SOURCE: Carruth, Hayden. “The Separate Splendours: Homage to Edwin Muir.” Poetry 88, no. 5 (August 1956): 389-93.

In the following brief essay, Carruth, an award-winning American poet, praises Muir's treatment of time, our moment in history, and eternity in such poems as “The Escape,” “The Interrogation,” and “All We.”

1. “to Fashion the Transitory”

The problem of time in Edwin Muir's poetry dominates all others and hence allies him to the metaphysical tradition in modern verse. But it is a loose and problematical alliance. If the metaphysical tradition is characterized essentially by certain habits of significant ambiguity in thought and diction, habits which were common to medieval liturgy and poetry until the time of Herbert and which have been imitated by some symbolist poets of our own era, then by contrast Muir's poetry is straightforward, single-minded, and virtually Wordsworthian in tone and manner. Muir is a fabulist, a poet of dreams and...