Lives of the Poets [Hardcover]

Michael Schmidt (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 5, 1999

A dazzling account of the entire history of poetry in the English language -- from the fourteenth century to the present -- by one of the most intelligent and passionate critics in the field.
        
Setting out to write his own homage to Samuel Johnson's legendary Lives of the English Poets of more than two hundred years ago, Michael Schmidt introduces us to the world tradition of poets who have written in English. From the rustic rhythms of Piers Plowman to today's postmodernists, from fifteenth-century Scotland to the contemporary Caribbean, Schmidt explores the lives and creations of more than three hundred poets, discussing their best (and sometimes worst) poems, their triumphs and tragedies, their individual genius. Here is the shared universe and work of so many great poets, including Chaucer, Donne, Blake, Behn, Burns, Wordsworth, Whitman, Dickinson, Rossetti, Yeats, Stevens, Lowell, Bishop, Ginsberg, Rich and Heaney, to name but a few. Schmidt also embraces the extraordinary poetry now emerging from Australia, New Zealand, India and other countries, and shows how these varied landscapes and cultures make their contributions to our common language. Tracing the themes and achievements of each poet's work, Schmidt demonstrates with wit and erudition how poets overshadow and inspire one another across the centuries. En route, he champions some unjustly neglected voices and outlines the ways in which history and politics intervene to shape (or sometimes misshape) the poetic imagination.
        
With infectious enthusiasm and avoiding all fashionable jargon, Schmidt speaks unapologetically for a common language -- the language of poetry, which unites people across continents and across the ages. For anyone who has ever been moved by a poem, a rich and important book.  

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Michael Schmidt's Lives of the Poets should engender endless debates. Anytime anyone attempts a project this monumental--nothing less than the entire history of poetry in English, after all!--plenty of people will disagree with how he or she goes about it. Take, for example, the fact that Schmidt crams 500 years of poetry (Richard Rolle of Hampole through Walt Whitman) into the first half of his massive tome, then spreads a mere century and a half (Emily Dickinson to the present) across the rest. And even 900-plus pages isn't enough space to treat every poet equally--indeed, it may be that Schmidt's choices will spark the liveliest disagreements. Then there are his various pronunciamentos on poetry itself--everything from its form to its influences. But no matter what you may think of Schmidt's methods or conclusions, his credentials are above reproach. Editor of PN Review and founder and editorial director of Carcanet Press, he is a man both passionate and knowledgeable about poetry--and poets. While Schmidt does, indeed, provide biographical information about his subjects, it is with their inner lives, their imaginative landscapes, that he is chiefly concerned. Open the book to almost any page or any era, and you'll find detailed analyses of not only the poems themselves but also the times, the culture, and the literary antecedents that affected them. Of T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound he writes: "Eliot and Pound rebelled together against what they saw as the misuse of free or unmetered verse." And in discussing Eliot's The Waste Land, he remarks:

In The Waste Land he demanded to be read differently from other poets. He alters our way of reading for good, if we read him properly. The poem does not respond to analysis of its meanings--meanings cannot be detached from the texture of the poetry itself.

In addition to giving the analytical part of the reader's brain a good workout, as he parses everyone from Spenser to Ashbery to Walcott, Schmidt offers up plenty of idiosyncratic opinion that will alternately raise hackles or set heads nodding in vigorous agreement. This may not be the most objective treatment of poetry to come down the pike, but it is an invaluable--and deeply entertaining--reference. --Margaret Prior

