The Irish born poet and playwright Louis MacNeice was part of the ‘Auden Group’ sometimes referred to simply as the Thirties Poets. To my mind, MacNeice is an entirely under-appreciated, almost forgotten member. Indeed, I had forgotten him. I remembered only a single line, read many years ago:
‘And all of London littered with remembered kisses’.
For a long time this line stayed in my mind, floating free from the rest of a poem and even from the name of its author. One day, I looked it up to find it was from Louis MacNiece’s ‘Autumn Journal’
Returned to MacNeice I discovered more. I was ‘suddenly rich’, as in the beautiful poem ‘Snow’ that I feature today…
Although poets are not always the best ‘performers’ of their work, I love to hear this recording of MacNeice reading his own poem. Separated as we are from that generation now, it gives us a window to the past, time dissolves, the crackle on the recording the only hint he is not in the room with us.
There are various interpretations of the last line. And in a poem about variousness, how appropriate to end with irresolution, as mysterious and unresolved as looking out through snow itself.
