Children as poets Book

Beginning with Edwin Muir and ending with Barry MacSweeney, a rangey and diverse slate of mid-20c British poets. I'm fond of reading anthology editions generations removed from their current issue (this collection was reissued in 1985 and 1991), to get a sense of the literature's moment and affect when it was contemporary and "young". Lucie-Smith's concise and useful introductions to each poet suggest a good deal of Movement-fatigue in the early-70s, and some skepticism of the lasting effects of loose agglomerations like the New Apocalyptics and the Group. I had overlooked the British scene from the 40s to the late 60s in my own education, stopping somewhere around Auden, Bunting, Empson, Gascoyne, and Dylan Thomas, and picking up again with Prynne and Raworth and the more experimental scenes covered in Caddell and Quartermaim's Other anthology and Iain Sinclair's Conductors of Chaos. No Prynne or Empson here, but the latter's influence is clearly felt in places.

Complete surprises: Roy Fisher. Terrific! The early, philosophical poems of Alan Brownjohn. The gnomic miniatures of Spike Hawkins and Ian Hamilton Finlay. The fact that I'm actually pleasurably taken in by the careful craft of poets like Durrell, Larkin, Martin Bell and Peter Redgrove...despite the occasional bad politics or limited subject matter. That DJ Enright may be my favorite of the "Movement" poets. Reinforcements: yes, as before, I do like the poetry of W.S. Graham and Christopher Middleton. And others: Stevie Smith, Roy Fuller, George Mackay Brown.

No doubt there was some bad, drab and grey verse here, but this pocket collection was mostly a good education, and time well spent.