Collected Poems

E. L. Mayo was a quiet poet who embraced obscurity almost as a condition for his intellectual freedom. Still, a few discerning critics noticed. David Daiches has said that \u201cMayo's poems ...pretend to be simple prose-like utterances, whereas in fact the best of them contain an echoing poetic meaning which begins to relase itself a split second after we have read the words.\u201d John Ciardi heralds him as a major figure in the development of the modern poem: \u201cSome of the poems of E. L. Mayo are happy evidence of how far poetry has come in a hundred years toward acquiring a wholly natural mastery of the commonest details of ordinary living...the sudden burgeoning of second meaning is the final distinction that separates poetry from prose...Mayo's ability to carry the poem from obsevation to revelation is a notable accomplishment.\u201d David Ray says in his introduction to this collection \u201cMayo was a Metaphysical, and his poems gain in power because of the tension between the metaphysical, the occasionally obscure or at least demanding references, and the idiomatic. Mayo followed up on mysteries, sought \u2018the true, secret name of the river,' opened up \u2018the mystery of better and of worse,' negotiated with that angel whose \u2018name was Lonliness.' Poetry, he said, was a \u2018mirror, showing/Clearer than to our shadowy sense, the glowing/And waning of a more than mortal creature.' Just as \u2018moles are very little/And worlds are very big,' so the poet and his world must work and live together, unfairly matched. Out of such tensionan occasional miracle emerges, hence Mayo\u2018s \u2018El Greco' sonnet. Such poems must not be lost to future generations.\u201d

About the Author :
E. L. Mayo was an associate professor of English at Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa. He taught also at Amherst College, the University of Minnesota, Phillips Academy, North Dakota State College, and the U.S. Military Academy Preparatory School.