World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various.
    from ‘Snow’, by Louis MacNeice

Incorrigibly Plural celebrates the diversity and vitality of Louis MacNeice’s writing. Poets and critics illuminate the work of a writer whose achievement and influence is increasingly recognised as central to modern poetry in English. Contributions include responses to MacNeice by poets such as Paul Farley, Leontia Flynn, Nick Laird, Derek Mahon, Glyn Maxwell and Paul Muldoon; discussions by critics such as Neil Corcoran, Valentine Cunningham, Hugh Haughton, Peter McDonald and Clair Wills; and more biographical accounts, including a memoir by MacNeice’s son, the late Dan MacNeice.

For each of them, MacNeice remains a continuing presence for his insight into the mechanisms of the modern world, his complex political awareness, his ability to bring the historical moment alive. Above all, what emerges is pleasure in MacNeice’s plurality of language and forms.

More than a retrospective work of criticism, Incorrigibly Plural belongs to live debates about contemporary poetry.

Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Preface

1    The Pity of It All
    PETER MCDONALD

2    Memoirs
    DAN MACNEICE

3    Pure Form, Impure Poetry, and Louis MacNeice’s Letters
    JONATHAN ALLISON

4     ‘I will acquire an attitude not yours’: Was Frederick MacNeice a Home Ruler, and Why Does This Matter?
    DAVID FITZPATRICK

5    On MacNeice on Trains
    LEONTIA FLYNN

6    ‘What am I doing here?’ Travel and MacNeice
    TERENCE BROWN

7    MacNeice and Thirties (Classical) Pastoralism
    VALENTINE CUNNINGHAM

8    Eclogues Between the Truculent
    DEREK MAHON

9    MacNeice’s Vehicles
    HUGH HAUGHTON

10     ‘Who would be loved by a goddess?’ Graves, MacNeice, and the Lyric of Classical Myth
    EDNA LONGLEY

11    The Perning Birch: Yeats, Frost, MacNeice
    PAUL MULDOON

12     ‘The ladies would say that he looked like a poet’: Tom and the Selling of Louis
    ANNE MARGARET DANIEL

13    The Lives We Live
    GERALD DAWE

14    Turn and Turn Against: The Case of Autumn Journal
    GLYN MAXWELL

15    ‘The Parrot’s lie’: Autumn Sequel and the BBC
    CLAIR WILLS

16    ‘Bulbous Taliesin’: MacNeice and Dylan Thomas
    JOHN GOODBY

17    When I Think of MacNeice
    THOMAS MCCARTHY

18    ‘His Inturned Eyes’: MacNeice in the Woods
    PAUL FARLEY

19     ‘Coming up England by a different line’: Louis MacNeice and Philip Larkin
    STEPHEN REGAN

20    The Same Again? MacNeice’s Repetitions
    NEIL CORCORAN

21    The Seal and the Cat
    NICK LAIRD

Notes
Guide to Further Reading
Notes on Contributors
Index