Poetry
Empson's poetry is clever, learned, dry, aethereal and technically virtuosic—not wholly dissimilar to his critical work. His high regard for the metaphysical poet John Donne is to be seen in many places within his work, tempered with his appreciation of Buddhist thinking, an occasional tendency to satire, and a larger awareness of intellectual trends. He wrote very few poems and stopped publishing poetry almost entirely after 1940. His Complete Poems is 512 pages long, with over 300 pages of notes. In reviewing this work, Frank Kermode commended him as a 'most noteworthy poet', and chose it as International Book of the Year at the TLS.
Read more about this topic: William Empson
Famous quotes containing the word poetry:
“The award of a pure gold medal for poetry would flatter the recipient unduly: no poem ever attains such carat purity.”
—Robert Graves (1895–1985)
“Our poetry emulates the recent progress in military strategy: Our army’s strength is the foot soldiers.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)
“Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.”
—Aristotle (384–322 B.C.)