The all-sustaining air : romantic legacies and renewals in British, American, and Irish poetry since 1900 / Michael O'Neill.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 192-202) and index.

Introduction : 'original response' -- 'The all-sustaining air' : variations on a romantic metaphor -- 'A vision of reality' : mid-to-late Yeats -- 'Dialectic ways' : T.S. Eliot and counter-romanticism -- 'The guts of the living' : Auden and Spender in the 1930s -- 'The death of Satan' : Stevens's 'Esthétique du mal', evil, and the romantic imagination -- 'Shining in modest glory' : post-romantic strains in Kavanagh, Heaney, Mahon, Carson, and others -- 'Just another twist in the plot' : Paul Muldoon's 'Madoc : a mystery' -- Deep shocks of recognition and 'gutted' romanticism : Geoffrey Hill and Roy Fisher.

O'Neill's study provides sensitive close readings of poets publishing since 1900, including Yeats, Eliot, Stevens, Heaney, Hill and Hughes. He shows that Romantic poetry is a dominant presence in their poems. The book will interest those who enjoy the exploration of poetry's attempt to deal with major human and cultural issues.