Day Lewis on Poetry
|C. DAY LEWIS’S talks on Modern Poetry (1YC) are, as one has come | expect from him, on a high level of seriousness and good sense. But they are also notable for their exceptional lucidity. Without undue concessions to "popularisation,’ Professor Day Lewis, who is by no means always lucid in print, has clearly expounded, with weilchosen examples, the characteristic qualites of recent verse, its themes, subjects and techniques. There is no Third Programme loftiness here. A welcome directness and freedom from jargon show consideration for a general, rather than a specialised, audience. Another noteworthy feature is the dispassionateness with which the speaker discusses the failures, as well as the successes, of the poetry of "the years of /’entre deux guerres," in which he played so prominent a part. His examples are not always obvious ones- Eliot, Yeats, Dylan Thomas, of course, but also Edward Thomas, Laurie Lee, Edwin Muir and Robert Frost. Such talks make me want to hear them more than once, and regret that the New Zealand Listener, unlike its English counterpart, does not have the space to reprint them.
J.C.
R.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19540212.2.24.2
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 760, 12 February 1954, Page 12
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188Day Lewis on Poetry New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 760, 12 February 1954, Page 12
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