The London Mercury, Vol. I, Nos. 1-6, November 1919 to April 1920Various
General
The London Mercury, Vol. I, Nos. 1-6, November 1919 to April 1920
Various
English literature -- Periodicals; London (England) -- Periodicals
This volume contains short essays on the poems of Julian Grenfell,
Rupert Brooke, Robert Nichols, Robert Graves, Siegfried Sassoon, R.
E. Vernède, Charles Sorley, Francis Ledwidge, Edward Thomas, F. W.
Harvey, Richard Aldington, and Alan Seeger: with a paper on "The Best
Poetry" at the end. A casual student of the list of contents might make
several hasty criticisms. He might suppose that he was going to find
here a series of short lives, manufactured because of an accidental
connection between them. He might be fortified in this suspicion by
the fact that one or two poets are in the list who have no claim to
rank with the others. But he need only begin to read the book to
remember that Mr. Sturge Moore is a poet, a sound critic, and a writer
incapable of hackwork. There is one obvious defect; he has omitted a
few poets (Edward Wyndham Tennant is an example) who had better claim
to admission than some in his list. But there is little else that can
be urged against him. Mr. Sturge Moore wastes no space over biography.
He takes, _seriatim_, the books of these young poets and confronts them
in a generous but not an undiscriminating mood, asking himself what is
their spirit, what their technical qualities and defects and which are
their best poems. These essays are not (even when their subjects are
unworthy of effort) facile journalism; they are considered criticism
written in the prose of a poet, prose rich with novel and beautiful
images and embodying the results of profound reflection upon life and
art.
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