A. E. Housman Poems

by A.E. Housman, Alan Hollinghurst (Editor)

Alan Hollinghurst called A. E. Housman's "A Shropshire Lad" "the most vital English poetry collection of the 1890s and perhaps of the whole period from the death of Tennyson until Hardy's Satire of Circumstances". Drawing heavily on this volume, Hollinghurst gathers here a resonant collection of verse from Housman's oeuvre that, with its emphasis on the inevitable decay of youth and beauty and on the touching bonds of male friendship, was anthemic for the generation that went to war in 1914.

Genres: Poetry

76 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

A Shropshire Lad (1896) and Last Poems (1922) apparently published works of British poet and scholar Alfred Edward Housman, brother of Laurence Housman and Clemence Housman.

To his fellow noted classicists, his critical editing of Manilius earned him enduring fame.

The eldest of seven children and a gifted student, Housman won a scholarship to Oxford, where he performed well but for various reasons neglected philosophy and ancient history subjects that failed to pique his interest and consequently failed to gain a degree. Frustrated, he gained at job as a patent clerk but continued his research in the classical studies and published a variety of well-regarded papers. After a decade with such his reputation, he ably obtain a position at University College London in 1902. In 1911, he took the Kennedy professorship of Latin at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he remained for the rest of his life.

As a scholar, Housman concentrated on Latin. He published a five-volume critical edition, the definitive text, of his work on " Astronomica " of Manilus from 1903 to 1930. Housman the poet produced lyrics that express a Romantic pessimism in a spare, simple style. In some of the asperity and directness in lyrics and also scholarship, Housman defended common sense with a sarcastic wit that helped to make him widely feared.

There are several biographies of Housman, and a The Housman Society http://www.housman-society.co.uk/

Reviews

[archive ☄ · Rating 5 out of 5]

as robert lowell observed, it was as if housman had foreseen the somme.

[Leonardo · Rating 5 out of 5]

The melancholy of unrequited love and the English countryside (and more specifically "the love that dare not say its name" and an idyllic vision of 19th-century Shropshire) lay at the heart ("core" seems a crude word here) of the work of Georgian poet A.E. Housman. Images of young dead soldiers and the longing for a pastoral beauty take shape through carefully crafted words that both embody an intense emotion and a life long struggle to hold the reins of the same emotion and to sublimate it into poetry. Housman published only two books during his lifetime. However, one of his best and most famous poems was only included in one of the two books published after his death, although it refers to a major event in England's social and literary history (the trial of Oscar Wilde) that occurred one year before he published his first book. It begins with the following stanza: "Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrists? / And what has he been after that they groand and shake their fists? / And wherefore is he wearing such a conscience-stricken air? / Oh they're taking him to prison for the colour of his hair." No wonder Morrissey (a man of controversial opinions, but a refined lyricist) has mentioned Housman as one of his favourite poets.

[Brendan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think we can file Housman under 'O' for overrated.

He knew how to work a rhyme scheme. But I was often struck by how outdated or pointless or redundant his work seems. You may expect a lot of references to death, soldiers, and nature (of rural England).

Hollinghurst devoted over half of this overview to pieces from A Shropshire Lad, and rightly so. It is the collection most people think of when they think of Housman. None of the selections from Last Poems did anything for me.

A few notable poems:

XII - a death poem - A Shropshire Lad
"To an Athlete Dying Young" - A Shropshire Lad
XXXI - unrequited man-crush - More Poems
IX - four-liner - Additional Poems
"R.L.S." - the death of Robert Louis Stevenson - Additional Poems

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

very lyrical.

[Ben Zammit · Rating 4 out of 5]

Couple of favourites, but not a diverse range. Not to say the themes of lost love, countryside and dead soldiers are unimpressive. The opposite. War poetry is great, but I think the fact that Houseman was a staple among soldiers *during* the Great War also says a lot. These are some of the deepest of human emotions, so if you think that’s what poetry is for, then this at least shows that the well is deep. With undeniable form and meter to boot.

White in the moon the long road lies,
That leads me from my love.

[Laura Verret · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having never read Houseman before, I was surprised to find such sleek and potent ideas beneath the tidy exteriors of his terse little stanzas. Will definitely look for more of his work.