Fifty-six poems, including "Chinese Ballad" and "A Masque (The Birth of Steel)." "The wrung-out, colloquial dryness of this diction has its own firm music, capable of being heightened, in more elaborate poems, to a grand polyphony."-Robert Fitzgerald, New Republic.
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About the Author
Sir William Empson (27 September 1906 – 15 April 1984) was an English literary critic and poet.
He is sometimes praised as the greatest English literary critic after Samuel Johnson and William Hazlitt, and widely influential for his practice of closely reading literary works, fundamental to the New Critics. Jonathan Bate has claimed that the three greatest English Literary critics of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries are, respectively, Johnson, Hazlitt and Empson, "not least because they are the funniest".
Empson has been styled a "critic of genius" by Sir Frank Kermode, who qualified his praise by identifying willfully perverse readings of certain authors; and Harold Bloom has stated that Empson is among a handful of critics who matter most to him, because of their force and eccentricity. Empson's bluntness led to controversy both during his life and after his death, and a reputation in part also as a "licensed buffoon" (Empson's own phrase).
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An underappreciated English poet.,
By Johann Krenel (Brooklyn, New York) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Collected Poems (Paperback)
William Empson is well known for his work in literary criticism and theory, particularly Seven Types of Ambiguity and The Structure of Complex Words, but he began his career as a poet and was at one time considered one of the best young poets in England. His poems are often difficult, occasionally deeply moving, frequently funny, and always brilliantly constructed. In an age when smart, honest poetry is being appreciated once again, Empson's poems deserve our renewed attention.
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Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
We tunnel through your noonday out to you. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
We tunnel through your noonday out to you. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
90
books
cite this book:
See all 90 books citing this book
- William Empson: Prophet Against Sacrifice (Critics of the Twentieth Century) by Paul H. Fry on 26 pages
- Literature and the Taste of Knowledge (The Empson Lectures) by Michael Wood on 5 pages
- William Empson: The Critical Achievement by Christopher Norris on 4 pages
- A bicyclette by Edward Nye on page 33, Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- Tragedy after Nietzsche: Rapturous Superabundance by Paul Gordon in Back Matter (1), Back Matter (2), and Back Matter (3)
See all 90 books citing this book
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