A. E. Housman Is a Poet for the Age of Brexit
A. E. Housman
The 63 lyrics in that book  first published in 1896  have a purity of speech and intensity of feeling that lent the collection the aura of a classic from the moment of its appearance. “You may read it in half-an-hour ” said one early reviewer of the book  “but there are things in it you will scarce forget in a lifetime.” What  Housman  writes about  almost without exception  is sorrow: lost love  nostalgia  mutability  grief  and death.  He  seems to understand everything about the pain of life  and the beauty of that pain—the way suffering itself can become a source of bittersweet pleasure.  He  is a poet who can’t listen to a blackbird sing without hearing a summons to the grave:
Yet as the English biographer and journalist Peter Parker shows in Housman Country  his new study of the poet’s work and legacy  “luckless lads” who came to  Housman  prepared to open their hearts were shocked by the wary  acerbic  pedantic man they encountered.  His  obituary in The Times of London described  him  as “so unapproachable as to diffuse a frost … [ He ] appeared of all men least tolerant of sentiment.” When the novelist E. M. Forster wrote to  Housman  expressing enthusiasm for  his  poetry   Housman  responded with a letter that Forster described as “absolutely hateful … I was so disappointed and hurt that I destroyed it after one rapid perusal.” Another writer was stunned  too. “Far from believing that man wrote [A] Shropshire Lad ” he said after meeting  Housman   “I shouldn’t even have thought  him  capable of reading it!”
To perceptive observers  however  the vast gulf between the poetry and the poet only added to  Housman ’s pathos. Clearly this was a man so sensitive to pain that  he  had to wear heavy emotional armor. Indeed  the poems themselves are often about the deflection of feeling by an ironic stoicism  which ends up highlighting the very emotion it is meant to conceal. What  readers from the beginning must have wondered  was the wound behind  Housman ’s bow? What made  him  so well acquainted with grief?
This was a matter for speculation and rumor during  Housman ’s lifetime ( the man  wasn’t about to give anything away)  but the answer has long since been established as a central part of  his  legend. In 1879  when  he  was 20 years old and a star student at Oxford   Housman  fell in love with a classmate  Moses Jackson—a hearty  athletic  and entirely straight man. In  his  distress that  his  romantic feelings were not reciprocated   Housman  ended up failing  his  final exams  to the shock of  his  teachers and family. Although  he  eventually did become a classical scholar   his  career was sidetracked for a decade by the fiasco.
The 63 lyrics in that book  first published in 1896  have a purity of speech and intensity of feeling that lent the collection the aura of a classic from the moment of its appearance. “You may read it in half-an-hour ” said one early reviewer of the book  “but there are things in it you will scarce forget in a lifetime.” What  Housman  writes about  almost without exception  is sorrow: lost love  nostalgia  mutability  grief  and death.  He  seems to understand everything about the pain of life  and the beauty of that pain—the way suffering itself can become a source of bittersweet pleasure.  He  is a poet who can’t listen to a blackbird sing without hearing a summons to the grave:
Yet as the English biographer and journalist Peter Parker shows in Housman Country  his new study of the poet’s work and legacy  “luckless lads” who came to  Housman  prepared to open their hearts were shocked by the wary  acerbic  pedantic man they encountered.  His  obituary in The Times of London described  him  as “so unapproachable as to diffuse a frost … [ He ] appeared of all men least tolerant of sentiment.” When the novelist E. M. Forster wrote to  Housman  expressing enthusiasm for  his  poetry   Housman  responded with a letter that Forster described as “absolutely hateful … I was so disappointed and hurt that I destroyed it after one rapid perusal.” Another writer was stunned  too. “Far from believing that man wrote [A] Shropshire Lad ” he said after meeting  Housman   “I shouldn’t even have thought  him  capable of reading it!”
To perceptive observers  however  the vast gulf between the poetry and the poet only added to  [TGT] ’s pathos. Clearly this was a man so sensitive to pain that  he  had to wear heavy emotional armor. Indeed  the poems themselves are often about the deflection of feeling by an ironic stoicism  which ends up highlighting the very emotion it is meant to conceal. What  readers from the beginning must have wondered  was the wound behind  [TGT] ’s bow? What made  [TGT]  so well acquainted with grief?
This was a matter for speculation and rumor during  [TGT] ’s lifetime ( the man  wasn’t about to give anything away)  but the answer has long since been established as a central part of  his  legend. In 1879  when  he  was 20 years old and a star student at Oxford   Housman  fell in love with a classmate  Moses Jackson—a hearty  athletic  and entirely straight man. In  his  distress that  his  romantic feelings were not reciprocated   Housman  ended up failing  his  final exams  to the shock of  his  teachers and family. Although  he  eventually did become a classical scholar   his  career was sidetracked for a decade by the fiasco.