Madam, - The obituary of James Liddy in your issue of November 8th was a fitting tribute. He was, to paraphrase Yeats, a "hearty welcomer", a man with a big heart and many friends both in Ireland and in the United States. He was a presence not only in both countries, but also in that spiritual country that joins the two, populated by poets and readers of poetry.
Not only was he one of the first writers to prove that being Irish and being forthrightly gay was not a contradiction in terms; in his work he also showed how the spirit of the "beat generation" could enter a sensibility that remained Irish to the marrow. In doing so he opened a space for the important poetry in Irish of Cathal Ó Searcaigh. There is no one like James Liddy among us today. - Yours, etc,