'He alone on this isotonic plain' : Robert Graves, Keidrych Rhys, Lynette Roberts, and the situation of the poet in war

Mundye, Charles

Abstract

The article examines aspects of Robert Graves’s creative and personal relationship with the Anglo-Welsh modernist poets Lynette Roberts and Keidrych Rhys. Roberts and Rhys met in late 1930s bohemian London literary circles, and were married, with Dylan Thomas as Best Man, at the beginning of World War 2. Rhys was responsible for one of the first great Anglo-Welsh modernist magazines – the simply-named but highly provocative Wales – which was first published in 1937, and to which Graves contributed poems and work in progress for The White Goddess in the mid 1940s. At the same time Graves was involved in a lengthy correspondence with Lynette Roberts, discussing aspects of Welsh mythology, and the day-to-day life of war, literature, and literary politics. In outlining the extent and importance of these modernist connections, I further consider Graves’s intervention in Rhys’s wartime ‘predicament’ as a poet in uniform, and examine ways in which tensions between poetry and war during World War 2 were understood in relation to the legacy of Graves’s generation and World War 1.

Citation

Mundye, C. (2013). 'He alone on this isotonic plain' : Robert Graves, Keidrych Rhys, Lynette Roberts, and the situation of the poet in war. Gravesiana, 3(4), 703-729

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: 2013
• Deposit Date: Nov 13, 2014
• Journal: Gravesiana
• Publisher: Robert Graves Society
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 3
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 703-729
• Public URL: https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/467519
• Contract Date: Nov 23, 2017