Lives of the Modern Poets

640 Pages·1997·1.33 MB·English

by  William H. Pritchard

Lives of the Modern Poets : With a New
title:
Preface By the Author
author: Pritchard, William H.
publisher: University Press of New England
isbn10 | asin: 0874517877
print isbn13: 9780874517873
ebook isbn13: 9780585229539
language: English
American poetry--20th century--History and
criticism, English poetry--20th century--
subject History and criticism, Modernism
(Literature)--United States, Modernism
(Literature)--Great Britain.
publication date: 1996
lcc: PS323.5.P7 1996eb
ddc: 811/.5209
American poetry--20th century--History and
American poetry--20th century--History and
criticism, English poetry--20th century--
subject: History and criticism, Modernism
(Literature)--United States, Modernism
(Literature)--Great Britain.
Page iii
Lives of the Modern Poets
With a New Preface by the Author
William H. Pritchard
Page iv
Published by University Press of New England, Hanover, NH 03755
© 1980 by William H. Pritchard
Originally published in hardcover by Oxford University Press, New
York.
First University Press of New England edition, 1997
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America 5 4 3 2 1
CIP data appear at the end of the book
Acknowledgment is made for permission to quote from the following
works:
Hart Crane: The Complete Poems and Selected Letters and Prose of
Hart Crane, copyright 1933, © 1958, 1966 by Liveright Publishing
Corporation. By permission of Liveright Publishing Corporation.
T. S. Eliot: Collected Poems 19091962, copyright 1936 by Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich, Inc.; copyright © 1943, 1964 by T. S. Eliot;
copyright 1971 by Esme Valerie Eliot. Reprinted by permission of
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., and Faber and Faber Ltd.
Robert Frost: The Poetry of Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery
Lathem, copyright 1928, 1930, 1934, 1939, 1947, © 1969 by Holt,
Rinehart and Winston; copyright 1942, © 1956, 1958, 1962 by Robert
Frost; copyright © 1967, 1970, 1975 by Lesley Frost Ballantine.
Reprinted by permission of Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Publishers,
Jonathan Cape Ltd., and the Estate of Robert Frost.
Thomas Hardy: "Nobody Comes," copyright 1925 by Macmillan
Publishing Co., Inc., renewed 1953 by Lloyds Bank Ltd.; "Proud
Songsters," copyright 1928 by Florence E. Hardy and Sydney E.
Cockerell, renewed 1956 by Lloyds Bank Ltd. All selections from
Collected Poems, reprinted by permission of Macmillan Publishing
Co., Inc. "Winter in Durnover Field,'' "On the Departure Platform,"
"The Last Chrysanthemum," "The Going," "The Voice," "After a
Journey," "At Castle Boterel," and "The Missed Train" from Collected
Poems by Thomas Hardy (New York: Macmillan, 1953).
(Acknowledgments continued on page 318.)
Page v
To my Mother
Page vii
Contents
Preface to the University Press of New England Edition ix
Acknowledgments xvii
Introduction 3
I 15
Thomas Hardy
Circumstantial Satirist
II 49
W. B. Yeats
Theatrical Nobility
III 83
E. A. Robinson
The Prince of Heartachers
IV 109
Robert Frost
Elevated Play
V 141
Ezra Pound
Persistent Explorer
VI 171
T. S. Eliot
Superior Amusement
VII 203
Wallace Stevens
Poet of the Academy
Page viii
VIII 235
Hart Crane
A Fine Messed-Up Life
IX 263
William Carlos
Williams In the American Grain
Conclusion 295
A Calendar 299
Critical Works Cited 303
Index 309
Page ix
Preface to the University Press of New England Edition
Randall Jarrell said that a good critic has to be willing to stick his
neck out: my decision to write a book about nine poets from earlier in
our century, and to title it (with Samuel Johnson in mind) Lives of the
Modern Poets, at least reveals a neck stuck out. More than one
reviewer of the book seized the opportunity it offered to adverse
criticism by noting, among other things, its relative lack (compared to
Johnson's Lives) of biographical fact; also its deference, perhaps
excessive, to the modern critics who had canonized the nine poets in
question. As for the canonized list itself, my friend the late Julian
Symons suggested that it was rather odd, in a book about the nine
most important modern poets writing in English, to choose seven
Americans, an Irishman, and a single EnglishmanThomas Hardy.
Even agreeing to my exclusion of Auden as having been born too late
(all the chosen poets were born before 1900 and produced much of
their significant work in the century's second and third decades),
Symons mentioned Kipling, Robert Graves, A. E. Housman, and
Wilfred Owen, and wondered if my subject weren't, perhaps, the best
American poets. A fair query, and I could only console myself that the
important thing about such a book wasn't who it left out, but what I
managed to say, and how, about those put in. But even