The repossession of innocence

That generation of poets that emerged in Britain during the 'fifties, from start to finish of that long decade - how easy it has been for us to pretend we saw them clearly, and how little excuse they have given us for the pretence! There is Larkin, stiffening as he reaches sixty, but still interesting in the little he publishes. There is Enright, refining his ironic line with unfailing if inadequate urbanity. There is Elizabeth Jennings, bland, featureless, still writing poems. And Donald Davie, surviving his changes with an air of wear and tear that is elderly and authoritative. And Silkin with his mythic vision, and Ted Hughes with his: Hughes, most pleasing of them all to the Academy, famously fabricating his unrelenting myths at almost the same pace as Peter Redgrove.