Reading Old Friends

John Matthias is Professor of English at the University of Notre Dame and has been Visiting Fellow in poetry at Clare Hall, Cambridge. His six volumes of poetry include Turns, Crossing, Northern Summer: New and Selected Poems, and A Gathering of Ways. He has co-translated Contemporary Swedish Poetry, and The Battle of Kosovo, and he has edited 23 Modern British Poets, Introducing David Jones, and David Jones: Man and Poet. He has received awards from the Columbia University Translation Center, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, the Society of Midland Authors, and the Poetry Society of America. His poems and essays appear regularly in many American and British journals, and his work has been translated into Swedish, Dutch, French, German, Greek , and Serbo-Croatian.

"John Matthias is one of the leading poets in the USA at the moment. He is also an accomplished critic. These pieces are written in a congenial and civilized style. They are not 'criticism' in the current sense of tedious argument and defended theory. John writes for an audience that reads. Even so, there is a great deal of good criticism here, and the book will be reviewed as a critical tour de force. This is a lively book, an intelligent one, and one I think many will admire and find powerfully interesting." — Guy Davenport, University of Kentucky"He is a unique talent, combining the experimental energies of modernism and postmodernism with an acute sense of literary form…These impulses emerge, variously but always engagingly, throughout the essays collected here." — Vincent Sherry, Villanova UniversityIn reviewing Matthias' column "Not for Sale in USA," the Washington Post said of his poetry criticism, "Matthias writes with such gusto, knowledge, and love… Every word of this is exciting for anyone in the least interested in poetry."

• PrefaceAcknowledgmentsPart I: Old Friends and Old SelvesReading Old FriendsPlaces and Poems: A Self-Reading and a Reading of the Self in the Romantic Context from Wordsworth to ParkmanPart II: OthersPoetry of Place: From the Kentucky River to the Solent ShoreW.H. Auden and Benjamin BrittenRobert Duncan and David Jones: Some AffinitiesDai GreatcoatThe Later Poetry of David JonesSuch a Kingdom: The Poetry of Geoffrey Hill 1952-1971Poet-Critics of Two GenerationsSome Notes on the English Poetry of Goran Printz-PahlsonPart III: Three Poems on PoeticsTurns: Toward a Provisional Aesthetic and a DisciplineDouble Derivation, Association, and Cliche: From the Great Tournament Roll of WestminsterClarifications for Robert Jacoby: "Double Derivation ...," part iv, II. 1-10; part vii, II. 1-15, 22-28Part IV: Not for Sales in USA, Some Poets of the 1980sAnthologies of Contemporary British PoetryPoet-Translators and Translator-PoetsOf Publishers, Readings, and Festivals: Circa 1986Anglo-Welsh PoetryHugh MacDiarmid and Scottish PoetryScottish Poetry after MacDiarmidInside History and Outside History: Seamus Heaney, Eavan Boland, and Contemporary Irish PoetryPart V:: After Auden, Some Poets of the 1970sMichael HamburgerR.S. Thomas and Edwin MorganElizabeth Daryush and Barbara GuestJon StallworthyParis LearyAnne StevensonDavid SteingassWilliam Hunt and William EversonJohn FullerElizabeth Jenings and Peter PorterJohn Cotton and D.M. ThomasNotes