Georgian Poetry Selected And Introduced By James Reeves. Richard Aldington, a contemporary poet and critic of the Georgians, devastatingly described them as being after `a little trip for a little weekend to a little cottage where they wrote a little poem on a little theme.' The editor of this collection can hardly bring himself to refute this, defining the term `Georgian' as belonging to `a kind of poetry now irredeemably discredited'.
He does, however, ask us to remember that if only for a short time, between the publication of the first Georgian anthology in 1912 and the appearance of Eliot's The Waste Land in 1922, the Georgians were the modern movement in English poetry.
Tired of Victorian moralising they allowed every aspect of life as their subject, with nothing too meagre for art, and set about describing this in the language of daily use. Unfortunately, most had difficulty in seeing anything past warm, nostalgic pictures of rural comfort. Andrew Young's poems are representative of this tendency; his concern is of moles, cuckoos, swallows (small, pretty birds are a constant Georgian image), a beech tree, and two poems on melting snow.
The first half of this book is mostly such stuff, with the addition of Davies' dark undertone, and de la Mare's `haunted and magical area between sleep and waking'. It seems that the Georgians simply had little life as such to focus upon until the outbreak of World War I, whose poets, Graves, Sassoon and Owen, exemplify perhaps the highest achievement possible under the movement's objectives. They are well represented here, with Dulce et Decorum Est, They, and Graves' Outlaws shining incongruously out from the other `hangers-on, amateurs of truth and beauty, lovers of the English scene who could turn a jewel-like lyric with the best', as Reeves has it.
As a selection, the book works well. Those main characteristics; rural prettiness, delight in the minor, natural simplicity, and latterly, that confusion of patriotism and scepticism are all present. Reeves rounds off with a brief biographical note on each poet, accounts which reminded me of Stead's accusation that their work `is the product of sheltered lives, not the deliberate concealment of facts.' If you're a fan of T.S. Eliot or the Imagists, then read this book; to think they rose from such an unpromising period only adds to your respect for them. (NR KAT. 7)
