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Literary EssaysJohn Heath-StubbsEdited by Trevor Tolley
All saints revile her, and all sober men
Ruled by the God Apollo's golden mean -- In scorn of which we sailed to find her In distant regions likeliest to hold her Whom we desired above all things to know, Sister of the mirage and echo . . . from `The White Goddess' (1951)
To mark the poet John Heath-Stubbs' eightieth birthday, Carcanet publish his major literary essays. The earliest was written in 1945, the most recent half a century later. There is a notable continuity of concern and tact throughout the book: here is a poet who has not been distracted by the fashions and vagaries of the age from his vocation, which is to read deeply and to understand the very different terms on which every major writer wrestles poems from the language. These erudite, witty and considered pieces combine the insights of a substantial practitioner in all the poetic genre with the broad learning of a scholar-critic. They consider many of the great English poets from Spenser to the present day, as well as the Italians Tasso and -- one of Heath-Stubbs' passions -- Leopardi. In engaging his chosen writers Heath-Stubbs employs, shrewdly and accurately, his unique understanding of poetic process. He has an unusually vivid sense of the challenges and rewards of the sustained long poem -- epic, allegory and satire -- and an ear critically attuned not only to rhythmic but semantic nuance. His fascination with specific detail never distracts him from his sense of the larger project of the poem itself.
A.T.TOLLEY, the noted Canadian editor and critic, was born in Birmingham in 1927, studied at Oxford, and has taught at universities in Finland and Australia, and for the last thirty years at Carleton University in Ottawa.
'In his poetry, the literature of the past is an important inspiration, as are the images that inhabit it.'
Trevor Tolley Praise for John Heath-Stubbs 'It's a reflection of Heath-Stubbs's creative generousity that he writes warmly about apparently trivial things, sometimes in a way that explores or hints at the momentous implications behind them' Edmund Prestwich, The North 'His range of subject matter is panoramic, and his control of emotion and intention the best of his generation.' Poetry Review 'His poetry is formidable, amiable, hugely intelligent and sacramental.' Times Literary Supplement. |
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