Those not repelled by the pomposity of the back-cover copy ("there
is no place here for the poet as entertainer," etc.) might actually
find themselves, well, entertained by this assemblage of
20th-century works by poets from the British Isles, with the
occasional American or New Zealander thrown in for good measure.
Longley stresses in her brisk preface the dominance of the lyric
mode, in which "the common factor is concentration," and she argues
that the differences between "urban" and "rural" poetries are not
as glaring as one might at first assume. Crucial to the poems of
the century were the effects of industrialization, especially as
manifested in urbanization and, to an even greater degree, war.
Thomas Hardy dryly observes that "After two thousand years of mass
/ We've got as far as poison-gas." The number of pages allotted to
each of the 59 contributors peaks at 13 (for Auden), and brief
critical/biographical notes preface all the entries, which are
organized chronologically. We are reminded, for instance, that
Stevie Smith was so nicknamed "because her fringe resembled that of
the jockey Steve Donaghue." T.S. Eliot, Philip Larkin, Sylvia
Plath, Dylan Thomas, and W.B. Yeats are all here, and their
positions are secure; of course, it is more difficult to predict
the staying power of poets still writing today, although Seamus
Heaney and Thom Gunn are likely candidates. Whether anthologists of
21st-century verse will include Medbh McGuckian or Tom Leonard (the
latter, employing Glaswegian dialect, morphs W.C. Williams's "This
Is Just to Say" into "Jist ti Let Yi No") is anyone's guess.
Enlightening and entertaining, though not essential. (Kirkus
Reviews)
This epoch-marking anthology presents a map of poetry from Britain
and Ireland which readers can follow. You will not get lost here as
in other anthologies - with their vast lists of poets summoned up
to serve a critic's argument or to illustrate a journalistic
overview. Instead, Edna Longley shows you the key poets of the
century, and through interlinking commentary points up the
connections between them as well as their relationship with the
continuing poetic traditions of these islands. Edna Longley draws
the poetic line of the century not through culture-defining groups
but through the work of the most significant poets of our time.
Because her guiding principle is aesthetic precision, the poems
themselves answer to their circumstances. Readers will find this
book exciting and risk-taking not because her selections are
surprising but because of the intensity and critical rigour of her
focus, and because the poems themselves are so good. This is a
vital anthology because the selection is so pared down. Edna
Longley has omitted showy, noisy, ephemeral writers who drown out
their contemporaries but leave later or wiser readers unimpressed.
Similarly there is no place here for the poet as entertainer,
cultural spokesman, feminist mythmaker or political commentator.
While anthologies survive, the idea of poetic tradition survives.
An anthology as rich as Edna Longley's houses intricate
conversations between poets and between poems, between the living
and the dead, between the present and the future. It is a book
which will enrich the reader's experience and understanding of
modern poetry. The anthology covers the work of 70 poets: Thomas
Hardy, W.B. Yeats, Edward Thomas, D.H. Lawrence, Siegfried Sassoon,
Edwin Muir, T.S. Eliot, Ivor Gurney, Isaac Rosenberg, Hugh
MacDiarmid, Wilfred Owen, Charles Hamilton Sorley, Robert Graves,
Austin Clarke, Basil Bunting, Stevie Smith, Patrick Kavanagh,
Norman Cameron, William Empson, W.H. Auden, Louis MacNeice, John
Hewitt, Robert Garioch, Norman MacCaig, R.S. Thomas, Henry Reed,
Dylan Thomas, Alun Lewis, W.S. Graham, Keith Douglas, Edwin Morgan,
Philip Larkin, Ian Hamilton Finlay, John Montague, Thom Gunn, Ted
Hughes, Geoffrey Hill, Sylvia Plath, Fleur Adcock, Tony Harrison,
Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley, Derek Mahon, Douglas Dunn, Eilean
Ni Chuilleanain, Paul Durcan, Tom Leonard, Carol Rumens, Selima
Hill, Ciaran Carson, James Fenton, Medbh McGuckian, Paul Muldoon,
Jo Shapcott, Ian Duhig, Carol Ann Duffy, Kathleen Jamie, Simon
Armitage and Don Paterson.
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