Interesting to see Crichton-Smith, Muir and Morgan come up on ILB. I read most of C-S and Muir's stuff many years ago, also some but less Morgan who seemed too wilfully cerebral for my tastes - admittedly an opinion based on a fairly superficial acquaintance. Strawberries is an obvious and very beautiful exception, although I know it from having heard it read more recently on tv or radio I think - I don't remember seeing it in print before I spotted this thread. In the end I thought CS a fairly modest talent tbh, and even Muir, though definitely more interesting, is a bit bloodless, going from dream-and-myth abstractions to moral abstractions without taking in much of the stink of life. His Autobiography is exceptional, more interesting than his poetry IMO, and he seems to have been an incredibly nice man.
― frankiemachine, Wednesday, 17 June 2009 21:55 (fourteen years ago) link