Reviews for The Columbiad

The average rating for The Columbiad based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-08-23 00:00:00 Sandra Hunt Dipped in and out of this book for many a month and came away very impressed with MacNeice as a poet -- it's a shame he seems to have been overshadowed by Auden (who I guess he resembles but has a less arch quality to him, in my opinion.) I also think he gets a bum rap for being remembered primarily for his poem "Bagpipe Music," which is a fine poem but certainly not his only fine poem or even his finest. He always exerts a steady control over the forms of his poems but doesn't distort his intelligence to fit into the forms -- see how deftly he ties together past, present, and future through repetition in this small poem, "Coda": Maybe we knew each other better When the night was young and unrepeated And the moon stood still over Jericho. So much for the past; in the present There are moments caught between heart‑beats When maybe we know each other better. But what is that clinking in the darkness? Maybe we shall know each other better When the tunnels meet beneath the mountain. That is very good. Seems the book might already be out-of-print in the U.S., which is a shame since I had to burrow it from the library; nevertheless, copied out a number of poems scattered across his writing life that I hope to return to in the future and ponder over some more.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-01-11 00:00:00 G S Gravlee I can't remember reading Louis MacNeice before diving into these Collected Poems. I was quickly in love with his poetry and never tired of reading him, though this is quite a large volume. MacNeice was a formal poet. He worked in formal structures and and meters and almost always with rhyme. Some poets find poetic formality restricting, find that it confines lyricism, but MacNeice soars. His poems ripple with energy and read so fluidly that, given the abundance of poetry he wrote, it makes me think it came naturally to him. He reminds me of Auden that way. Another reason for liking him is that his poems are verbally expansive and treat their subjects fully. There are few poems here I'd call short. My favorites are the poems of the 121-page "Autumn Sequel" containing 26 masterful cantos written in terza rima. I like Louis MacNeice, who left us, young, in 1963, as much as any new poet I've read recently.