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Modern Poetry: A Personal Essay 1969
Mr. MacNeice has set himself to discuss contemporary poetry in the light of his own experience as student and poet. The first half of the book is devoted to his "case-book" his formal introduction to poetry in preparatory school, the development of his taste in public school and Oxford ... The rest of the book treats technical problems matters as fundamental as metric and rythme, imagery, diction, the quality of obscurity. He concludes with a brief statement of his faith as an artist. THIS TITLE IS CITED AND RECOMMENDED Books for College Libraries.
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About the author
Louis MacNeice
126 books57 followersBorn 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.
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.
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October 31, 2014
The key term is "A personal essay".
Fascinating as a historical document: the thirties poets are weighed by a thirties poet and even if Auden and Dylan Thomas were friends, MacNeice is nothing less than judicious in his handling of them. It's interesting to see how Eliot, Yeats and Pound were regarded by a representative of "the next generation' without the benefit of hindsight. MacNeice discusses what was then "the new poetry", the 'poetry of pylons", in terms of its rhythms and diction and imagery and is far less doctrinaire than many who followed. His preference is for the poet who is living outside the library:
'I would have a poet able-bodied, fond of talking, a reader of the newspaper, capable of pity and laughter, informed in economics, appreciative of women, involved in personal relationships, actively interested in politics, susceptible to physical impressions'. (198)
The idea that a sense of humour or reading the news paper were revolutionary qualifications for a poet says something about the world he was living in. It seems ironic that if you degendered poet, the statement would still seem revolutionary.
The essay is also an insight into MacNeice as poet, as three of the eleven chapters are his "case book", a survey of the development of his own poetics in which he critically reviews his younger self with its affectations and enthusiasms.
As criticism it offers a salutary reminder that "Modernism" was not the only game in town and it remains a testament to the idea that a poet doesn't have to look down his or her nose at everyone else:
Further I had to earn my own living, and that is antipathetic to a purely aesthetic view of life. And lastly, living in a large industrial city, Birmingham, I recognised the squalor of Eliot was a romanticised squalor because treated on the whole as decor. The 'short square fingers stuffing pipes' were not brute romantic objects abstracted into a picture by Picasso, but were living fingers attached to concrete people-were even, in a sense, my fingers.
Fascinating as a historical document: the thirties poets are weighed by a thirties poet and even if Auden and Dylan Thomas were friends, MacNeice is nothing less than judicious in his handling of them. It's interesting to see how Eliot, Yeats and Pound were regarded by a representative of "the next generation' without the benefit of hindsight. MacNeice discusses what was then "the new poetry", the 'poetry of pylons", in terms of its rhythms and diction and imagery and is far less doctrinaire than many who followed. His preference is for the poet who is living outside the library:
'I would have a poet able-bodied, fond of talking, a reader of the newspaper, capable of pity and laughter, informed in economics, appreciative of women, involved in personal relationships, actively interested in politics, susceptible to physical impressions'. (198)
The idea that a sense of humour or reading the news paper were revolutionary qualifications for a poet says something about the world he was living in. It seems ironic that if you degendered poet, the statement would still seem revolutionary.
The essay is also an insight into MacNeice as poet, as three of the eleven chapters are his "case book", a survey of the development of his own poetics in which he critically reviews his younger self with its affectations and enthusiasms.
As criticism it offers a salutary reminder that "Modernism" was not the only game in town and it remains a testament to the idea that a poet doesn't have to look down his or her nose at everyone else:
Further I had to earn my own living, and that is antipathetic to a purely aesthetic view of life. And lastly, living in a large industrial city, Birmingham, I recognised the squalor of Eliot was a romanticised squalor because treated on the whole as decor. The 'short square fingers stuffing pipes' were not brute romantic objects abstracted into a picture by Picasso, but were living fingers attached to concrete people-were even, in a sense, my fingers.
Displaying 1 of 1 review