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.
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Famous quotes containing the word poetry:
“If poetry should address itself to the same needs and aspirations, the same hopes and fears, to which the Bible addresses itself, it might rival it in distribution.”
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“Poetry, and Picture, are Arts of a like nature; and both are busie about imitation. It was excellently said of Plutarch, Poetry was a speaking Picture, and Picture a mute Poesie. For they both invent, faine, and devise many things, and accommodate all they invent to the use, and service of nature. Yet of the two, the Pen is more noble, than the Pencill. For that can speake to the Understanding; the other, but to the Sense.”
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