The New Criterion
Quite simply, the best cultural review in the world
- John O’Sullivan
FeaturesWalter de la Mare (1873–1956) was never a Poet of Importance. He made no prophecies, issued no manifestos. To the burning questions of the age he responded, if at all, only with dreamy silence. He was doggedly vague. If he ever contemplated the Zeitgeist, he would probably have personified it as “Herr Professor Zeitgeist” and included him, like “John Mouldy,” in one of his riddling children’s poems: I spied John Mouldy in his cellar,De la Mare was, in his vexing way, deeply frivolous. He preferred the misty, the ill-defined, the indeterminate, to the hard-edged fact. In a 1909 review for the Times Literary Supplement, he praised the Dorset-dialect poet William Barnes for possessing “the magnanimity of refusing ... This article is available to subscribers and for individual purchaseSubscribe to TNC (Print and Online editions) Subscribe to TNC (Online only) This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 26 April 2008, on page 4 Copyright © 2009 The New Criterion | www.newcriterion.com http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/the-kingdom-of-never-to-be-3803
rate this article for your user profile
E-mail to friend
|
by Eric Ormsby On the Collected Poems and The Unfinished Poems of C. P. Cavafy, newly translated by Daniel Mendelsohn. by Eric Ormsby A review of The Whole Difference: Selected Writings of Hugo von Hofmannsthal, edited by J. D. McClatchy.  The New Criterion is now optimized for Mobile Devices 
New from The New Criterion: "Free speech in
EventsJuly 16 2009 OPEN CHICAGO EVENT Webcasts
"Taking the Occasion," poems by Daniel Brown
Jay Nordlinger on the future of classical music, from an evening with the Friends of The New Criterion.
A profile of the abstract painter Thornton WIllis Weblog 
|
add a comment
you must have an account to post a comment. {SIGN IN} {register now}