The Imagination of Edward Thomas by Michael Kirkham (review)

HUMANITIES 121 much in it, lamenting in 'To Any Dead Officer' the death of a subaltern who had been 'knocked over in a hopeless dud-attack.' This, and the thought of the war dragging on, left Sassoon 'blind with tears'; yet capable, still, ofa soldier's conclusion: 'Iwish they'd killed you in a decent show.' (PHILIP GARDNER) Michael Kirkham. The Imagination of Edward Thomas Cambridge University Press 1986. xi, 225. us $39.50 Michael Kirkham's aim in this excellent book is, in his own words, primarily to 'explore and chart the domain of Thomas's imagination' (ix). This interesting phrase shows how thoroughly Kirkham has absorbed Thomas's own aesthetic and vocabulary: he clearly sees criticism, much as Thomas saw poetry, as the detailed examination of a terrain. This deep sympathy with his subject may be Kirkham's greatest asset as a commentator, but it is only one of many. The map Kirkham draws is of an austere, almost arid, country, characterized most easily by those features it does not possess. The land of Thomas's imagination is fundamentally Romantic in its idealism, but there is little faith in God, great mistrust of the transcendental, and contempt for organized religion. Other mental landmarks - natureworship , humanism, patriotism, love of home and hearth, egoism - are present only with a flickering, disorienting transience. Kirkham repeatedly links Thomas with Coleridge, seeing both as figures consumed by yearnings for certainty, stability, permanence which self-contempt cannot allow them to satisfy. He also aligns Thomas with Conrad and Forster in their ironic mistrust of the ideals and systems of belief that they passionately want to accept. For Kirkham, in short, Thomas is both post-Romantic and pre-Modernist: on the one hand he is heir to the Wordsworthian need for a faith at once secular and transcendant; on the other he is sceptical not just of revealed religion but of all possible sources of faith. I find this map of Thomas's imagination accurate and helpful. Iam also impressed and often humbled by Kirkham's ability to make particular texts illuminate features of this intellectual landscape. His close readings preserve an admirable balance: they are at once successfully integrated into his argument and faithful to the individuality of each text. He claims to be less than fully convinced of the quality of Thomas's prose, but his elegant treatment of several passages belies him. The poems are invariably handled with equal sensitivity: the connections between them are carefully traced; the recurrent situations and patterns of imagery classified with great skill; and the half-hidden symbolism which Thomas so loved brought to the surface with an almost archaeological care. 122 LETTERS IN CANADA 1987 Ihave only one major criticism: Kirkham makes no sustained attempt to place Thomas in any literary context other than that of post-Romantic poetry. In particular he hardly tries to link Thomas with - or to distinguish Thomas from - his contemporaries. Thomas's relations with the Georgians are almost casually dismissed, his friendship with de la Mare is not mentioned at all, and his obvious affinities with Hardy receive parenthetical treatment, never systematic analysis. The book is weakest of all, I think, in its handling of Thomas's relations with Frost. Kirkham seems defensive, almost territorial, in his desire to minimize Frost's influence over Thomas or likeness to him. Kirkham asserts that Frost's 'characteristic mode' in North of Boston was 'long blank verse poems' and that after Thomas wrote a couple of these, 'he went his own way.' But Frost's volume also contains some short poems which sound very much like Thomas: consider, just to take well-known examples, 'The Road Not Taken' and 'The Oven Bird.' A more hospitable attitude to Thomas's contemporaries would have done much to enliven the later, somewhat reiterative parts of this book. But such quibbling is undeserved; this is a wise, sensitive, and interesting treatment of a wise, sensitive, and interesting writer. (ALAN HERTZ) John Baglow. Hugh MacDiarmid: The Poetry of Self McGill-Queen's University Press. 258. $30.00 The poet Hugh MacDiarmid (who in his personal life was named Christopher Grieve) is regarded by Scots as having been an influential...