Serious Poetry: Form and Authority from Yeats to Hill

by Peter McDonald

Do we want to read poetry, or just like having a few poets to talk about? The history of poetry in twentieth-century Britain and Ireland is one which ends with the assimilation of successful poets into a media culture; it is also, however, another history, one of form and authority, in which certain poets found modes and pitches of resistance to the seeming inevitabilities of their times. In this history, it is the authority of poetry (and not the media-processed poet) which is at stake in the integrity of poetic form.

Serious Form and Authority from Yeats to Hill offers a controversial reading of twentieth-century British and Irish poetry centred on six figures, all of whom are critics as well as W. B. Yeats, T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, Louis MacNeice, Seamus Heaney, and Geoffrey Hill. Yeats's centrality to twentieth-century poetry - and the problem many poets and critics had, or still have, with that centrality - is a major focus of the book. Serious Poetry argues that it is in the strengths, possibilities, perplexities, and certainties of the poetic form that poetry's authority in a distrustful cultural climate remains most seriously alive.

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

Reviews

[Christopher · Rating 2 out of 5]

Eight essays relating to the poets W. B. Yeats, T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, Louis MacNeice, Seamus Heaney, and Geoffrey Hill. The first paper, on how World War I shaped Yeats’ poetry even though he was loathe to comment directly on the war, is never very far from being interesting. But this and the remaining chapters are written in florid, obtuse prose that can never get to the point, and when insights do come they don’t repay the effort. Even if you are a fan of these poets, and one of those fans who likes to read academic criticism, this book is no fun at all.