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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 11655 - 72 Avenue NW Edmonton Ab T6G 0B9 (780) 436 3320 http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/ Latest book: Continuations (with Sheila E Murphy) http://www.uap.ualberta.ca/UAP.asp?LID=41&bookID=664 Oh, goddamnit, we forgot the silent prayer. Dwight D, Eisenhower [at a cabinet meeting]