Marsh, Edward - John Middleton Murry (essay date 1919)
John Middleton Murry (essay date 1919)
SOURCE: “English Poetry, 1919,” in Poets, Critics, Mystics: A Selection of Criticisms Written Between 1919 and 1955, edited by Richard Rees, Southern Illinois University Press, 1970, pp. 59-66.
[In the following essay, initially published in the Athenaeum on December 5, 1919, Murry contrasts Marsh's Georgian Poetry anthology with other collections of English poetry.]
Shall we, or shall we not, be serious? To be serious nowadays is to be ill-mannered, and what, murmurs the cynic, does it matter? We have our opinion; we know that there is a good deal of good poetry in the Georgian book, a little in Wheels. We know that there is much bad poetry in the Georgian book, and less in Wheels. We know that there is one poem in Wheels beside the intense and sombre imagination of which even the good poetry of the Georgian book pales for a moment. We think we know more than...
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