Böcker av C. Day Lewis

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.

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 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 centenary edition of C Day Lewis' poems. It offers the reader a 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.