Purity of Diction in English Verse and Articulate Energy

In his criticism, he has drawn a map of modernism, starting with Hardy and

Pound, that remains one of the definitive outlines of twentieth-century

experiment in form and language. The mapmaker, in this case, is a notable

locus on the map.

Helen Vendler

Donald Davie's first two prose books (1952, 1955), available now in one

volume with a new foreword, set the agenda for 'The Movement' and shaped

the critical approach of two generations of readers and teachers of poetry.

They have also proven of value to poets finding their way.

Intended as 'two stages in one investigation', they provide a

brilliantly detailed analysis of the workings of English poetry and remain,

with books such as I.A.Richards's Practical Criticism and William Empson's

Seven Types of Ambiguity, primary critical texts, reviving attention to

poetry at a technical level and, in the process, stirring awake for many

readers major (and minor) writers of the late eighteenth century who

require special qualities of attention.

Davie remains a particularist, proving in insight after insight the

deep rewards of close attention. For him poetry is a responsible art; it is

not an end in itself but must always 'reek of the human'.