Poetry and Marxism: Three English Poets Take Their Stand

Abstract

It is about time that poets spoke up for themselves. And to-day the professional monopoly of critics is being seriously threatened by the invasion of poets into the jealously guarded field of criticism. They seem to be increasingly taking over the function usually assigned to the critic. Poets possess an intimate understanding of the difficulties of the creative process and the special requirements and limitations of their craft. Who has a better right, who is better qualified, to speculate on the arcana of aesthetics? In the past poets waged wordy wars in behalf of their convictions. Indeed, one could tentatively advance the thesis that creative writing is an indispensable preparation for the proper exercise of the critical function. Of the leading English critics—Dryden, Samuel Johnson, Coleridge, Hazlitt, Pater, Matthew Arnold—only two were not also poets. But the fusion of poetry and criticism that is taking place to-day is of an original, if not altogether unprecedented, kind. Poets who have turned critics are interested not so much in appreciation, or even technique, as in the problem of values. Their major task is to achieve a valid philosophical outlook, a coherent system of beliefs.