Housman and Poetry
A E Housman was superficially at least, an austere professional classical scholar producing definitive editions of Juvenal and Manilius. This unlikely figure was also a popular poet. He caused consternation amongst leading literary figures in the 1930s when his Name and Nature of Poetry was published. Housman believed that poetry should move you, it should have an almost physical effect. T.S.Eliot thought that 'it set back poetry by ten years'.
The contrast between Housman's The Shropshire Lad and Last Poems and T.S.Eliot's Wasteland could not be greater, although they are about love, loss and regret.
Getting the meaning of the Wasteland in one reading is difficult. Most people would not try. On the other hand, Housman's poems are easy to read - he wanted everyone to read them and to feel what he felt. He made his poetry inexpensive to buy, so there were few barriers to reaching a wide audience. They sold exceptionally well, and they still sell today.
Here is an example of Housman's poetry:
Because I Liked You
Because I liked you better
than suits a man to say
It irked you, and I promised
to throw the thought away
To put the world between us
We parted stiff and dry;
'Good-bye, said you, 'forget me'
'I will, no fear, said I.
If here where clover whitens
The dead man's knoll, you pass,
And no tall flower to meet you
Starts in the trefoiled grass
Halt by the gravestone naming
The heart no longer stirred,
And say the lad that loved you
Was one that kept his word.