Collected Poems
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Author Description
Robert Graves was one of the greatest and most prolific British writers of the 20th century, the author of numerous volumes of poetry, as well as countless essays, historical novels (including the well-known I, Claudius and Claudius the God), and the marvelous nonfiction work The White Goddess.A writer of striking originality, he spoke with a highly individual yet ordered voice in which lucidity and intensity combine to a remarkable degree. His love poetry, some of his best-known and most distinctive work, is at once cynical and passionate, romantic and erotic, personal and universal. He wanted his poetry to act as a "spiritual cathartic" to the poet and the reader. His work has been described as "romanticism boiled dry," a striving for the pure, the unpretentious, the essential, the vigorous, and the "non-literary."This volume represents Graves' final thoughts on his prodigious body of work, containing those poems which he most wanted to see survive. Long out of print, it is being reissued to honor his death in early 1986.
Menrva's Summary
THE PULSE
This collection serves as the definitive distillation of Robert Graves' poetic output, capturing his final selection of work he deemed worthy of preservation. The poems function as a spiritual cathartic, navigating the tension between romantic idealism and cynical observation. Graves employs a precise, unadorned linguistic style to explore themes of love, mythology, and the human condition. The narrative framework is primarily lyrical and introspective, reflecting the poet's lifelong pursuit of essential, non-literary truth.
INSIDE THE PAGES
- Exploration of classical and mythological archetypes
- Introspective examination of romantic and erotic love
- Use of sparse, disciplined, and unpretentious language
- Focus on the tension between cynicism and passion
- Rhythmic structures rooted in traditional prosody
- Themes of personal identity and the poet's role in society
- Philosophical inquiries into the nature of spiritual catharsis
- Chronological arrangement reflecting the poet's evolving perspective
THE COLLECTIVE ECHO
Discussion often centers on Graves' unique ability to balance intense emotional subject matter with a highly ordered and lucid technical execution. Readers frequently highlight the collection's stark, minimalist aesthetic, which critics have famously characterized as romanticism boiled dry. The work is widely recognized for its rejection of decorative artifice in favor of a more vigorous and essential poetic voice. Scholars and enthusiasts alike value this volume as the final, curated testament of a writer who sought to strip away the non-essential to reach the core of human experience.
Page Count:
624
Publication Date:
1988-03-03
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
ISBN-10:
0195051432
ISBN-13:
9780195051438
Poetry
20th Century
Classic Literature
British literature
