This month's New York Review has some very fine articles in it, including an excellent essay by Godine author Brad Leithauser on the British poet Louis MacNeice, entitled "The Shadow Man." Brad Leithauser is a poet, and is the author of two titles at Godine — Lettered Creatures and the forthcoming volume Toad to a Nightingale, both volumes of collected light verse, both of which are illustrated beautifully by his equally-talented brother Mark.
On MacNeice, Brad writes, "...what remains for me most memorable about MacNeice is his 'pure poetry'—his shorter lyrics. They make a peculiar group, both in their versification and in their surrealistic effects. It may be with them, in all their harsh and haunting loveliness, rather than with the more nakedly autobiographical longer poems, that MacNeice emerges most distinctly—and with them that MacNeice, burning his brightest, comes out from under Auden's shadow and anyone else's."
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