Cover of Lives of the Poets

Lives of the Poets

National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist

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.

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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 Poetsilluminates our most transcendent literary tradition.

Audience
adult
Length
epic · 992 pages

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These suit anyone who liked Lives of the Poets. Sign in and mark a few books for picks shaped around your own taste.

  1. The Art of Poetry: How to Read a Poem Shares poetry, nonfiction, literary criticism
  2. The Wounded Surgeon: Confession and Transformation in Six American Poets Shares poetry, literary criticism, nonfiction
  3. Poet Be Like God Shares poetry, biography, nonfiction
  4. The Complete Poems Shares poetry

“People who read Lives of the Poets tend to reach for these next.”

  1. Paul Celan: Poet, Survivor, Jew
  2. A Poet's Guide to Poetry
  3. The Sounds of Poetry: A Brief Guide
  4. Twentieth Century Pleasures: Prose on Poetry

“If you want more of the same (biography), start with these.”

  1. On Elizabeth Bishop
  2. The Last Avant-Garde: The Making of the New York School of Poets
  3. Rimbaud and Jim Morrison: The Rebel as Poet
  4. I Wanted to Write a Poem: The Autobiography of the Works of a Poet

“If it was the poetry that hooked you, try one of these.”

  1. The Road Not Taken: Finding America in the Poem Everyone Loves and Almost Everyone Gets Wrong
  2. On Whitman
  3. End to Torment: A Memoir of Ezra Pound by H. D.
  4. The Unknown Poe

“These start from a similar idea, even if they go somewhere else with it.”

  1. Poems of Christina Rossetti
  2. The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose of John Milton
  3. Adonis: Selected Poems
  4. Poetry: The Basics