The Bells of Saint Babel’s

Letters

Vol. 21 No. 16 · 19 August 1999

From Allen Curnow

A friend who writes from Germany evidently likes my poem ‘The Bells of Saint Babel’s’ (LRB, 10 June) but points out the navigational impossibility of ‘West/Longitude one-/eighty-three’. I wouldn’t excuse myself to her, or to any other reader similarly troubled, by arguing that a poem which submerges Mt Everest in the Pacific may be allowed a small liberty in fixing the Kermadec Trench: the truth being that in consulting my excellent, detailed map of the sea floor in this hemisphere, I added three degrees to the 180 instead of subtracting them. Vanity hardly knows whether to hope the variant will be noted, or pass unnoticed, next time I print the poem.

Allen Curnow
Auckland