Twentieth-Century British and Irish Poetry

Twentieth-Century British and Irish Poetry ‘This authoritative yet accessible book carries the reader deep into the rewards of modern poetry. O’Neill and Callaghan combine their own subtly informed accounts of the work of leading poets with judiciously chosen extracts from classic critical studies. Broad in scope, deep in insight, clear in historical exposition and always attentive to the verbal make-up of particular poems and imaginative worlds, Twentieth-Century British Poetry: Hardy to Mahon is at once an introduction and a revisitable archive, full of sustaining guidance.’ John Kerrigan, University of Cambridge ‘Both formally attuned and contextually alert, the author-editors have here selected passages from the best recent critics and interwoven them with their own informed and illuminating commentary, revealing both the innovation of modern poetry and its implication within a diverse range of literary traditions. Altogether, the book provides an invaluable companion to one of the great ages of poetry in English.’ Seamus Perry, Balliol College, Oxford Twentieth-Century British and Irish Poetry: Hardy to Mahon offers an accessible and imaginative guide to the criticism of British and Irish poetry in the twentieth century. The editors also supply their own stimulating readings of the poetry. Through an insightful narrative – which points up the major features of the poets and the chosen excerpts – Michael O’Neill and Madeleine Callaghan knit together contributions by major critics, including essays by a number of distinguished poet-critics such as Geoffrey Hill, Andrew Motion and Tom Paulin. Featured poets include Hardy, Yeats, Eliot, Owen, Lawrence, Auden, Dylan Thomas, Larkin, MacDiarmid, Stevie Smith, Plath, Heaney, Mahon and many others.

Acknowledgements viii Introduction 1 1 Modern Poetry: Transition and Trauma 11 Thomas Hardy, Edward Thomas and Wilfred Owen Thomas Hardy 11 Extract from British Poetry in the Age of Modernism 17 Peter Howarth Edward Thomas 30 Extract from The Poetry of Edward Thomas 33 Andrew Motion Wilfred Owen 37 Extract from Poetry of Mourning 41 Jahan Ramazani 2 Forms of Modernism: Things Fall Apart 57 W. B. Yeats, T. S. Eliot and D. H. Lawrence W. B. Yeats 57 Extract from Our Secret Discipline 63 Helen Vendler T. S. Eliot 71 Extract from He Do the Police in Different Voices 77 Calvin Bedient D. H. Lawrence 83 Extract from ‘Hibiscus and Salvia Flowers’ 87 Tom Paulin 3 Poetry of the Thirties: Between Two Fires 94 W. H. Auden, Louis MacNeice and Stephen Spender W. H. Auden 94 Extract from ‘The 1930s Poetry of W. H. Auden’ 98 Michael O’Neill Louis MacNeice 108 Extract from Louis MacNeice 112 Peter McDonald Stephen Spender 120 Extracts from The Ironic Harvest 123 Geoffrey Thurley 4 Poetry of the Forties: Realism and Rhetoric 129 Keith Douglas and Dylan Thomas Keith Douglas 130 Extract from ‘I in Another Place’ 133 Geoffrey Hill Dylan Thomas 141 Extract from The Romantic Survival 144 John Bayley 5 Post-War Poetry: Featureless Morning, Featureless Night 149 Philip Larkin and the Movement Philip Larkin 149 Extract from Out of Reach 154 Andrew Swarbrick The Movement 162 Extract from The Movement 166 Blake Morrison 6 Beyond the Movement: No Bloodless Myth 178 Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath and Geoffrey Hill Ted Hughes 179 Extract from ‘Ted Hughes: The Double Voice’ 182 Margaret Dickie Sylvia Plath 187 Extract from Sylvia Plath and the Theatre of Mourning 191 Christina Britzolakis Geoffrey Hill 200 Extract from ‘History to the Defeated’ 203 Alan Robinson 7 Situated Sequences and Marginal Voices 214 Basil Bunting, Hugh MacDiarmid, Thomas Kinsella, Stevie Smith and Tony Harrison Hugh MacDiarmid, Thomas Kinsella, and Basil Bunting 214 Extracts from The Modern Poetic Sequence 218 M. L. Rosenthal and Sally M. Gall Stevie Smith 230 Extract from A History of Twentieth-Century British Women’s Poetry 232 Jane Dowson and Alice Entwistle Tony Harrison 234 Extract from The Poetry of Tony Harrison 237 Luke Spencer 8 Northern Irish Poetry: The Poles of Our Condition 245 Seamus Heaney and Derek Mahon Seamus Heaney 245 Extracts from The Poetry of Seamus Heaney 250 Neil Corcoran Derek Mahon 259 Extract from Poetry in the Wars 263 Edna Longley Afterword 267 Recommended Reading 272 Index 290