Word: poet
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...cause of his success is not just his billing as "the poet the Princess reads" (Margaret does). It is simply that Britons of all classes think Betjeman one of the pleasantest men alive. He himself says that he cannot understand why people buy his verse ("I don't call it poetry"), and he describes himself as "a passionate observer of the second-rate." Actually, Betjeman observes a great deal more than the second-rate. He has a unique eye for the twilight of changing times, although he is one Englishman who looks neither back in anger nor forward...
...lover not of antiquarianism but of genuine gaslit charm and hedge-hid privacy, Poet Betjeman despises planned progress: I have a Vision of the Future, chum...
...funniest poems Betjeman is given to adolescent admiration of female tennis players ("Pam, I adore you, Pam, you great big mountainous sports girl"). He cries to be a sports girl's racket, pressed to her breast or flying in the sunlit air. But Betjeman is not chiefly a poet of humor. Born a Quaker, but now a deeply serious Anglican, he can write of religion with earnest simplicity or with a chuckle ("The old Great Western Railway makes me very sorry for my sins...
...20th century morality play by Poet Archibald MacLeish, with overtones of both Everyman and Faust, in which God and the Devil contend for the afflicted soul of a modern Job. Despite some flatness in both poetry and drama, and a hollowly humanistic ending, it makes for an arresting evening in the theater and repeats some eternal questions about the meaning of man's suffering. Brilliantly directed by Elia Kazan...
...Touch of the Poet. Eugene O'Neill is as long-winded as ever, but it's a powerful wind that blows a lot of good in this tale of a boozing innkeeper and his crumbling illusions. With Eric Portman, Kim Stanley, Helen Hayes...