Edwin Muir Selected Poems

by Edwin Muir

Born on the Orkney island of Wyre in 1887, Edwin Muir settled in various parts of Europe during the first half of the twentieth century - from Glasgow, to Austria and Czechoslovakia throughout to 1920s, 1930s and again after the war. Muir's poetry bears oblique witness to the most traumatic years and events of this century, and is haunted by the symbolic 'fable' which he longed to find beneath the surface 'story' of mere events, as he came to terms with his own nature amidst the terror and confusion of the European maelstrom. As Seamus Heaney has 'Muir's poetic strength revealed itself in being able to co-ordinate the nightmare of history with that place in himself where he had trembled with anticipation...His simultaneous at-homeness and abroadness is exemplary.'

Genres: Poetry, Scotland

108 pages, Paperback

First published December 12, 1965

About the author

Edwin Muir, Orcadian poet, novelist and translator noted, together with his wife Willa Anderson, for making Franz Kafka available in English.

Between 1921 and 1923, Muir lived in Prague, Dresden, Italy, Salzburg and Vienna; he returned to the UK in 1924. Between 1925 and 1956, Muir published seven volumes of poetry which were collected after his death and published in 1991 as The Complete Poems of Edwin Muir. From 1927 to 1932 he published three novels, and in 1935 he came to St Andrews, where he produced his controversial Scott and Scotland (1936).

Reviews

[Joel Zartman · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is always with Muir, however long you spend puzzling out and making sense of the poem, always a feeling there is more that you didn't understand than that you did. He is one to keep returning to and to study.

[bowiesbooks · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a completely stunning collection of poetry about religion, Scotland, homeland and loved ones. Fantastic.

[David Allison · Rating 4 out of 5]

The edition I read has an excellent introduction by Mick Imlah that makes a hard but fair assessment of Muir'a late development, his seeming disinterest in words for the own sake, and his efforts to find a pattern of human life in the mess individual lives around him.

With the weaknesses of Muir's approach having been flagged in advance, the reader is then free to discover its considerable strengths for themselves - a long walk up a sometimes unspectacular hillside, but man, what a view at the top!

[Nick Meyer · Rating 3 out of 5]

‘The Horses’ is justly famous and ‘Child Dying’ is beautifully and movingly done -
Unfriendly friendly universe, I pack your stars into my purse-
To my mind these lines show both the strengths and weaknesses of his poetry.
The first line with its oxymoron is superb and the idea of the stars, the whole universe diminishing as the child dies is very moving and convincing, but the rhyme of universe and purse seems clunky. His later poetry is the most successful, but so often his insistent rhyming draws attention to itself rather than the sense of the poem.

[Katinka · Rating 5 out of 5]

And then, that evening
Late in the summer the strange horses came.
We heard a distant tapping on the road,
A deepening drumming; it stopped, went on again
And at the corner changed to hollow thunder.
We saw the heads
Like a wild wave charging and were afraid.
We had sold our horses in our fathers’ time
To buy new tractors. Now they were strange to us . . .
From "The Horses", by Edwin Muir

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mick Imlah's introduction to this collection is an excellent primer on Orkney born poet Edwin Muir. Presented chronologically you can watch his progression as a poet over time. Leaving Orkney as a youth, Glasgow then Europe before settling in Cambridge, knowing the context for the poems helps but I didn't warm to his writing. Maybe I am just prejudiced as he cast Glasgow as Hell.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Powerful and moving, intimate and vast.

[Sushil Kumar]

Aaaa

[Cooper Renner · Rating 4 out of 5]

If he’d written only The Labyrinth his place would still be secure, even if The Horses is the more famous poem.

[Kevin Albrecht]

(Orcadian poet. Read some collection by him.)

[Moira McPartlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful sweeping poems with satisfying rhymes and images. I loved them all from the grand apocalyptic to the intimate.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

I grew into these . There are some real high points.

[✎ madalaine · Rating 4 out of 5]

edwin ur so sexy

[Michael P. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Muir's talent is obvious, maybe even prodigious, but his work is not to my taste.