Doug,
I failed to mention Donald Davie's attraction to the work of Edward Dorn,
whom he invited to teach at the University of Essex. Tom Raworth was also,
I believe, in residence at Essex while Davie was "Number Two", though DD's
perspective on Raworth's work was definitely mixed, at least as I heard him
voice his view in person. I'd like to read Davie's "final word" on TR, if
it exists and if anyone can direct me to it.
Barry
On Fri, 21 Dec 2007 09:32:41 -0700, Douglas Barbour
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>Wow, Barry, fascinating stuff, & it must've been interesting in all
>ways.
>
>I came across Davie with his book, Ezra Pound: Poet as Sculptor, so
>have always thought he was at least somewhat informed on modernism in
>poetry. That he was able to represent that group you name below, & then
>later see his way to acknowledging Bunting as far more important than
>most of his British fellows had noticed, suggests a finely tuned
>eclecticism.
>
>Doug
>
>
>On 20-Dec-07, at 6:08 PM, Barry Alpert wrote:
>
>> Right at the beginning of my graduate studies, I witnessed Donald
>> Davie’s
>> transition from second-in-command at the University of Essex to Yvor
>> Winters’ successor at Stanford University. He liked to put it thus, “I
>> replaced Yvor Winters and Robert Lowell replaced me.” I never heard
>> that
>> he had lost his position at Essex, but he did mention that he had had
>> to
>> ask his graduate student Tom Clark (who had been highly recommended to
>> him
>> by Donald Hall) to leave because of reasons I’ll let you imagine. I
>> was
>> lucky enough to attend the first course Davie gave at Stanford, Modern
>> British Poetry, which covered, as I remember, Thomas Hardy, Gerard
>> Manley
>> Hopkins, W.B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot, and Ezra Pound. Two of the so-called
>> Stanford Five (the last generation of poets to study directly with Yvor
>> Winters) sat in on that class, John Peck and Robert Hass, though Peck
>> made
>> such a strong impression that I remain a bit uncertain whether Hass was
>> indeed present. Perhaps Robert Archambeau’s forthcoming study from the
>> University of Notre Dame Press, “Laureates and Heretics”, will set the
>> record straight about John Peck, John Matthias, James McMichael, Robert
>> Hass, and Robert Pinsky.
>>
>> The failing AOL software on my computer already “disappeared” my first
>> version of this post, so before treating the complex issue of Donald
>> Davie’s relationship to modernism, I need a break.
>>
>>
>> Barry Alpert
>Douglas Barbour
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