C. Day Lewis

Se llam Thirties (as como Auden Group y War Generation...) a un conjunto de poetas ingleses de la d cada del 30 (W. H. Auden, Louis MacNeice, Cecil Day-Lewis, Stephen Spender, entre otros), que asumi un rol activo frente a la contingencia de una sociedad en crisis, con variables colectivas dram ticas y urgentes. Este grupo era, por un lado, ep gono de la Primera Guerra Mundial, con su r mora de cerca de diez millones de muertos; por el otro, antesala de la Segunda, con sus siguientes millones de vidas por cobrar."Los Thirties" autores que hicieron propaganda de una poes a al servicio del socialismo La burgues a tiene que esperar un poco de dolor, una penitencia ].A. T. Tolley, en The poetry of the Thirties, sencillamente dec a hacia 1975: "Un cambio que est asociado en los nuevos poetas de los a os treinta: la aparici n de una preocupaci n por temas pol ticos".Para una mayor indagaci n cr tica, se recomienda tanto el libro de Tolley (London: Gollancz, 1975), as como el estudio de Desmond Ernest Stewart: Poets of the thirties, London, Routledge & K. Paul, 19692.Hoy en d a, sin embargo, estas conexiones pueden despreciarse. En un homenaje a Louis MacNeice, Auden escribi "Desde un punto de vista literario, el v nculo period stico contempor neo de los nombres de Auden, Day-Lewis, MacNeice, Spender, es y siempre fue absurdo". Y Day-Lewis, en su autobiograf a (The buried day), fue a n m s enf tico: "Aunque Auden, Spender, MacNeice y yo nos conocemos personalmente desde mediados de los a os treinta, ninguno de nosotros ni siquiera hab a conocido a los otros tres hasta despu s de la publicaci n de New Signatures (...). No sab amos que ramos un movimiento hasta que los cr ticos nos dijeron que lo ramos".Sin embargo, no s lo una poca los se ala. Adem s de pasar por la Universidad de Oxford, estos poetas sintieron la obligaci n social de preocuparse por los asuntos p blicos, adoptando de esta forma una dicci n m s cercana para todos, adecuada a la experiencia y representaciones que el mundo le proporcionaba a sus s bditos.Adem s, tanto Day-Lewis (que le dedica a Auden su libro The Magnetic Mountain, as como el poema "Epilogue: For W. H. Auden") como MacNeice (en "Postcript to Iceland: for W. H. Auden") as como Spender (en "One More New Bocthed Beginning", donde recuerda a MacNeice) comparten algo m s que una etiqueta de la cr tica, que se hace notoriamente visible en sus trabajos po ticos: la autorreferencialidad de un espec fico proyecto.Dicho de otro modo, estos poetas (pese a sus individualidades) estaban inmersos dentro de una interacci n mucho m s amplia, como bien anota Desmond Ernest Stewart en materia de industria cultural: "Faber & Faber lideraron el campo en la publicaci n de muchos de los principales poetas, dramaturgos, arquitectos y cineastas de los a os treinta, hasta tal punto que Faber & Faber mismo podr a ser considerado como parte del fen meno de los a os 30. En cierto modo, esto fue un desarrollo sorprendente, ya que las opiniones pol ticas de los escritores en muchos casos deben haber ido directamente en contra de las creencias pol ticas de T. S. Eliot, la influencia literaria dominante en Faber & Faber durante este per odo, y de Geoffrey Faber, el fundador de la firma".Si bien la lista podr a haber sido m s inclusiva, por ejemplo Tolley recuerda a otros poetas de Oxford, como Rex Warner, Norman Cameron o John Betjeman, "the big four", forjan una metaliteratura, capaz de ser le da o analizada en conjunto.

A reissue of a much-loved adventure which has stood the test of time and is as exciting today as when it was first published nearly 70 years ago. It all begins when Nick breaks the classroom window with his football, and the Headmaster says Nick has to pay for the damage. Nick has no more hope of raising the money than of going to the Moon, so that's when rivalling Ted's and Toppy's gangs decide to sign a truce and plan Operation Glazier to get the money for Nick. The plan goes smoothly and soon the money has been collected, but when it goes missing the boys turn detective to try and find the culprit.

In this work, C. Day Lewis, former Professor of Poetry at Oxford, chooses a form that enables his various gifts to be displayed to advantage and to sustain rapt interest in a poem longer than convention now favours. It is a poem in seven parts: 'Dialogue at the Airport'; 'Flight to Italy'; 'A Letter from Rome'; 'Bus to Florence'; 'Florence: Works of Art'; 'Elegy Before Death: at Settignano'; 'The Homeward Prospect'. The whole resembles a suite in music; various metres are used, and each part is self-contained, though all are on the same subject - a journey to and in Italy. The poet has used his first impressions of the country to illustrate certain deeper themes indicated by the epigraph: '...an Italian visit is a voyage of discovery, not only of scenes and cities, but also of the latent faculties of the traveller's heart and mind.' If anybody has had the slightest doubt about Mr. Day Lewis's ability to practice what he professes so eloquently and vigorously in his lectures, An Italian Visit should be convincing proof that its author is a poet in the full and splendid exercise of his powers.' Eric Gillett in the National Review.

A collection of poetry from Cecil Day Lewis, Poet Laureate from 1968 until his death in 1972. Originally published in 1957, this collection shows how much his style had changed after having distanced himself from Auden. In 1951, he became only the second living writer (after TS Eliot) to be featured in the popular series of 'Penguin Poets' paperbacks. In his introduction, he wrote: 'Looking back over my verse of the last 20 years, I was struck by its lack of development - in the sense of one poetic phase emerging recognizably from the previous one and leading inevitably to the next: it would all be much tidier and more in accordance with critical specifications, were this not so. But my verse seems to me a series of fresh beginnings rather than a continuous line.'

In this welcome centenary edition of C. Day Lewis' poems, Jill Balcon has substantially extended her husband's own Penguin selections of 1951 and 1969, including not only his last collection "The Whispering Roots" (1970), but also vers d'occasion written when he was Poet Laureate and a number of the Posthumous Poems. This broad retrospective allows the reader a proper view of the technical variety and range of Day Lewis' work, from the pastoral lyrics of his youth, inspired by Hardy and Yeats, through the political verse of the 1930s, to the reflective and more personal poems of his later years. Day Lewis was fond of quoting Robert Frost's dictum that 'a poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom'. This could equally well describe his own development as a writer: idealistic, sincere and psychologically acute, he bears witness in his poetry to a lifelong commitment to serving literature and its makers.

C. Day Lewis (1904-1972) was one of the leading young poets of the 1930's who - along with W. H. Auden, Louis MacNeice, and Stephen Spender - broke away from the staid poetic establishment to dominate British poetry in the middle third of the century. Here, for the first time, are all the poems Day Lewis wrote, including occasional verse which has never appeared in book form and a number of poems previously published only in limited editions. The Complete Poems has been edited, with an introduction and textual notes, by Jill Balcon, the poet's widow.

The range and variety of the poetry of a 40-year period which took on a new coloring with the advent of the first World War.