The poetry of A.E. Housman is nothing if not gorgeous. I picked this up as context for my dissertation as Orwell read and recited Housman’s poems growing up but I found a poet who is rivalling William Blake for the title of my personal favourite poet. 

‘A Shropshire Lad’ is his most famous for a reason, it is a pastoral that is quite homoerotic in its content, glamourising a love of home and the Shropshire countryside whilst at the same time reading much like Blake in its criticisms and stance against the Boer War, much focus being on the loss of youth who needlessly died and will never see the countryside of their homeland again. It was extremely powerful and the beauty of Housman’s lyric and words did bring me to tears but when we learn part of the poem is from the perspective of a man reminiscing on his life and the beauty around him as he goes to the gallows the moment extremely stung and changed my perspective on the whole poem. 

I have seen a lot of reviews claiming the rest of Housman’s poems a lot weaker but I disagree. They continue in the same sentiment, with the same emotional care to their themes, and the poem I have quoted to open the review is from ‘More Poems’, a lesser critically appreciated anthology, whereas I found it utterly stunning. There was a collection of lighter verse at the end too which was a bit of fun and batshit, most notably a poem about becoming a parallelagram.

Looking into Orwell’s homoerotic childhood songs has opened me up to discovering a new favourite poet.