Collected Poems

1960

Brasch PR6025 U6 A17 1960

London: Faber and Faber

While it is written in plain language, Edwin Muir’s poetry is often parabolic. When he moved with his family from Orkney to Glasgow, Muir left behind unspoilt Eden and journeyed into the fallen world and was disturbed by what he found there. In his writing, he creates narratives of journeys and labyrinths, good and evil, alienation and paradox, life and death. In Varieties of Parable, MacNeice comments on the metaphorical nature of Muir’s journeys and places and the ‘dream quality’ of his most successful poems.