Stephen Spender - Böcker

Poems Written Abroad is the first publication of the earliest collection of poetry by the famous poet, novelist, literary critic, translator, and radical, Sir Stephen Spender (1909-1995). Spender wrote and compiled this manuscript in 1927, when he was living in Nantes and Lausanne. In tone and diction, Spender's poems range from creatively traditional to unexpectedly innovative. They reflect his reading in Shakespeare and French poetry, as well as his absorption in music and modern art. They also document his struggles with his sexual identity and his emerging desire to devote his life, at whatever cost, to the writing of poetry.This beautiful facsimile edition, authorized by the Spender estate, faithfully reproduces the features of the original manuscript now held by the Lilly Library, including the frontispiece, an ink drawing by Spender himself, and little-known photographs of the poet. The editor's extensive introduction and detailed explanatory notes situate Spender's juvenilia in the context of his life and work and the history of modern poetry. The volume will appeal to readers with interests in modern poetry, gender studies, and fine books.

Shelley said, in his Defence of Poetry, that poetry should be both centre and circumference of knowledge. In his new book, Spender takes Shelley's claim and relates it to modern literature. He points out that, ever since the Industrial Revolution, writers have been conscious of there being a problem of creating literature in the industrial era. All the discussions of tradition, symbolism, myth and the rest are part of a conscious strategy of writers to come to terms with a modern world which they feel presents quite special problems for them. Spender shows how Matthew Arnold's idea that criticism might be more important than poetry in our time, was taken over by poets who wrote criticism, and how in tern they have become superseded by critics who write poetry. The critical intelligence tens to absorb creative energy. He discusses the difference between the creative and critical functions and things that the present tendency of criticism to supersede creativity, and for poetry to become an academic exercise conducted by poets who are dons, is having a stifling effect on poetry. He thinks that there is an increasing tendency for the most creative activity of literature to become shut off from life and fermented, and that literature should be related much more to contemporary history, and less to dogmatic principles of academic criticism. This is a book in which the writer tried to reassert the relationship of literature to modern life. He believes that this relationship was the pre-occupation of writers in the 1920s and 1930, but that since then literature has become increasingly split into the writing of the new academics and that of aggressive anti-intellectuals. He things that contemporary criticism should be on a much wider basis, and take into account the history and the society in which we live, as well as the abstract principles which recent critics have evolved. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1963.

Shelley said, in his Defence of Poetry, that poetry should be both centre and circumference of knowledge. In his new book, Spender takes Shelley's claim and relates it to modern literature. He points out that, ever since the Industrial Revolution, writers have been conscious of there being a problem of creating literature in the industrial era. All the discussions of tradition, symbolism, myth and the rest are part of a conscious strategy of writers to come to terms with a modern world which they feel presents quite special problems for them. Spender shows how Matthew Arnold's idea that criticism might be more important than poetry in our time, was taken over by poets who wrote criticism, and how in tern they have become superseded by critics who write poetry. The critical intelligence tens to absorb creative energy. He discusses the difference between the creative and critical functions and things that the present tendency of criticism to supersede creativity, and for poetry to become an academic exercise conducted by poets who are dons, is having a stifling effect on poetry. He thinks that there is an increasing tendency for the most creative activity of literature to become shut off from life and fermented, and that literature should be related much more to contemporary history, and less to dogmatic principles of academic criticism. This is a book in which the writer tried to reassert the relationship of literature to modern life. He believes that this relationship was the pre-occupation of writers in the 1920s and 1930, but that since then literature has become increasingly split into the writing of the new academics and that of aggressive anti-intellectuals. He things that contemporary criticism should be on a much wider basis, and take into account the history and the society in which we live, as well as the abstract principles which recent critics have evolved. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1963.

Stephen Spender, the son of a journalist, was born in London in 1909. He was educated at University College, Oxford, where he met, among others, W. H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood and Louis MacNeice, with whom he was to develop a poetics of engagement, writing powerfully of the confusion and alarm of 1930s Europe. He visited Spain during the Civil War, in 1937, where he assisted the Republican cause with propaganda activity. His post-war memoir World within World was recognised as one of the most illuminating literary autobiographies to have come out of the 1930s and 1940s, distilling a distinctively personal, humanistic socialism. His poetry has been praised for its exploratory candour, its personal approach to the stresses of modernity, and its exact portraiture of social and political upheaval. Grey Gowrie's new selection offers a timely and incisive revaluation of Spender's substantial poetic corpus.

Stephen Spender, along with his friends W. H. Auden, Louis MacNeice and C. Day Lewis, rose to prominence in the 1930s, writing powerfully of the fear and paranoia of a continent heading towards war. By the time of his death in 1995 he had established a distinguished reputation as a poet, critic, editor and translator. This New Collected Poems, edited by Michael Brett, gathers seven decades of verse from Poems (1933) to Dolphins (1994) and the late uncollected work. Reordering the thematic principle of the 1985 Collected Poems, this edition returns to a book-by-book chronology and allows the reader to experience, for the first time, the full development and range of his career.