Considering my epic memory, I'd take nothing I recall for granted ...
I've come to the conclusion that my brain takes in facts, swirls them
around a bit with scattershot prejudices then regurgitates them in a
random order.
I recommend the Davie book to anyone interested in Hardy.
Roger
On Dec 21, 2007 1:08 AM, Barry Alpert <[log in to unmask]> 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
>
>
>
> On Thu, 20 Dec 2007 22:27:57 +0000, Roger Day <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> >Looking at Amazon, with the grain is a 1998 carcanet edition which
> >includes a reprint of the 1973 edition of TH & British Poetry. I sold
> >my copy a while a go.
> >
> >I'll have to go back and re-read it. I'm pretty sure Davie wasn't
> >particularly a modernist in any way. Maybe he wasn't in to re-writing
> >the historical record in that manner.
> >
> >Davie was I think a VC at that time.
> >
> >Roger
>
>
> >
> >On Dec 20, 2007 9:52 PM, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> >> 'With the Grain', how does that relate to Davie's book, 'TH and British
> >> Poetry'?
> >> A few weeks ago I acquired an ex-library copy of
> >>
> >> The Poet in the Imaginary Museum
> >>
> >> Essays of Two Decades
> >>
> >> edited [with a very substantial introduction, I must say] by Barry Alpert
> >>
> >> (Carcanet, Manchester, 1977).
> >>
> >> Davie's essay 'Hardy's Virgilian Purples' (1972) has a postscript:
> >>
> >> 'One thing that excited me in this investigation was the proof it seemed
> to
> >> give, that Hardy at his best proceeded in a way not wholly different from
> >> Pound's way, or Joyce's, or (I could have added) Eliot's. But in the
> years
> >> since, the sudden spate of books and essays about Hardy's poetry seems
> for
> >> the most part still impelled by a wish to prove that Hardy provides a
> viable
> >> insular alternative to the international 'modern movement'. I am quite
> out
> >> of sympathy with that sort of endeavour.'
> >>
> >> [Was Davie a VC or just an injudicious supporter of a VC who suffered in
> >> those worrisome campus times?]
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> On 21/12/07 8:17 AM, "Roger Day" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >>
> >> > Donald Davie, writing in With The Grain, was quite taken with Hardy.
> >> > Saw him as a precursor to modern _English_ poetry - that's England in
> >> > the country, not the language - making a "direct line" between Hardy
> >> > and, wait for it, Phil "The Glum"[1] Larkin, skipping out all that
> >> > messy, and foreign, modernism stuff. Mind you, what happens to those
> >> > WW1 shirkers? He's not the first or the last to try and do so. If you
> >> > skip Pound or Eliot or even Thomas and Owen, then you can get back to
> >> > being pastoral and religious and provincial, buttered scones for tea,
> >> > the Home Service and all that. Mind you, Davie had an axe to grind -
> >> > he lost his Vice Chancellorship of some steel-and-glass uni after
> >> > failing to control a lock-out in the 60s.
> >> >
> >> > Anyway, With the Grain is an interesting read nonetheless. Even if I
> >> > can't remember much about it bar the insularity.
> >> >
> >> > Roger
> >> >
> >> > [1] That's a Home Service joke BTW.
>
--
My Stuff: http://www.badstep.net/
"And we're slow to acknowledge the knots on the laces
heart it races"
Architecture in Helsinki
|