The Myriad-Minded Lyric

The lyric, a short poem expressing the mood of a single speaker, is our most essential and typical form of poetry. It is multi-faceted and distinguishable from narrative poems and encompasses the broadest range of European works. The Anglo-Welsh poet, Edward Thomas, argued that the lyric must ‘by music and suggestion . . . incalculably and at once, sow in us the seed of emotion’. Its objective is to ‘convert us by ecstasy’ (p. 17). He alludes to the mystical and magical elements of poetry, using the word ‘convert’ to compare it to a profound religious experience, reshaping the way we think, feel and conduct ourselves. Thomas thought about this a lot; he committed himself to the idea that words can change our lives.

Edward Thomas c. 1912 by E.O. Hoppe

Edna Longley’s latest monograph studies Thomas’ role in advancing the lyric as a form in early twentieth-century England. Longley is a well-known Yeats scholar and approaches Thomas with the same academic frame of mind. In this book, she is concerned with the wider implications of Thomas’ work on English poetry. She analyses Thomas’ work to springboard her discussions into much larger literary themes.

Thomas abandoned prose in favour of poetry: the most astonishing fact of his life as a writer. Prose possessed too many shortcomings. In his quest for fundamental truth, poetry held a power which prose could never achieve. He believed verse held its anchor in the essence of life – the roots of speech – and rejected the then-current Imagist aesthetic of his peers (i.e. Ezra Pound and his group of writers) in favour of long held traditions (p. 30). ‘Poetry tends to be lyrical when it is furthest from prose, and most inexplicable,’ he explained in 1909, comparing his verse to music. In the first few chapters, Longley focuses on Thomas' prose works, drawing out the images and verbatim clauses he embedded and rehashed into his most famous poems. Her analysis proves that, for Thomas, poetic theory and practice co-aligned: poetry acted as a way of synthesising fully formulated ideas into short, well-carved stanzas. His poetry required distillation – an idea he carried into his criticism, saying that D.H. Lawrence’s poems were the ‘quintessence’ of what his novels had been trying to say (p. 40). Thomas’ work displays how poetry recreates and reformulates existing things, being an independent interaction with language in and of itself.

In December 1914, Thomas had a revelatory experience: suddenly, he began to write poems, aged thirty-six. This moment of artistic epiphany coincided with a key life decision. Thomas enlisted to fight in France; a moment which led to his death in the Battle of Arras, 9 April 1917. During the war years, his poetry and worldview coalesced. Poetry turned into something as serious as life, becoming the ‘compact essential real truth’ for Thomas, dominating his vision of England as a place worth dying for. 

Longley focuses on Great War poetry and continues to search for the distinguishing marks between poetry and prose. The Great War and poetry worked hand-in-hand as Thomas and others constructed an image of England as a ‘cultural epithet’ – not so much a geographical entity as it was a folkloric dream; an ‘earthly habitat’ (p. 128). Longley asks, ‘[w]hat distinguishes poetic “truth” from other kinds? To put the question another way: What is a war poem?’ (p. 122). Thomas and his contemporaries seized the moment of political fluctuation and worked towards creating a vision of the war with words alone. Wilfred Owen asserted poetry’s ‘superiority to “other media forms”’ (p. 141). Thomas, in the same solemn tone, remixed existing forms in what Longley calls his ‘wartime aesthetic trajectory’ (p. 150). Longley argues unconvincingly that Robert Frost’s work should be included in the Great War canon, but her exploration of the mechanisms of a war poem helps to reveal an array of poetic truth claims, helping us understand why Great War poetry sits firmly within our national consciousness as a heightened mode of expression.

Longley finally moves onto how Thomas’ poetry acted as his own personal psychodrama – chiefly, a relief from his inner torments. Like the later poet, Philip Larkin, Thomas troubled over his dissatisfactions with life and viewed the ‘myriad-minded lyric’ as an outlet which appealed to ‘the central part of [his] nature’ (p. 229). Through a rigorous analysis of his letters and private correspondence, Longley shows how Thomas needed poetry to psychoanalyse himself. The result of his efforts amounts to an oeuvre which ‘faces into an “unknown” that spans metaphysics and history . . . [starting] with, and from, the self. [. . .] The lyric as psychotherapy compels and impels Edward Thomas’ poetic journey’ (p. 262). We should view his poems as a special contribution to modern poetry.

Source:

Under the Same Moon: Edward Thomas and the English Lyric. By Edna Longley. Pp 302. London: Enitharmon Press, 2017. 978-1-911253-14-3.