Word: spearses
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If Spears book cannot be classified with the kind of critical biography Richard Ellman achieved in his brilliant "Yeats--the Man and the Masks," it equally fails to react with the alive sensitivity to the poetry itself that Reuben Brower demonstrates in "The Poetry of Robert Frost--Constellations of Intention...
Classified in Auden's terms, Monroe K. Spears, author of Disenchanted Island, mixes the qualities of the critic's critic and the maniac. As critic's critic, Spears approaches Auden through close textual study, drawing information from all of Auden's work, from the writers and musicians that influenced him...
Spears' book is, to begin with, the most accurate and comprehensive study that has been done of Auden. The author had access to biographical materials and manuscripts that have not been available to others, and he has read Auden unbelievably carefully. He had difficulties, however, which other critics and biographers...
As a result, Spears tried to compromise: he has written a study of Auden's poetry using biographical material where it was directly relevant to what the poet was writing. Otherwise Spears is silent about the intriguing life W.H. Auden has led.
The second chapter, on Auden in the Thirties, is heavily biographical and intriguing. The third chapter deals with Auden's "shift in perspective" and return to religion from which, Spears insists, he had never really departed. The fourth and final chapter has a lovely section on Auden's critical works...