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Lives of the Poets

by Michael Schmidt


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Writing self-consciously in the tradition of Johnson, Schmidt takes the entire history of English-language poetry as his subject here. Giving a critical rather than an objective account of the best-known poets, the book argues for a broad understanding of what constitutes English poetry. A New York Times Notable Book in 1999.


Available editions of Lives of the Poets

9780375406249 9780375406249, Hardcover, Random House Inc, 1999

$5.35 (Good)

Other copies of 9780375406249
   
9780756752415 9780756752415, Paperback, Diane Pub Co, 1998

None currently available
   
9780375706042 9780375706042, Paperback, Vintage Books, 2000

$2.92 (Good)

Other copies of 9780375706042
   

Publisher Notes

Encompassing the works of more than three hundred poets, a definitive history of poetry in English ranges from the fourteenth century to the present day and explores the lives, poetry, and inspiration of these masters of the English language.

Media Reviews

"Schmidt's taste--powerfully formed by such precursors as David Jones, C. H. Sisson, and Donald Davie--is on view throughout this book, as he describes, in chronological order, poet after poet....The curious and belligerent tone in which Schmidt's book is written is meant, I think, to distinguish it as 'one man's views,' to avoid the neutral explanatory tone of the biographical encyclopedia, to assume the mantle of Samuel Johnson. But the tone works against its own aim, which is to win the general reader to the poets of the English language."

Excerpt

Poems swim free of their age, but it's hard to think of a single poem that swims entirely free of its medium, not just language but language used in the particular ways that are poetry. Even the most parthenogenetic-seeming poem has a pedigree. The poet may not know precisely a line's or a stanza's parents; indeed, may not be interested in finding out. Yet as readers of poetry we can come to know more about a poem than the poet does and know it more fully. To know more does not imply that we read Freud into an innocent cucumber, or Marx into a poem about daffodils, but that we read with our ears and hear Chaucer transmuted through Spenser, Sidney through Herbert, Milton through Wordsworth, Skelton through Graves, Housman through Larkin, Sappho through H.D. or Adrienne Rich."

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