nnyhav
Reader
Poet, novelist, essayist, critic, translator ... so opens the bookjacket backblurb on my copy of Collected Poems (Doubleday '58, '61). I won't rehash here the bioverviews provided at the Trust Society, kirjasto or wiki.
I've been prompted to open this thread upon completing The White Goddess, Graves' historical grammar of poetic myth, of which I'll have more to say downthread. For now, I'll leave it at finding the first half ingenious, the second half a slog ... with all due respect to serendipity: I read this in part to better get at the poetry, and the aforementioned volume opened of its own accord to the poem entitled "The White Goddess" (and no, there was no defect in the binding that caused it).
I also read Good-bye to All That a couple years ago, my reaction at the time: "Remarkable in its time, so successful in setting the standard that it seems less remarkable now. I preferred Cummings' The Enormous Room." (cf subsequent comments on WWI lit)
But Graves is best remembered for I, Claudius (& then Claudius the God), which engendered a BBC series probably even better remembered; in any case, it's been too long for me to remember much. (But I do recall his rendering of Apuleius' The Golden Ass ...)
I've been prompted to open this thread upon completing The White Goddess, Graves' historical grammar of poetic myth, of which I'll have more to say downthread. For now, I'll leave it at finding the first half ingenious, the second half a slog ... with all due respect to serendipity: I read this in part to better get at the poetry, and the aforementioned volume opened of its own accord to the poem entitled "The White Goddess" (and no, there was no defect in the binding that caused it).
I also read Good-bye to All That a couple years ago, my reaction at the time: "Remarkable in its time, so successful in setting the standard that it seems less remarkable now. I preferred Cummings' The Enormous Room." (cf subsequent comments on WWI lit)
But Graves is best remembered for I, Claudius (& then Claudius the God), which engendered a BBC series probably even better remembered; in any case, it's been too long for me to remember much. (But I do recall his rendering of Apuleius' The Golden Ass ...)