The Burning Perch

by Louis MacNeice

Faber are pleased to announce the relaunch of the poetry list - starting in Spring 2001 and continuing, with publication dates each month, for the rest of the year. This will involve a new jacket design recalling the typographic virtues of the classic Faber poetry covers, connecting the backlist and the new titles within a single embracing cover solution. A major reissue program is scheduled, to include classic individual collections from each decade, some of which have long been Wallace Stevens's Harmonium and Ezra Pound's Personae from the 1920s; W.H. Auden's Poems (1930); Robert Lowell's Life Studies from the 1950s; John Berryman's 77 Dream Songs and Philip Larkin's The Whitsun Weddings from the 1960s; Ted Hughes's Gaudete and Seamus Heaney's Field Work from the 1970s; Michael Hofmann's Acrimony and Douglas Dunn's Elegies from the 1980s. Timed to celebrate publication of Seamus Heaney's new collection, Electric Light, the relaunch is intended to re-emphasize the predominance of Faber Poetry, and to celebrate a series which has played a shaping role in the history of modern poetry since its inception in the 1920s.

Genres: Poetry, British Literature

64 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1963

About the author

Born to Irish parents in Belfast, MacNeice was largely educated in English prep schools. He attended Oxford University, there befriending W.H. Auden.

He was part of the generation of "thirties poets" which included W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender and Cecil Day-Lewis; nicknamed "MacSpaunday" as a group — a name invented by Roy Campbell, in his Talking Bronco (1946). His body of work was widely appreciated by the public during his lifetime, due in part to his relaxed, but socially and emotionally aware style. Never as overtly (or simplistically) political as some of his contemporaries, his work shows a humane opposition to totalitarianism as well as an acute awareness of his Irish roots.

Reviews

[Goodreeds User · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some bangers in here for sure, but some twee, cryptic, or questionable content also...

[Robin Helweg-Larsen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Intense, but trivial.
Nihilist tone, morbid reviews of childhood and the past in general, endless premonitions of death (possibly by suicide) for both the individual and society at large. Witty without joy. Gloomy. No joy, no redemption, no glory. A product of the early 20th century and consciously stuck in that period – war, social dislocation, no sense of direction or purpose. As in the very last line, a tunnel that is without any sense of a possible light at the end (although his Dedication to Mary expresses the “improbable” hope of meeting in some heaven).
The title refers to The Budgie, who, in a universe of “galaxy on galaxy, star on star”, in a world in which humans are destroying themselves and the planet, stands on his perch and admires himself in his little mirror and thinks he is all that is important… even as his perch burns. A nice summation of how MacNeice viewed society in general.
Reminiscent of Eliot’s smaller poems in voice and richness, but nothing on the scale of Prufrock, let alone The Waste Land or Four Quartets.

[Frenchy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I came across MacNeice because this book is at the program of an ultra-competitive set of exams to become an ESL teacher in French high schools. And you wonder why, save for the fact that maybe they wanted someone to conveniently represent at once both Irish literature and poetry, and whose poems are not too long to analyze in an exam setting.

The overall feeling when reading The Burning Perch is of superficial brilliance and not much else. MacNeice is a deft hand with the technicalities of verse and a virtuoso when it comes to dazzling the reader with the breadth of his vocabulary and cultural references (the Bible! the Classics! all the trips one can take on the Grand Tour!), cleverly mixing them with the conveniences of modern life or with nursery rhymes. Beyond that, running themes are such lofty clichés as death, remembrance and childhood, and typical 20th century fears about technology.

Unfortunately, it often seems that his overuse of exotic names, cultural references and the likes serves to obscure the lack of depth in most of the poems. It's hard to find a memorable line and some poems look like fillers in an overall slim collection (Château Jackson, October In Bloomsbury, Flower Show).
The book was posthumously published in 1963. Thinking about poetry published that year (Adrienne Rich, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Allen Ginsberg) or even about William Carlos Williams who also died in 1963, MacNeice's poems appear hopelessly dated and irrelevant, mentions about computers and vacuum cleaners notwithstanding.

When reading about MacNeice's life, one gets the sense that he was chummy with much better poets than him (Auden, Eliot, Spenser) thanks to his typical upper crust education (public school, Oxford) and it's because of these connections he was propelled to the enviable status of (minor) published poet.
Apparently his masterpiece is Autumn Journal, so should you be inclined to reading his poetry anyway, maybe this is where you should start.

[Tony · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was Louis MacNeice's final poetry collection, published in 1963 shortly before his death. MacNeice himself said the poems were "ranging from bleak observations to thumbnail nightmares..." And there's some truth in that, although I think there's less bleakness than MacNeice thought.

Sometimes he's surprisingly playful - with 'Chateau Jackson' for example - with rhyme, even if not with content.

I like MacNeice's poetry. I find it hard, with poetry, to explain why I like something. I have said this many times before. I don't have the academic language to analyse poetry technically. I tend to react to it on a base level, as I do to art. The technique must be part of it, but it is the way the words work that affects me. It is the emotional impact that counts to me. Sometimes poets are clearly technically superb, but their work leaves me cold. It's like admiring a building because it is impressively put together without feeling anything when you are in it and around it.

MacNeice knows how to use the power of language to craft a response. It's not always easy or straightforward but it is worth the time it takes to break it down. These aren't opaque or difficult in the way that I found Pasternak (as an example) but they aren't easy either. That's not a bad thing. Sometimes we want to have to earn our joy.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

All right, this is dangerous, because I truly don't remember anything about this book of poems, but in Googling, I came across one by this author and liked it very much, so I'm crediting myself with that sentiment for this book. Here is the end of a poem about a man who visits a favorite childhood house where they often played croquet and who is washing his hands as memories overtake him:

And a grown-up voice cries Play! The mallet slowly swings,
Then crack, a great gong booms from the dog-dark hall and the ball
Skims forward through the hoop and then through the next and then

Through hoops where no hoops were and each dissolves in turn
And the grass has grown head-high and an angry voice cries Play!
But the ball is lost and the mallet slipped long since from the hands
Under the running tap that are not the hands of a child.

[Callum · Rating 3 out of 5]

An impressive number of truly great poems, here, but compromised as a collection by the first half's unevenness.

[M · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thumbnail nightmares are a delight and an inspiration. Distortions and spirals made my head spin. Don't let confusion and opacity keep you away from these poems.

[Vincent · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tra-la.