SOURCE: Mahony, Christina Hunt. “London Meets Laredo, a Nightmare: Louis MacNeice's Irish War.” Irish University Review 25, no. 2 (autumn-winter 1995): 204-14.

In the following essay, Mahony interprets MacNeice's Holes in the Sky as reflecting the poet's reaction to and conflicting emotions concerning World War II. Mahony pays particular attention to the mood and theme of “The Streets of Laredo” and gauges public reception of MacNeice's rendition and other versions of this ballad.

In 1948 the British edition of Louis MacNeice's Holes in the Sky was published. It was his first volume of poetry to appear after the war, and his reviewers were nearly unanimously negative, indicating their lack of enthusiasm for, disappointment in or hostility to the poet's changing and experimental style. In the thirties, as part of that famed poetic quartet, MacSpaunday,¹ MacNeice had been found to be identifiably British, urgent and politicised, but in the sombre post-war climate his...