Louis MacNeice
Louis MacNeice
Frederick Louis MacNeice was an Irish poet, playwright and producer for the BBC. Known for its exploration of introspection, empiricism, and belonging, his poetic work is now considered among the twentieth century's greatest. Despite being renowned as a member of the Auden Group, he was also an independently successful poet with an influential body of work, which is replete with themes ranging fro
"Where skill will no longer languish nor energy be trammelled To competition and graft, Exploited in subservience but not allegiance To an utterly lost and daft System that gives a few at fancy prices Their fancy lives, While ninety-nine in the hundred who never attend the banquet Must wash the grease of ages off the knives."
"It’s no go the Yogi-Man, it’s no go Blavatsky, All we want is a bank balance and a bit of skirt in a taxi."
"Some on commission, some for the love of learning, Some because they have nothing better to do Or because they hope these walls of books will deaden The drumming of the demon in their ears."
"I am not yet born; O hear me. Let not the bloodsucking bat or the rat or the stoat or the clubfooted ghoul come near me."
"Then twangling their bibles with wrath in their nostrils From Bonehill Fields came Bunyan and Blake: "Laredo the golden is fallen, is fallen; Your flame shall not quench nor your thirst shall not slake."
"The difference between loneliness and mere solitariness, after all, is that the lonely sensibility wants to be otherwise. There is a reaching out that never quite touches. In MacNeice’s best work, the ingeniousness and inevitable failure of that reaching indicates the depth of the longing. He is a superb love poet, for instance, yet his love poems often foreground their own ephemerality, like ice sculptures in the summertime."
"Politics: distrust all parties but consider capitalism must go."
"The elegance in MacNeices poetry is more one of sensuality now and less one of ingenuity, and the poems he is writing are the experiences of a lonely contemplative person, occupied with himself and with the world we share."
"If the term “poets poet” means a poet whose virtuosity can be fully appreciated only by other poets, it may be applied to MacNeice. But if it were taken to imply that his work cannot be enjoyed by the larger public of poetry readers, the term would be misleading. He had the Irishmans unfailing ear for the music of verse, and he never published a line that is not good reading. I am very proud of having published the first volume he had to offer after coming down from the university."
"In my own prejudice ... I would have of a poet ... whose worlds would not be too esoteric ... fond of talking ... capable of pity and laughter ... appreciative of women ... involved in personal relationships ... susceptible to physical impressions..."
"It’s no go my honey love, it’s no go my poppet; Work your hands from day to day, the winds will blow the profit. The glass is falling hour by hour, the glass will fall for ever, But if you break the bloody glass you won’t hold up the weather."
"O early one morning I walked out like Agag, Early one morning to walk through the fire Dodging the pythons that leaked on the pavements With tinkle of glasses and tangle of wire."
