Michael Roberts, Collected Poems

Michael Whitworth (University of Oxford)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.08: English Writing and Culture of the early Twentieth Century , 1900-1945.
Vol. editors: Chris Baldick (Goldsmiths College, University of London), Peter Childs (Birmingham Newman University), Louise McDonald (Birmingham Newman University), Andrew Radford (University of Glasgow)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1958

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Poem collection

Resources

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Michael Roberts's

Collected Poems

, edited by his widow Janet Adam Smith, contains nearly all of the poems he published from 1931 onwards, along with a selection from his first volume,

These Our Matins

(1930), and some late, previously unpublished poems.

The early poems are predominantly philosophical arguments cast in stanzas and regular metres. “Time and the Crystal Image” echoes T. S. Eliot's “Sweeney Among the Nightingales”, while “Perspective” draws upon Herbert Read's neo-metaphysical “Equation”. Even where Roberts writes in the first-person singular, he eschews affective discourse: the “I” of “Midnight” registers the stars through the window, but gives little indication of what he felt; the exception is the personal lyric, “Poem for Elsa”. Through images

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866 words

Citation: Whitworth, Michael. "Collected Poems". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 02 March 2005 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=5944, accessed 26 April 2024.]

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