Housman's poems /

These 12 chapters on Housman's characteristic themes, tones, and attitudes include such subjects as "Deaths and Endings," "Personae," and "Strong Feelings." Bayley makes many effective summary statements about the poet's work, noting and showing (for example) "non-survival as a positive creed, and a consolation," and stating that "his poems have an instinct both for revelation and for concealment." Major emphases throughout are on Housman's "emotional iconography," and on the "gap between impact and feeling, and implication, being prolonged almost indefinitely." A nearly disproportionate degree of likeness of "a poetry of opposites, and reversals" is demonstrated with the writing of Paul Celan and Philip Larkin. Several chapters seem hurried to unearned finales; some topics do not appear to have a consistent thematic purposiveness; "Jokes" overlooks wit and wordplay. The intriguing subject of a romanticism that is "a classic acceptance of things," a mainstay of the argument, is somewhat muddy. The sources of many citations are not given. Yet this book is written with assurance, with many telling phrases and pointed observations, however much its principal notions seem to merge; a high and respectful intelligence is at work here. Recommended: advanced undergraduate; graduate. L. K. MacKendrick; University of Windsor