Volume 8, Number 9 · May 18, 1967
Good Manners
By Marius Bewley
The Collected Poems of Louis MacNeice
edited by E.R. Dodds
Oxford, 575 pp., $9.75
High and Low
by John Betjeman
Houghton Mifflin, 81 pp., $3.95
Collected Poems 1930-1965
by A.D. Hope
Viking, 214 pp., $5.75
Probably most readers, like the present writer, have always felt vaguely amiable toward Louis MacNeice's poems. They have been well-mannered and have exhibited commendable sentiments. They have shown obvious critical intelligence about the contemporary cultural and social scene without pedantry, and have not been afraid of a nostalgic wistfulness (duly disciplined) for a more attractive past while sensibly accepting the present. MacNeice could write lines with rhythms so insistent that they tyrannized the inner ear. I fully expect to go out at last with the verse
Review, 2956 words
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