Was Hugh MacDiarmid a great poet? Was he, as John MacQueen asserts in his Foreword to Catherine Kerrigan's study, one of 'the three greatest poets to use English in the 20th century', the other two being Yeats and Eliot? One can understand MacQueen putting the matter that way, but perhaps it is not the most helpful way when the reputations of Eliot and Yeats are shaking down, in the ordinary process of time, following their immense acclaim. Perhaps there is too much talk of 'great' poets altogether, so far as the 20th century is concerned. If there is a useful critical question to be answered about MacDiarmid at this stage, it is perhaps not so much how great he was but what sort of poet he was.

LRB 5 April 1984 | PDF Download