'Thou Breath of Autumn's Being': Voicing Masculinity in the Poetry of Late Life

This article argues that lyric poetry is a form suited to contesting dominant ideas about masculinity because of its thematic and formal preoccupations with voice. It voice offers different way viewing the social constrictions accompany male experiences ageing well-known theory mask ageing. Through study long history Western verse, which includes writers such as William Shakespeare, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, W. B. Yeats, Robert Frost Philip Larkin, explores significance restricted breathing in relation norms masculine reticence physiological deterioration vocal profile age. then possibility counter-voicings poems intergenerational themes from group post-war British poets.