ABSTRACT
If the poem is to be pure, the poet's voice must be stilled and the initiative taken by the words themselves, which will be set in motion as they meet unequally in collision. And in an enchange of gleams they will flame out like some glittering swath of fire sweeping over precious stones, and thus replace the audible breathing in lyric poetry of old – replace the poet's own personal and passionate control of verse. Between the Acts is, then, a poetic novel about a country and a people threatened by war. The time is June 1939. Yet actual references to the war are very few in number, and much of the kind of uncertainty and fear for the future is embedded deeply below the surface of what is, in fact, a highly entertaining work. Reference to the cesspool's site shows the remains of the Britons, Romans, Elizabethans, and the period of the Napoleonic Wars.
