Keith Douglas (Poet to Poet) - Hardcover

Douglas, Keith

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0571230385 ISBN 13: 9780571230389

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 2006

Synopsis

In this series, a contemporary poet selects and introduces a poet of the past. By their choice of poems and by the personal and critical reactions they express in their prefaces, the editors offer insights into their own work as well as providing an accessible and passionate introduction to the most important poets in our literature.

Keith Douglas (1920-1944) began writing when he was at school at Christ's Hospital School, London, continued at Oxford, and thereafter in the army and in the Middle East. By the time he was killed in Normandy, aged only twenty-four, in June 1944, he had achieved a body of work that singled him out as the most brilliant and promising English poet of the Second World War. The present pioneering selection of Keith Douglas's work, by Ted Hughes, was first published in 1964.

About this title

Review

“Each poem turns out to be an exercise [and] whatever they are, these 'exercises' display [the poet's] striving towards and, briefly, perfecting the qualities we value in him: the incisive, nimble glance, the uniquely tempered music, the simple, point-blank, bull's-eye statement, the tensile delicacy.” —Ted Hughes, from his Introduction
“Ted did a beautiful [BBC radio] program on a marvelous young British poet, Keith Douglas, killed in the last war... Both of us mourn this poet immensely and feel he would have been like a lovely big brother to us.” —from a letter Sylvia Plath wrote to her mother in June 1962

"Each poem turns out to be an exercise [and] whatever they are, these 'exercises' display [the poet's] striving towards and, briefly, perfecting the qualities we value in him: the incisive, nimble glance, the uniquely tempered music, the simple, point-blank, bull's-eye statement, the tensile delicacy." --Ted Hughes, from his Introduction
"Ted did a beautiful [BBC radio] program on a marvelous young British poet, Keith Douglas, killed in the last war... Both of us mourn this poet immensely and feel he would have been like a lovely big brother to us." --from a letter Sylvia Plath wrote to her mother in June 1962

Each poem turns out to be an exercise [and] whatever they are, these 'exercises' display [the poet's] striving towards and, briefly, perfecting the qualities we value in him: the incisive, nimble glance, the uniquely tempered music, the simple, point-blank, bull's-eye statement, the tensile delicacy. "Ted Hughes, from his Introduction"

Ted did a beautiful [BBC radio] program on a marvelous young British poet, Keith Douglas, killed in the last war... Both of us mourn this poet immensely and feel he would have been like a lovely big brother to us. "from a letter Sylvia Plath wrote to her mother in June 1962""

Each poem turns out to be an exercise [and] whatever they are, these 'exercises' display [the poet's] striving towards and, briefly, perfecting the qualities we value in him: the incisive, nimble glance, the uniquely tempered music, the simple, point-blank, bull's-eye statement, the tensile delicacy. Ted Hughes, from his Introduction

Ted did a beautiful [BBC radio] program on a marvelous young British poet, Keith Douglas, killed in the last war... Both of us mourn this poet immensely and feel he would have been like a lovely big brother to us. from a letter Sylvia Plath wrote to her mother in June 1962

"

About the Author

Keith Douglas was born in 1920. At school and at Oxford he was both a prolific poet and a committed member of the Officers Training Corps. When the Second World War broke out, he enlisted immediately, and was posted to Palestine in 1941. When his tank regiment began fighting in El Alamein in 1942, Douglas was instructed to stay behind as a staff officer. But he made his own way to the battlefield, an experience which he recounted in his prose memoir Alamein to Zem Zem (first published in 1946). He later took part in the Normandy invasion on 6 June 1944, and was killed three days later. His Collected Poems came out in 1951.

About this edition

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0571230385
• ISBN 13: 9780571230389
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 48
• Editor: Hughes Ted