221 FOOTNOTES 1. In a purely practical way, poetry has become even more part of Ezekiel's life in the last year or two; he has given up all outside commitments such as writing articles, broadcasting, and journalism (book-reviews, art criticism, etc.), in order to concentrate on three activities; teaching, editing Poetry India and writing poetry. The connection between the last two is obvious; and, from teaching prosody to his students over the past year, this part of his life, too, has had a direct influence on the form of his poetryo 2. There is also a departure from the house of Indo-Anglian poetry, perhaps; knowing only English, Ezekiel is to some extent isolated from an Indo-Anglian tradition that has been heavily reliant upon Indian-language poetry. That the departure was also a deliberate one seems very clear. Living in England (1948-52), where the first volume was published, brought Ezekiel into contact with new trends; and he has been compared to the poets writing in England since the thirties. Eliot and Auden are clear influences on his work, of course; but this in itself says little about Ezekiel, and no attempt is made here to refer to Ezekiel's achievement in any other terms than his owno 3. The prelude to "Something to Pursue" shows clearly Ezekiel"s early concern for the exact name in this matter: That I may see myself No longer unresolved, But definite as morning. 4e Two types of sex-failure figure in the poems: (1) the frozen lack of commitment ("An Affair"); (2) dissatisfaction with the act. Broadly, the later poems deal more with the latter type, highlighting a concern for action and also for blessedness. The theme is later treated in terms of an attempted synthesis of city and love. 5. This raises the question as to how far Ezekiel is the man of the poems; no simple answer seems possible, but one can notice a trend towards greater use of protagonists in the later works, and less reliance upon autobiographical data. "Case Study" (The Unfinished Man) might perhaps have remained without the dislocation between "he" and "me" in the final stanza, had it been an earlier composition. In the final volume, the use of myth-figures represents an extreme form of this dislocation; one is tempted to write of The Poet, The Birdwatcher (using capital letters) etc. 6. Only in such terms as these does the darkness and "the bloody sacrificial myth" of "On an African Mask" find a place, alongside the disgust for the undaring word, dressed only for the drawing-room, in "On Meeting a Pedant."