Poetry and history …

… Notes toward an introduction by William Logan | The New Criterion. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

We cannot blame the past for being the past, for having attitudes that strike us as unfortunate or even horrifying. None has much influence on the poetry—it has effect only when critics decide that all authors should be taken to the pillory, if not the gallows.

Such uses of the past condescend to the poet for failing to anticipate, within the roil of his life, what our advanced age would think, not of his poetry, but of his prejudices. We’re allowed to shake our heads a little at what previous ages thought (or more usually failed to think), but we cannot escape the knowledge that the future may look askance at moral failings to which we are blind. Meanwhile, we patronize the past only at the risk of becoming a mob of Mrs. Grundys.