In this stunning volume of epic breadth, Michael Schmidt connects the lives and works of more than 300 poets over the last 700 years--spanning distant shores from Scotland to Australia to the Caribbean, all sharing the English language.
Schmidt reveals how each poet has transformed "a common language of poetry" into the rustic rhythms and elegiac ballads, love sonnets, and experimental postmodern verse that make up our lyrical canon.
A comprehensive guided tour that is lively and always accessible, Lives of the Poets illuminates our most transcendent literary tradition.
“In englesh forto make a book”
“And as I lay and lened and loked in the wateres”
“Merely written for the people”
“Not as I suld, I wrait, but as I couth”
“A little man with little hands and little cuffs”
Substance with and without Rites
Long Gray Beards and Glittering Eyes
Snapping Asunder the Leading-Strings
“They lived once thus at Venice” and in Camden
A Beginning of the End of Victorian Poetry
“A language not to be betrayed...”
“Arranging, deepening, enchanting”
“What shall I say, because talk I must?”
Inventing and Reinventing the Wheel