The Poet’s Tongue

When W.H. Auden and John Garrett edited The Poet’s Tongue, an “anti-academic” anthology intended for schools, the irony was not lost upon them. First printed 1935, the compilation was meant to be poetry - “the multifarious, sometimes ridiculous ongoing enterprise” - not “poetry” - academic, insular texts written by dead people intended only for school exams. Steven Burt at The London Review of Books explores why  Tongue, and the the ideas about high and low culture it presents, are still relevant seventy-five years later.

From LRB:

It’s in two parts, paginated separately; part one has simpler language, and more narrative, as if intended for younger readers. But that division is almost the only clue that Auden and Garrett intended the book for schools. Selections arrive in alphabetical order by first line (an arrangement The Rattle Bag imitated), with authors’ names left out of the main text (they show up in the table of contents); humour and obsequy, fame and anonymity, prayer and limerick, show up unpredictably, side by side. Few anthologies can offer such consistent pleasure from the obscurest inclusions:

Here lie I, Martin Elginbrodde:
Ha’e mercy o’ my soul, Lord God,
As I wad do, were I Lord God
And ye were Martin Elginbrodde.