Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Poetry and Art

SABCL - Volume 27

Part 3. Literature, Art, Beauty and Yoga
Section 1. Appreciation of Poetry and the Arts
Appreciation of Poetry

Housman’s Poetics [1]

I have been waiting for a long time to take a look at A. E. Housman’s little book The Name and Nature of Poetry. It’s been with you for months now. Perhaps you could spare it for a while? How did you like it?

[A few days later] What has happened to my Housman letter?

Housed, man!

[Still later] Here is the book. I kept it with the hope of noting down my own ideas on Housman’s theory, but all this time has elapsed without my being able to do it. Apart from the theory, Housman, judging from the book, has a fine sense of true poetic quality — in others. For his own poetry, from the extracts I have seen, looks rather thin. I have read the book three or four times and always with satisfaction to my solar plexus.

22 September 1936