Collected Works: Clere Parsons

by Clere Parsons, John Howlett (Editor)

Clere Parsons (1908–1931) was a poet of the 1930s and university contemporary of W.H. Auden. He was a key figure within the Oxford poetry scene and served as editor of a number of student magazines including the influential Oxford Poetry. An early proponent of American Modernism, Parsons’ sole volume of posthumous poetry revealed these innovative influences and marked his voice as highly distinctive.

Although fading from view in the years following his death, Parsons’ work has been praised by such influential critics as Geoffrey Grigson and C.H. Sisson. This edition by Shoestring Press, which includes every poem published by Parsons as well as the majority of his prose, will therefore serve to introduce his work to a new readership and locate him among the most original talents of the twentieth century.

61 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2017

Reviews

[Peter Nelson-King · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fleeting light in interwar modernism, Clere Parsons (1908-1931) only wrote for a few years before his early death from diabetes, but in his lifetime he made a striking contribution to British modernist writing. Co-editor of the magazine Oxford Poery, Parsons was heavily influenced by Auden, Cummings and Zukofsky, and his technique ranged from surrealism to collage, probing the power of the human mind to be affected by, and to affect, reality. At his best the poems imbue a sense of a terrible awe in the world, and the wonder and danger of diving into human psychology, making his work modern not just in technique but also in spirit. This volume collects all his published poems, from the posthumously-published volume Poems (1932) to everything else published in Oxford Poetry and other magazines. Also included are a set of book introductions and critical articles that reveal his prose voice, though this moment is where I lost interest in Parsons the man - his tenor is clever but vicious towards the poetry of his day, and that can only be amusing for so long. His work doesn't have the wide-audience appeal of the most popular modernists from this age, as it hangs on odd word mashups and its meanings are sometimes opaque. The book is a must-read for specialists in this field, but most people will see it only as a curiosity, or irritating.