Collected Poems and Plays: Wyndham Lewis

by Wyndham Lewis, Alan Munton (Editor), C.H. Sisson (Introduction)

This volume includes major works such as One-Way Song and Enemy of the Stars in very different versions as well as other writings that can now be seen as central to the formation of Lewis's work. The plays and poems crackle with concentrated, brilliant, and ferocious energy as Lewis creates a literary equivalent to the visual revolutions of Cubism and Vorticism, exploring how an artist should think and write in an oppressive world.

Genres: Poetry, Drama

232 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1979

Reviews

[Joyce · Rating 5 out of 5]

was there anything he couldn't do? (except make sensible interpersonal and political decisions)

[oswald · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating book. With the One-Way Song, the question is whether he actually pulls off the transmutation of personality he apparently tries for everywhere in his work. . . whether he was after all merely writing flavorless extraneoclassical verslets, or succeeded in erecting a monument to his own palate.

It must also be decided whether anyone else could have written this. It is certain that no one else would have tried, but I can't say there's a single rhyme in the whole thing that another man couldn't have come up with. So the question arises, what did he want with this form? Maybe nothing but the pitter-patter of "enemy salvoes".

There is no doubt of the authorship of the plays. These seem to be exquisite pictures in fine detail, but it's possible he's just breathlessly smashing adjectives together. Either way the effect is magnificent.

Lewis is typically more the preacher than the professor, but he depicts himself in the latter role in an elegiac section of the One-Way Song, and consummates the image in the essay at the end of the book. There we see what has been very rare for a long time: a sincere and unaffected appreciation for Plato.