Milton! thou should'st be living at this hour

Milton was 400 years old a few days ago. According to Wordsworth, Milton had "a voice whose sound was like the sea; Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free." According to some illiterate at the Guardian:

Milton lacks the qualities now considered essential in a poet: concision, humour, or romance . . . Readers can handle the poignancy of On His Blindness and snatch pleasure from the great quotes. But the imagery and subject matter of the epics are rooted in a theology and mythology that today are gone.

He comments further "We prefer to like our poets, and Milton was a bore and a prig." Our non-boring and non-priggish hero at least recommends Milton's prose. I wonder whom he considers to have been a "likable" poet. Ezra Pound?

Tags: Milton, poetry