Most Read... Rebecca WattsThe Cult of the Noble Amateur
(PN Review 239)
John McAuliffeBill Manhire in Conversation with John McAuliffe
(PN Review 259)
Eavan BolandA Lyric Voice at Bay
(PN Review 121)
Patricia CraigVal Warner: A Reminiscence
(PN Review 259)
Vahni CapildeoOn Judging Prizes, & Reading More than Six Really Good Books
(PN Review 237)
Tim Parksin conversation with Natalia Ginzburg
(PN Review 49)
Next Issue Hal Coase 'Ochre Pitch' Gregory Woods 'On Queerness' Kirsty Gunn 'On Risk! Carl Phillips' Galina Rymbu 'What I Haven't Written' translated by Sasha Dugdale Gabriel Josipovici 'No More Stories' Valerie Duff-Strautmann 'Anne Carson's Wrong Norma'
Poems Articles Interviews Reports Reviews Contributors
PN Review 275
PN Review Substack

This article is taken from PN Review 6, Volume 5 Number 2, January - March 1979.

The Poetry of Charles Causley Edward Levy

Union Street, which appeared in 1957, might be said to prefigure Charles Causley's Collected Poems: 1951-1975. There too the poems of previous collections had been gathered in, with a group of new poems forming the final section of the book. Edith Sitwell's enthusiastic preface to the earlier collection suggests that Causley had graduated to the communion of inspired mid-century bards-Dylan Thomas, Sidney Keyes-whose praises she had earlier sung so generously. While Collected Poems has no such preface, it has been universally approved-by the deferential as well as the warmly appreciative. John Fuller, in his Times Literary Supplement review, didn't disguise his impatience with some Causley qualities, yet rounded off in these terms: 'But however [Causley] develops, this book stands as a tribute to an essential function of verse: the power to enchant.'

Such remarks are, I think, notably vague compared with Causley's own authoritative, sometimes gnomic, but always tough utterances about his poetry and poetry in general. There is a danger that in the case of a poet such as Causley, his evident 'power to enchant' may be seized on as a means of glossing over the complexities in his canon of work; so that he remains no more than a canny eccentric, an encouraging entertainer. Alternatively, an admirer of the Sitwellian kind may be equally unsatisfactory-the poet who enchants remaining no more than the inspired, enchanting poet. In fact, the words 'enchant' and 'charm' are central to Causley's work; but their full meaning may only be ...


Searching, please wait... animated waiting image