From Publishers Weekly

Using Samuel Johnson's 18th-century Lives of the Poets as a blueprint, this exhaustive survey treks through 600 years of mostly British poetry in English, from Wycliffe and Wyatt to Andrew Motion and Les Murray. In each of 64 chapters crammed with juicy anecdotes ("The kiss of Walt Whitman is still on my lips," reported an enraptured Oscar Wilde upon meeting his idol), Schmidt moves from biography to formal techniques to cultural reception. He focuses, for example, on what Donald Davie liked about Robert Burns, or Pound admired in Chaucer; on how "a living poem can engage another poem at five hundred years' distance, or across the other side of the world." While some would argue that a couple of pages summarizing The Canterbury Tales or The Prelude is insufficient, the book is more of a gathering of friends and rivals than a comprehensive companion. Schmidt, the founder of London's influential Carcanet Press (distributed here by Paul and Co.), has an intuitive sense of organizationAone sequence from Wallace Stevens to Marianne Moore to Elizabeth Bishop is smoothly connected and riveting. Throughout his tour, he lingers at major moments in political, religious and social history to show how poets have used the resources of language to respond to their respective pressures. Recently rediscovered women poets such as Emilia Lanyer, Charlotte Smith and Mina Loy receive ample attention, and 20th-century trends and movements (imagism, vorticism, confessionalism, language poetry, etc.) are forcefully elucidated. Schmidt's interest in the history of publishing shadows the main narrative, allowing the reader to emerge with greater appreciation for those publishers who gambled on their taste to disseminate the work of history's most scandalous, reclusive and devoted wordsmiths. (Oct.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 992 pages
• Publisher: Knopf (October 5, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375406247
• ISBN-13: 978-0375406249
• Product Dimensions: 9.7 x 6.7 x 2.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #837,047 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars More than Biography, November 25, 1999

By 

Kenneth Hope - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lives of the Poets (Hardcover)

This book is nearly 1000 pages long. Nearly every one of these pages has something to commend it to anyone interested in poetry. (In fact, as I page through, I can't seem to find one that doesn't.) Schmidt is eclectic in his selection, as one might expect from the editor of the distinguished PN Review. He draws interesting material from throughout the English speaking world and hones in, with remarkable intelligence and good taste, on what makes these poets, and their poems, worthy of our attention. He is good and always interesting on biography, which takes second place to the poems. Schmidt gets it right by focussing, when he writes on the poems themselves, on rhythms, meters, syntax, diction, and what it feels like to read them well. He is generous in many ways, to the poets, to their poems, and to his readers. I hope they are many.

28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating but a little long, July 9, 2000

By 

Mike Christie (Austin, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Lives of the Poets (Hardcover)

"Lives of the Poets" covers seven hundred years of English language poets and poetry in a little under a thousand pages. Schmidt starts in the early fourteenth century--early enough that he takes several chapters to get to Chaucer--and continues right up to the present day, ending with Seamus Heaney and his contemporaries.

Schmidt's style is to take several contemporary names and treat them together in a single chapter. Sometimes he gives a poet a chapter to himself (Edmund Spenser, William Blake); sometimes he deals with half a dozen at a time. The chronological approach (which he acknowledges is disdained by some in academe) works very well in providing a narrative, a sense of unfolding of poetic skill and poetic tradition.

The period up to about 1900 is beautifully done. Most of the poets whose lives and work Schmidt describes are well-known, either for their poetry, or at least as names. He includes quite a few, however, who will be familiar only to academics or real poetry buffs--Juliana Berners, Robert Manning, Mary Wroth, William Cullen Bryant. Schmidt's prose is lively and engaging, and his love for his subjects and their poetry shines through. I found myself inspired to read the poets I didn't know. I also found his discussion of the poets I did know useful--he gives a lot of biographical detail, and makes thoughtful (and sometimes acid) comments on the poetry itself. For example, he's not a big fan of Swinburne, and while he acknowledges his popularity and influence has sharp things to say about his work.

However, Schmidt's coverage of the twentieth century is less satisfying. He covers more poets (about 130) of the twentieth century than of the previous six hundred years (about 115). He's aware this is a problem, and makes excuses for it at one point, but it causes some difficulties for the reader. When you read about Richard Rolle or William Langland, even if you don't know their work, Schmidt's placing of them in their historical context around Chaucer's time allows you to fit them into the poetic scheme of things. But when he covers very recent poets, such as Edward Kamau Braithwaite, the historical positioning Schmidt does is less convincing, and without even a quoted line or two to judge him by the reader is unlikely to remember much about Braithwaite at all.

The net effect is of a set of newspaper profiles of modern poets. This effect gets gradually worse towards the end of the twentieth century poets, though many twentieth century poets are well-known enough that the reader can supply some of the context for themselves (and probably is familiar with the poetry). Auden, Eliot, Yeats, and Kipling, and even Larkin, Plath, Hughes and Heaney, need very little introduction to those who've read even a little recent poetry. The book would be better for some culling of those poets whose work is not yet in this class.

