In Michael Murphy's new annotated edition of Kenneth Allott's "Collected Poems" all Allott's previously published work is combined with eighteen new poems, some of which have only recently come to light. The whole collection is introduced and annotated by Murphy and now represents the most complete picture of Allott, a man widely regarded as one of most exciting poets of the late Thirties.
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His amphibious intelligence, moving between creativity and scholarship, [makes me] think of him as an example of a man who proved how illusory was Yeats' proffered choice between 'perfection of the life or of the work.' -- Seamus Heaney A powerful apocalyptic ... tone predominates, yet identifiable fragments of late-Thirties society can still be discerned, churning around in the echo-chamber of Allott's imagination ... at which moments the effect is something like MacNeice's bagpipe music rescored for cellos and muffled drums. -- Russell Davies New Statesman His poetry [is] original and personal in a way rare among young poets in any period but perhaps particularly in the 1930s. [F]ew poets in this century have written consistently with such wit and feeling, such natural elegance and style. -- Julian Symons Times Literary Supplement
About the Author
Kenneth Allott (1912-1973) was a leading poet of the Thirties generation, publishing two collections of poetry: Poems (1938) and The Ventriloquist's Doll (1943). He was also the editor of the highly influential Penguin Book of Contemporary Verse (1950, rev. 1962). His Collected Poems has been out of print for a number of years, and this updated and revised new edition includes a significant number of poems either previously unpublished or not reprinted. Michael Murphy is the author of three collections of poetry, most recently Allottments (2008), and his poems are included in The New Irish Poets. He is the author of a number of critical studies, including Writing Liverpool?:?Essays and Interviews (edited with Deryn Rees-Jones, 2007) and Proust and America (2007). He teaches at Nottingham Trent University and lives in Liverpool.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Allott, the neglected master.,
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This review is from: Collected Poems (Hardcover)
We all know about WH Auden and Louis MacNeice, and the 1930s Poets. But how many of us know Allott? Kenneth Allott, who died in 1973, was a master of the reverse bathos technique. He raised the most trivial things to the most monumental importance, yet his preoccupations with death and time and alienation were far from being depressing. He spoke with an unusual ambiguity that transcended who you were, and yet addressed you and everyone all at once. His small body of poems may be dandified and self-conscious, but it is also some of the most moving and deep writing ever to come out of the 1930s and 1940s.In my opinion Allott's greatest ever poem is "The Statue" - a romantic poem that could be addressed to anyone at any time, be they man, woman, beast, or child, gay or straight, black or white, able or disabled. It is asexual and ambiguous yet tender and loving. The best of Allott's other poems include: Morning And Evening, a powerful narrative poem which exemplifies his use of reverse bathos to perfection in building up a oppressive and scary portrait of life in wartime reduced to vignettes and vistas, still-lives and destruction. Aunt Sally Speaks: an aggressive and vicious rant, a demand for answers that will probably never be answered, a howl of defiance with a trembling undercurrent of terror. A savage yet beautiful poem which attacks the indifference of man, and his sophisticated vulnerability in an indifferent and cruel world. I also recommend The Children, Lament for a Cricket Eleven, Calenture, Exodus, Fete Champetre, Offering, and the poem that starts "Say goodnight and step over the mountain" Allott wrote scarcely a bad poem (although there are a few in this collection that are dubious) and even in his lesser works there are marvellous images and powerful insights. I leave you with the last verse of Ode in Wartime, which Roy Fuller draws our attention to in his foreword: Phosphor shall rise above a moon of sorrow, And we shall know such a day as never was, Tomorrow, or a day after tomorrow, Do what you will and when, love whom you please.
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