The Movement Reconsidered

ed. Zachary Leader, The Movement Reconsidered (Oxford University Press)

The Movement was the movement that never was. The anonymous, generic label was first applied to some emerging poets of the 1950’s in a review in The Spectator in October 1954 and although subsequently used to describe a characteristic type of poetry that was being written at the time, most of the principal names that were supposed to be a part of it made it clear that they didn’t consider themselves to be a part of any such thing.
What it represented concerned much more of what these poets didn’t do in common than what they did, being a reaction against Eliot’s elitist intellectualism, the ‘poetry of statement’ of the Auden group and the apocalyptic wordiness of some 1940’s poets. But as is pointed out, those 40’s poets have so disappeared from view now that it is less easy to see what particular excess was being thus corrected. But it was a plain style that tried to avoid undesirable habits rather than having a unifying agenda or manifesto and, as such, served as something like a cleansing process, based on common sense in a quite unfrightening way.
Larkin’s reputation hasn’t needed such a tag to bring attention to his poetry and Thom Gunn and Donald Davie quickly moved into new methods that made it clear they had more idiosyncrasies than likeness with the perceived hegemony. So, the publicity afforded by such a critical categorisation has benefitted the long term renown of lesser lights, keeping their names in view when they might have disappeared further from notice. Kingsley Amis, once the putative leader of the group, isn’t otherwise remembered primarily as a poet and John Wain’s legacy isn’t primarily based on his poems either.

This collection of essays by some of the most respected authorities on the subject is a wide-ranging and very welcome assessment of how it all looks now, almost as definitive as one would want it to be, and likely to be the last word required on the subject for some time, largely written by sympathizers, admirers and those who were there at the time, which doesn’t include the poets, most of who have died in recent years. And that in itself is a reminder of how rapidly such things pass into literary history. It is possible to believe that there was actually a ‘movement’ going on when reading about Amis and Wain in the 50’s but in terms of Gunn and any longer perspective, one can’t help but think it was any more than a minor footnote and a mention that briefly became a publicity gimmick.
Blake Morrison updates his book on the subject from the 80’s, showing how Larkin and Amis were more open to suggestion from America than they were prepared to admit. There was never much doubt that Larkin’s little Englandism was a pose because his reading of French poetry was referenced in some of his poems but Morrison points out that Robert Frost’s poem Directive has the ‘strikingly similar’ phrase ‘a house in earnest’ to Larkin’s Church Going visit to ‘a serious house on serious earth’. It’s always interesting to know but ever disappointing to find that a favourite poem might not have been quite as original as one thought. Morrison compares the social and political situation in Britain to the early C21st but not convincingly enough to make me believe it or to think that 1950’s poets are due to rush back into vogue.
Craig Raine’s brilliant reading of Dublinesque and his doubts cast in the direction of the technical excellence of the iconic An Arundel Tomb make an excellent conference piece. He is still appreciative of Larkin’s particular talent and if his exegesis of these and other poems doesn’t heighten one’s admiration for them any further, one does admire the clarity with which he understands the ways they work.
Nicholas Jenkins draws together the theme of skies in Auden and Larkin, a place from which danger emerged in the war, with great insight. Partly dependent on some Freudian psychology that looks a bit dubious to me, it is still an enlightening essay contrasting how skies in Larkin can reflect both mundane moods and another, more transcendent thing.
Three essays combine to put the Movement into contemporary perspective with Colin McGinn outlining the move in Philosophy towards ‘ordinary language’ and away from specialist phraseology in G.E. Moore, the later Wittgenstein and A. J. Ayer; Deborah Cameron’s socio-linguistic study refers us to Orwell’s dictum of good prose being like a pane of glass and Deborah Bowman examines the influence of Empson’s style. Along with James Fenton on Kingsley Amis: Against Fakery and a few parallels with the anti-phoney theme of Salinger’s 1951 classic The Catcher in the Rye, these illustrate a prevailing zeitgeisty attitude of downbeat, sceptical, post-war ordinariness.
Alan Jenkins demonstrates how Gunn’s Postures for Combat developed until, removing the first person and returning to Hardy, he could write the late masterpiece The Gas Poker.
William H. Pritchard surveys Donald Davie’s career as a critic, his ambivalent attitudes to both Movement and Modernism, but mainly his allegiance to Pound and antipathy to William Carlos Williams, his admiration for Gunn and ‘over valuation’ of Basil Bunting. Davie, at once austerely demanding but often generous, was the most illuminating commentator of his generation although always 'his own man'.
Rachel Buxton provides useful work on Elizabeth Jennings, another who didn’t see herself as part of the Movement but who we should be reminded of more often. The fact that she was the only woman and the only Catholic of the poets under consideration somehow has to be mentioned but it’s difficult to see how either factor made her any less a part of the group than she was already.
With other reportage from the time about the New Lines anthologies and Anthony Thwaite’s personal memoir, the only piece we don’t really need is on Larkin’s early, juvenile interest in lesbianism which on occasions seems to be given unwarranted attention however fascinating some seem to find it.

Fifty years and more after the fact, this illusory movement might look a bit pale and flat now that all kinds of post-modern playfulness and wonderment are upon us but some very major talents emerged in the 50’s- still highly worthy of our attentions- it’s just that they emerged at the same time individually and not as a group. Their efforts at a plainer style, ironies, less deceived knowingness and common language have been widely taken up by the mainstream poets who have made their reputations since, like Simon Armitage, Carol Ann Duffy, Andrew Motion and Glyn Maxwell.
This essential book is all that most students or readers interested in the period will need and it should send its readers back to whichever poems referred to in it grab the most of their attention.