A short poem serves most commonly as a tailpiece (no pun intended). Published in a book it had better be preceded by a prose composition, which will serve as a peroration. A poem expresses emotion, excitement; and before we get excited we need a dispassionate exposition of the subject we're to get excited about.

A poem is an editorial, a bit of philosophizing. An editorial paragraph is to be understood by a person who has read yesterday's newspaper and so knows what the editorial is about. An anthology of editorials requires a running recital of the news in the context of which each editorial was written.

In practical publishing, an editor finds himself with a remnant of a column open, and he casts about for something to eke out. At hand is a poem of a length suitable, there is no compelling reason why he should not print it, so in it goes. If he happens to have two poems of the same length he can prefer one to the other.

Is this a reckless way of choosing literary material? No. Merit is important in anything that is to be published, but is secondary to availability. No editor can publish a thing that he doesn't have. Many a poem gets published because it was of a convenient length and was in the editor's hand when a column wanted splicing out.

Your poem's prosperity is not defeated by publication as a column justifier. Consider the reader: he has read a story or a non-fiction piece and has assimilated a substantial message is mentally replete, satisfied. He is naturally ready for something more but is not now hospitable to anything formidable. His mind is idling or running only at cruising speed. He'll take in the minor work of a poet-a minor work as its length suggests.

A major poem would run to greater length, so it would not be here.

Manuel Boyfrank

TENNESSEE WILLIAMS, by Ger-

ald Weales, No. 53 in the Pamphlets on American Writers, The University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis 55455, 65 cents.

Thomas Lanier Williams, known as Tennessee, is a descendant of John Sevier (pronounced seveer), 17451815, who did atrocities against my great great grandparents and other Indians; but I shall not hold it against the playwright.

Gerald Weales explains Williams thoroughly and sympathetically. An understanding of the playwright's aims helps you appreciate a play and fix the play's value as poetry. A good poem, however, can be read and reread, and a good play seen with pleasure more than once. Weales does not say whether a Tennessee Williams play will stand repeated attendance.

Does it take a cheeky critic to say that a two-time winner of the Pulitzer. prize is not necessarily a good writer? Observe what such a prize amounts to, $500, and how narrow is the field. I was eleven when Pulitzer died and I recall the peculiar rules he laid down.

Although the prizes for a novel, a history, a biography or a book of verse had only about three stipulations apiece, that for a play runs to six or seven, thus: "For the (1) original (2) American play, (3) performed in New York, which shall (4) best represent the (5) educational value and (6) power of the stage, (7) dealing preferably with American life."

So no play that has merely been published is considered nor is one that has been staged elsewhere than in New York. The many British plays that contribute so richly to the American theater are ignored. When competition is thus cut away there is many a Broadway season when a play could fit the prize recipe and still be an authentic estinquedero.

M. B.