harwood at Better Books. 'But isn't it hellishly difficult to translate French poetry into English?' Comments on Harwood's work in Poetry Review.
• (21). Southampton, 31 December 1971. Prince to Harwood. Autograph letter (1 sheet), with envelope addressed to Harwood at Better Books. 'I had wondered, after your visit, whether you would be justified in finding it unrewarding; but I hadn't thought of you as in any way falling short [....] The mere fact of communicating with your generation, and feeling that you have some response towards me, is a gift of fortune.'
• (22). Southampton, 18 May 1972. Prince to Harwood. Autograph aerogramme (1 sheet), addressed to Harwood at the Aegean School of Fine Arts, Paros. Refers to his Clark lectures (Cambridge, 1973), and to the publication of The Waste Land manuscript (Pound's revision) as 'quite a revelation'.
• (23). Southampton, 5 January 1973. Prince to Harwood. Autograph aerogramme (1 sheet), addressed to Harwood in Boston, Massachusetts. Prince has completed the preparation of his Clark lectures, and has completed a new poem [Drypoints of the Hasidim]: 'It is in "free-verse" (though mine is not free), and most personal, being on the Hasidim (Jewish mystics of 18th-19th centuries)'.
• (24). Southampton, 10 August 1974. Prince to Harwood. Autograph letter (2 sheets), with envelope. Sends his 'warmest congratulations' on Harwood's marriage. 'Fulcrum have had the new poem for weeks and weeks, not to say months and months [....].' (Following the collapse of Fulcrum, Drypoints of The Hasidim was published by The Menard Press in 1975.) Prince is retiring from the University of Southanpton. He was invited to the University Essex by Ted Berrigan in the spring, and read Hasidim.
• (25). Southampton, 2 November 1974. Prince to Harwood. Autograph letter (1 sheet), with envelope. 'It would be a great pleasure if you and your wife could come to spend a weekend'.
• (26). Southampton, 1 December 1974. Prince to Harwood. Autograph letter (1 sheet), with envelope. The Harwoods cannot visit before Christmas. 'I have been working on my T. Wyatt selection for Faber [...].'
• (27). Southampton, 12 May 1975. Prince to Harwood. Autograph letter (1 sheet), with envelope. 'Here is the new poem, which came out last week.' Prince is 'to go to Jamaica for two years, as Professor of English, beginning in October.'
• (28). Southampton, 29 May 1975. Prince to Harwood. Autograph letter (1 sheet), with envelope. Asks for addresses of John Ashbery, Ted Berrigan and Tom Raworth - 'I want to send them copies of the new poem!' Has received Harwood, Freighters (Pig Press).
• (29). Southampton, 9 June 1975. Prince to Harwood. Typed letter (1 sheet), with envelope. Various comments on Freighters, beginning: 'I find much of the material pleasing and suggestive of many possibilities, yet the whole seems to me to be a kit for making a poem, not the poem itself. So strongly did it suggest this to me that I even had an impulse to write the poem I saw in it - Shoreham, Newhaven, the names of the ships, the geography, the history somehow touched in; but of course as the centre of it, and the thing which would vitalise the whole, would have to be the personal situation - a personal situation.'