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Incorrigibly Plural

Louis MacNeice and His Legacy

Edited by Fran Brearton and Edna Longley

Incorrigibly Plural: Louis MacNeice and His Legacy
10% off eBook (EPUB)
Categories: 20th Century, 21st Century, Irish, Memoirs, War writings
Imprint: Lives and Letters
Publisher: Carcanet Press
Available as:
eBook (EPUB) Needs ADE!
(Pub. Jun 2012)
9781847775948
£18.95 £17.05
Paperback (320 pages)
(Pub. Feb 2012)
9781847771131
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  • Description
  • Excerpt
  • Editors
  • Contents
  • World is crazier and more of it than we think,
    Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
    A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
    The drunkenness of things being various.
        from ‘Snow’, by Louis MacNeice
    Incorrigibly Plural celebrates the diversity and vitality of Louis MacNeice’s writing. Poets and critics illuminate the work of a writer whose achievement and influence is increasingly recognised as central to modern poetry in English. Contributions include responses to MacNeice by poets such as Paul Farley, Leontia Flynn, Nick Laird, Derek Mahon, Glyn Maxwell and Paul Muldoon; discussions by critics such as Neil Corcoran, Valentine Cunningham, Hugh Haughton, Peter McDonald and Clair Wills; and more biographical accounts, including a memoir by MacNeice’s son, the late Dan MacNeice.

    For each of them, MacNeice remains a continuing presence for his insight into the mechanisms of the modern world, his complex political awareness, his ability to bring the historical moment alive. Above all, what emerges is pleasure in MacNeice’s plurality of language and forms.

    More than a retrospective work of criticism, Incorrigibly Plural belongs to live debates about contemporary poetry.

    Acknowledgements
    List of Abbreviations
    Preface


    1    The Pity of It All
        PETER MCDONALD

    2    Memoirs
        DAN MACNEICE

    3    Pure Form, Impure Poetry, and Louis MacNeice’s Letters
        JONATHAN ALLISON

    4     ‘I will acquire an attitude not yours’: Was Frederick MacNeice a Home Ruler, and Why Does This Matter?
        DAVID FITZPATRICK

    5    On MacNeice on Trains
        LEONTIA FLYNN

    6    ‘What am I doing here?’ Travel and MacNeice
        TERENCE BROWN

    7    MacNeice and Thirties (Classical) Pastoralism
        VALENTINE CUNNINGHAM

    8    Eclogues Between the Truculent
        DEREK MAHON

    9    MacNeice’s Vehicles
        HUGH HAUGHTON

    10     ‘Who would be loved by a goddess?’ Graves, MacNeice, and the Lyric of Classical Myth
        EDNA LONGLEY

    11    The Perning Birch: Yeats, Frost, MacNeice
        PAUL MULDOON

    12     ‘The ladies would say that he looked like a poet’: Tom and the Selling of Louis
        ANNE MARGARET DANIEL

    13    The Lives We Live
        GERALD DAWE

    14    Turn and Turn Against: The Case of Autumn Journal
        GLYN MAXWELL

    15    ‘The Parrot’s lie’: Autumn Sequel and the BBC
        CLAIR WILLS

    16    ‘Bulbous Taliesin’: MacNeice and Dylan Thomas
        JOHN GOODBY

    17    When I Think of MacNeice
        THOMAS MCCARTHY

    18    ‘His Inturned Eyes’: MacNeice in the Woods
        PAUL FARLEY

    19     ‘Coming up England by a different line’: Louis MacNeice and Philip Larkin
        STEPHEN REGAN

    20    The Same Again? MacNeice’s Repetitions
        NEIL CORCORAN

    21    The Seal and the Cat
        NICK LAIRD

    Notes
    Guide to Further Reading
    Notes on Contributors
    Index



    Fran Brearton
    Fran Brearton is Reader in English at Queen’s University Belfast. She is the author of The Great War in Irish Poetry (Oxford University Press, 2000) and Reading Michael Longley (Bloodaxe, 2006). ... read more
    Edna Longley
    Edna Longley is Professor Emerita at Queen’s University Belfast. Her books include Poetry and Posterity (Bloodaxe, 2000) and, as editor, Edward Thomas: The Annotated Collected Poems (Bloodaxe, 2008). ... read more
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