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Louis MacNeice
A biography of the Irish poet, Louis MacNeice, contemporary and friend of W.H. Auden, Stephen Spender and Cecil Day Lewis. Jon Stallworthy is the author of a prize-winning biography of Wilfred Owen, and editor of a volume of his collected poems.
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First published June 1, 1995
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 20, 2012
Auden called MacNeice "A lover of women and Donegal" and the two might be emblematic of the physical and the musical that runs through his verse. He wrote a handful of the most beautiful lyric poems in English. Most of them “love poems”.
MacNeice emerges as a far more likeable character than many of the more dogmatic "Greater Poets" of that "low dishonest decade". Which probably goes some way to explain why he gets overlooked. His description of the ideal poet is a self portrait:
"I would have the poet able bodied, fond of talking, a reader of the newspapers, capable of pity and laughter, informed in economics, appreciative of women, involved in personal relationships, actively involved in politics, susceptible to physical impressions."
He was anti-theory and anti-dogma and I suppose that makes him difficult to conscript to whatever ideology you subscribe to. As the biography makes plain his relationship with Ireland was too complex for him to be conscripted into the gallery of “Irish poets” but too affable, too social, too frankly sensual, so very “unEnglish” that he seems to drift out of what he once described in a debate with Higgins as the England vs Ireland game he didn’t want to play.
The enjoyment of reading this biography comes from Stallworthy's prose, which is gently elegant, often faintly comic, without being obtrusive:
"Her nephew now needed a nanny, but before she could be appointed, the Scottish nurse had to be disappointed."
His treatment of his subject is even handed: he’s aware of what might be MacNeice’s faults and he doesn’t try to hide them. His willingness to let the subject speak in letters and poems is admirable. I'm not sure "cradle song" will ever be the same after reading MacNeice's letters to Eleanor Clark, but that's biography for you.
MacNeice emerges as a far more likeable character than many of the more dogmatic "Greater Poets" of that "low dishonest decade". Which probably goes some way to explain why he gets overlooked. His description of the ideal poet is a self portrait:
"I would have the poet able bodied, fond of talking, a reader of the newspapers, capable of pity and laughter, informed in economics, appreciative of women, involved in personal relationships, actively involved in politics, susceptible to physical impressions."
He was anti-theory and anti-dogma and I suppose that makes him difficult to conscript to whatever ideology you subscribe to. As the biography makes plain his relationship with Ireland was too complex for him to be conscripted into the gallery of “Irish poets” but too affable, too social, too frankly sensual, so very “unEnglish” that he seems to drift out of what he once described in a debate with Higgins as the England vs Ireland game he didn’t want to play.
The enjoyment of reading this biography comes from Stallworthy's prose, which is gently elegant, often faintly comic, without being obtrusive:
"Her nephew now needed a nanny, but before she could be appointed, the Scottish nurse had to be disappointed."
His treatment of his subject is even handed: he’s aware of what might be MacNeice’s faults and he doesn’t try to hide them. His willingness to let the subject speak in letters and poems is admirable. I'm not sure "cradle song" will ever be the same after reading MacNeice's letters to Eleanor Clark, but that's biography for you.
January 4, 2019
Well researched and written bio of a great 20th century poet.
September 13, 2012
This was an excellent biography of a poet's poet by very able biographer, I have had the opportunity of hearing Dr. Stallworthy lecture a few times at Oxford as well as read his brilliant biography of another poet Wilfred Owen. His research deepens the understanding of another writer's life and his observations add a picture of a very interesting artist which Macneice was.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews