Collected Poems | Louis MacNeice

It is no longer necessaryand not before timeto make a case for MacNeice as a poet. He had a couple of decades of fame, and more of comparative neglect, but his contemporaries read him poorly on the whole, even when they were most appreciative: as a 30s poet or journalist, as the author of a few near-perfect lyrics, and even as a professional lachrymose Irishman. Fortunately, errors of this order no longer need detailed correction. More to the point, it is the generations of poets, in Ireland as well as Britain, who have learned so much from MacNeiceformally, as well as in other wayswho provide the most potent argument for his poetrys continuing life. Two Irish poets in particularDerek Mahon and Paul Muldoonwould be unrecognisable without MacNeices example and influence; and others, from later Irish generations still, are continuing to discover and make creative use of resources in the poems of this writer who died before they were born.