SOURCE: Coulthard, A. R. “The Flawed Craft of A. E. Housman.” Victorian Newsletter, no. 84 (fall 1993): 29-31.

In the following essay, Coulthard asserts that while many critics have assessed Housman a superb craftsman, his poetry often demonstrates flawed craftsmanship. According to Coulthard, Housman's poetry is rife with awkward diction, odd syntax, lapses in taste, and clichés.

Most textbooks acknowledge the limited tonal and thematic range of Housman's verse, a deficiency Housman defended in the prefatory piece to More Poems, published the year before his death:

They say my verse is sad: no wonder;           Its narrow measure spans Tears of eternity, and sorrow,           Not mine, but man's. 

(The Collected Poems 155)

But once this narrowness is conceded, the typical anthologist then proceeds to praise Housman as a supreme craftsman. John Bowyer and John Brooks, for instance, call Housman's verse “perfect in form and feeling” (883). E. K. Brown and J. O...