THE WHISPERING ROOTS AND OTHER POEMS

by C. Day-Lewis ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 4, 1970

Here are fifty-eight new poems by England's poet laureate--according to the Oxford Companion to English Literature, the first truly distinguished laureate since Matthew Arnold. The only obvious reflection of that office is his eulogy for Winston Churchill; however, there are many poems that commemorate private history and ancestral locales with a mild but equally serious sense of occasion. For this Anglo-Irish poet, the past of Ireland's independence proves more accessible than his own origins, and meditation on lost detail is a dominant theme, from ""The House Where I Was Born"" (""No one is left alive to tell me/ In which of those rooms I was born. . . "") to ""Sunday Afternoon"" (""Gauge from a few chance-found and cherished fragments/ The genius of the lost original""). But the meditations extend to carefully observed courses of feeling and to happily unproblematical views of nature and art--sometimes in wry, near-doggerel quatrains, but more often with a meticulous laconic clarity that reflects unrushable ""discipline of living/ Under the law of death."" A translation of Baudelaire's ""The Voyage"" turns it into a robustly English poem, and ""Elegy for a Woman Unknown"" and ""The Widow Interviewed"" are particularly rich sustained lyrics. ""Tenure"" attracts notice for its revelation of the laureate as maverick: ""Tenure is not for me./ I want to be able to drop out of my head. . . "" or in, as he does most often and agreeably here.

Pub Date: Nov. 4, 1970

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Harper & Row

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1970

Categories: NONFICTION