Reviews for Poetry since 1939

The average rating for Poetry since 1939 based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-12-03 00:00:00 Jason Goodman A pretty good look at the British poetry scene in the 1940's by a poet of some stature himself, Stephen Spender. It's a nice little book, with lots of excerpts and also photos of the main poets. That said, most of the names will be lost on the present day reader, except for Eliot, Graves, Dylan Thomas, Auden, and Cecil Day Lewis.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-01-23 00:00:00 Kevin Tansey If nothing else, read it for the old-school literary takedowns: "But so inferior a mind and spirit as [Robert] Browning's could not provide the impulse to bring back into poetry the adult intelligence" (p. 20). "[Thomas] Hardy is a naive poet of simple attitudes and outlook" (p. 57). Published in 1934, Leavis sets out to determine what is "modern" poetry. After clearing away the mediocre Victorian and Georgian poets in style, Leavis sets his sights on T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Gerard Manley Hopkins, finding in them the only possible seeds of change to move English poetry forward.