True Friendship
Geoffrey Hill, Anthony Hecht, and Robert Lowell Under the Sign of Eliot and Pound
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
True Friendship looks closely at three outstanding poets of the past half-century—Geoffrey Hill, Anthony Hecht, and Robert Lowell—through the lens of their relation to their two predecessors in genius, T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. The critical attention then finds itself reciprocated, with Eliot and Pound being in their turn contemplated anew through the lenses of their successors. Hill, Hecht, and Lowell are among the most generously alert and discriminating readers, as is borne out not only by their critical prose but (best of all) by their acts of new creation, those poems of theirs that are thanks to Eliot and Pound.
“Opposition is true Friendship.” So William Blake believed, or at any rate hoped. Hill, Hecht, and Lowell demonstrate many kinds of friendship with Eliot and Pound: adversarial, artistic, personal. In their creative assent and dissent, the imaginative literary allusions—like other, wider forms of influence—are shown to constitute the most magnanimous of welcomes and of tributes.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In his latest, noted literary critic and Boston University professor Ricks (Dylan's Visions of Sin) makes a thorough, thoughtful examination of the web of influence connecting poets Geoffrey Hill, Anthony Hecht, and Robert Lowell with two of their most iconic predecessors, T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. Using as a jumping-off point William Blake's idea that "opposition is true friendship," Ricks's collection of critical essays investigates the notion that three of the postwar era's most significant poets were engaged in an ever-evolving creative conversation with Eliot and Pound. This "conversation" often manifested itself as influence and homage, but just as often emerged as a struggle by the next generation of poets to free themselves of artistic constraints while living and creating in the shadows of giants. Dissecting their creative relationships, Ricks analyzes each poet's work through the prism of those who came before and after, offering clear and insightful analyses of representative selections from the oeuvre of each. Though perceptive and scholarly, Ricks is also entertaining and personable, and never lets his obvious affection for his subjects cloud his judgment.
