“All human aims are stupefied denial…” #1949Club #stephenspender

Today for the #1949Club, I’m sharing some thoughts on a poetry book which was released in that year – “The Edge of Being” by Stephen Spender. I wasn’t able to find a huge amount of verse issued in 1949, and was reminded of Theodor Adorno’s statement “To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric”. It’s definitely worth remembering how damaged the world was after WW2; I could see a lot of that in Beverley Nichols’ book which I reviewed on Thursday. Nevertheless, Spender published this book in 1949 and as he’s a writer I’m pretty sure I’ve not read before, it seemed like the perfect time to try his work. Spender was known as a poet who focused on themes of social injustice and the class struggle, so I was keen to see what his verse was like. This collection, published by Faber, contains 25 poems; some are a few lines, and some stretch to several pages; and all are thought-provoking. His style is not always straightforward or easy to read, and there were times I felt I was missing his…