Overall, a fascinating read. But if you're not the sort of person reading modern poetry fairly regularly, the last three or four hundred pages will probably be largely skimmed.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Cost of Eloquence, February 10, 2003

By 

Atar Hadari (London United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Lives of the Poets (Paperback)

Schmidt's history opens with an occasion on which he chaired a debate between Heaney, Walcott and Brodsky, contemporary giants - hence a portrait of himself in situ with the Gods - but its true opening scene is a typically more casual one mentioned in aside - where he tells us that his father disclaimed any further interest in his prospects when he announced his intention to publish poetry; he had put himself beyond the pale, made himself "a gambler" at best, and it is this chatty comfortableness along with self aggrandizement which holds the charm of this survey. Schmidt's paternal conference has the air of "Brideshead Revisited" as the painter Charles's father wonders aloud what became of a cousin who had run through his allowance early, gone off to Australia perhaps? Wherever possible in his account of the poets from Langland and Gower to his own stable of Khalvatis and Cissons Schmidt tries to give the impression that he was there, in spirit if not in person, and it is his identification of publishers' base motives not less than poets' fleeting visions which conspire to make this not so much a critical sourcebook as a story of how English poetry wound its roots into a tree.

Of the eighteenth century Tory publisher and clubman Tonson, whose Kit Kat club saw writers gathering with him to eat superb pies, he remarks that it was clever of him to gather writers round him so that he could pick off their completed works like berries ripened off the bush. It is just possible, he allows, that writers and publisher actually enjoyed each other's company socially. Of the printer who bought out Milton's copyright from his widow for an additional eight pounds after a total payment of fifteen, he observes that this was a good buy. The fathers of poets are viewed by Schmidt companionably as "men of substance", if they have wealth, and the sorry ends of poets who do not have such means or a career besides come to seem regular as passing calendar leaves. Spenser's work went up in flames, he ended very poor. Charlotte Mayhew, a favourite of Hardy's, consigned to a friend the copy of her poem taken in that great man's hand, and drank bleach. These, as well as the publishers' copyists, scribes and outgoings for paper are the cost of eloquence: a life in foolscap.

What emerges from the trawl of centuries is a generalism not common in this age of political axe grinders for critics: Schmidt sees that the ageing rebel turned conservative Wordsworth ("the silent muser had become the comfortable talker") echoes across centuries the radical turned arch-conservative Eliot, both critics in their age who turned their backs on ground broken. A half page on the dogs at poets' sides and what they tell us of their owners - Pope, Byron, Elizabeth Barret - is a gem. The readings of the poets are quirky but often fair: Browning left nine tenths of his work not worth re-reading, but that leaves a tenth that stands, a huge amount. Donne gets a quick seeing to - too clever and abstruse - Raleigh, with his deathbed nerves of steel, is "a man of flesh and blood". More often than not it is a chain of well chosen adjectives that makes Schmidt's prosecution or defense briefly and irrefutably - Johnson, despite his sloth, had "put so many projects into motion" that he achieved them, Dryden was happy to be top of his heap and did not "struggle with himself" to get higher. He quotes the great critics and sources so regularly - Aubrey, Wharton, Hazlitt, Eliot - that the intrusion of an occasional croney of his own - Cissons, Donald Davies - draws you up short. We had come to believe Schmidt was ensconced there in the Mermaid Tavern, what does this latter day vaingloriousness here? In these bowings to others' views he sometimes loses his tone - at his best he either lifts great critical cases outright or makes his own gruff motions to the jury, often digging up a soul long lost to view in the dungeons of posterity's Old Bailey.
It is a vast book. I have still not reached the twentieth century, though those I've browsed of the contemporary listings do not retain his scabrous touch. Pity. He leaves to other publisher-writers the honour of regaling us with tales of chicanery in his own poets' contracts. Or he reveres too much his comfortable perch with them to risk scaring his own poets from his own pie shop. Still. It's not possible to skip while reading through his earlier centuries. His greatest achievement is to make English poetry live like a story you do not wish to miss parts of - you never know when Burns will echo Piers Ploughman, you do not know when Schmidt's map, like a three dimensional model, will let you see the Pearl poet peeping up at the bottom of the sea beneath a fishing trip by some contemporary craft.