SOURCE: "A Self-lacerating Frankness," in The Times Literary Supplement, No. 4742, February 18, 1994, p. 10.

[Symons is an English novelist, short story writer, poet, critic, and biographer. In the review below, he comments on the poetry collection Dolphins and commends Spender's lifelong dedication to critical self-evaluation.]

"Lines for Roy Fuller", one of the poems in Stephen Spender's new collection [Dolphins], reminded me of the powerful effect Spender's Poems of 1932 had on the youthful Fuller. He knew a good many passages by heart: so did I, and we used to cap each other's quotations. There is a suggestion of the influence those early poems had on our generation in Fuller's autobiography, when he says a poem of Spender's about the unemployed helped to advance "the concept of a poetry of direct social function" reaching beyond "the provision of stimulating or consolatory sounds and images". Nowadays it might be felt that to write...