Louis MacNeice Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Eamon Grennan

Critical Essay by Eamon Grennan

SOURCE: Grennan, Eamon. “In a Topographical Frame: Ireland in the Poetry of Louis MacNeice.” In Facing the Music: Irish Poetry in the Twentieth Century, pp. 192-207. Omaha: Creighton University Press, 1999.

In the following essay, which was originally written in 1981, Grennan analyzes the complex emotions in MacNeice's poetry about Ireland. Grennan notes that these poems contain a mixture of apprehension, love, nostalgia, distrust, and appreciation for Ireland's natural beauty.

                                                                                                              That we were born Here, not there, is a chance but a chance we took And would not have it otherwise.

I cannot deny my past to which my self is wed.

That Louis MacNeice is an Irish poet is a fact his critical commentators do not ignore. Mostly, however, reference to the fact is of an incidental kind and tells us little about the poetry itself or about the nature and importance of MacNeice's relationship with Ireland.¹...
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