SOURCE: "The Poetry of Edwin Muir," in The Hudson Review, Vol. XIII, No. 4, Winter, 1960-61, pp. 550-67.

In the following essay, Holloway assesses the relation of Muir's poetry to modern literary movements and cultural trends.

The recognition which any poet seeks from any reader is first and foremost a detailed attention to his poems; and a comprehension and appreciation of them, not in order to clarify a literary landscape or solve a critical problem, but for their own sake. Because of this, the most direct way in which one can offer recognition to Muir's achievement as a poet is to concentrate closely upon his individual poems. Yet in the present state of literary and critical opinion, one cannot, in Muir's case, make this one's first move. There is a general problem about the literary and critical horizon which must be dealt with as a preliminary. In turning to...