Table of Contents

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

About the Author

Michael O Neill is Professor of English and Directorof the Institute of Advanced Study at Durham University, UK. He haspublished numerous books, chapters, and articles on many aspects ofRomantic, Victorian, and contemporary poetry. He received theCholmondeley Award for Poets for his own poetry in 1990. Madeleine Callaghan received her PhD from the Universityof Durham, UK. Her research interests extend throughout theRomantic period s poetry and prose and twentieth-centuryand Victorian poetry. She is currently preparing her thesis forpublication and working on a new monograph on poetic influence inWordsworth, Byron and Yeats.

Reviews

The editors have admirably carried out their self-imposedtasks ... The somewhat complicated arrangement is amply justifiedif one considers the work as a classroom tool, aimed primarilyat giving a student audience food for thought, HelenGoethals. (Cercles, 2012)