Lives of the Poets Book

Quintessentially good-humoured, consummately unstuffy, all but dripping with erudition: Michael Schmidt is an English scholar to die for. In this seminal work he undertakes--and succeeds at--an imposing task: leading us through a vast and swirling river otherwise known as the expanded canon of English literature. Taking the era of the Black Death as a starting point--children dragged by their foster mothers past lime-doused pits of the dead--he immediately captures our justifiably sceptical attention. Travelling from Lichfield and Devon, to Cambridge, Stratford, and York (to name a few), he's soon our trusted tour guide, offering literary criticism, summaries, biographies, forging connections between and among the greats and lesser knowns. We're also treated to an entertaining array of anecdotes, including, for instance, that Shakespeare's contemporaries quaffed the first English beer (hops having arrived in Kent), and that upon its initial publication, Walt Whitman's Song of Myself was banned in Boston. Like all good guides, he knows exactly when to speed up, when to pull to shore to examine more closely the murky depths. With opinions at times bordering on the acerbic--he spares no kindness for Allen Ginsberg and his brand of substance-abuse induced visions, nor is he about to excuse Wallace Stevens for "signing his soul over to the Hartford" [Insurance Company]--Schmidt navigates through choppy, and at times altogether uncharted waters. Under his avuncular tutelage, we come to understand how this "vulgar English...this poor cousin of Latin and Norman French" rose from the lowly depths of servant's quarters and peasant's fields to the chosen language of Chaucer and Milton, and all who follow in their wake. --Martha SilanoRead More