TO THE EDITOR OF THE ARGUS
Sir, - While valuing a certain astringent and challenging quality in your reviewer's comment last Saturday on a recent Australian anthology, I cannot think that his description of Gordon's "Sick Stockrider" should pass. He writes: - "It is a sketch in galloping anapest." That is to say, it is written in the rhythm of Browning's "How They Brought the Good News," or of Gordon's own swiftly racing lines, "To the Wreck." But Gordon was too good a bushman, too good a horseman, too good a verse-writer to cause a sick man - a dying man - to meditate in "galloping anapest." The lines of "The Sick Stockrider" move unmistakably in a quiet amble; "And the station children playing overhead." -Yours, &c.,
NETTIE PALMER
Kalorama, Feb. 27.
First published in The Argus, 2 March 1935
Note: this letter is replying to a review of an Australian poetry anthology, The Wide Brown Land, which was reprinted here last week.
