In the first episode of their new Close Readings series on political poetry, Seamus Perry and Mark Ford look at ‘An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland’ by Andrew Marvell, a poem about politics but also political inasmuch as nobody can agree on what it says. Is the poet celebrating Cromwell’s arrival in England following his brutal Irish campaign, or deploring the death of Charles I, or both?
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Further reading in the LRB:
David Norbrook: Political Verse
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