The Essential Baxter

by James K. Baxter, John Weir (Editor)

Although many treasure the poetry of New Zealander James K. Baxter, less familiar are his forays into written prose and public speaking which similarly dazzle, challenge, and entertain. Laced with the humor, passion, intelligence, and everyday detail beloved of his poetry, this unique
selection of writings explores those issues--social life, love, religion, nature, and everyday life--which make Baxter's life and work central to the New Zealand experience and to his generation.

158 pages, Hardcover

First published April 14, 1994

About the author

James Keir Baxter was a poet, and is a celebrated figure in New Zealand society.

In his critical study Lives of the Poets, Michael Schmidt defines Baxter's 'Jacobean consonantal rhetoric'.Schmidt has claimed that Baxter was 'one of the most precocious poets of the century' whose neglect outside of New Zealand is baffling. His writing was affected by his alcoholism. His work drew upon Dylan Thomas and Yeats; then on MacNeice and Lowell. Michael Schmidt identifies 'an amalgam of Hopkins, Thomas and native atavisms' in Baxter's 'Prelude N.Z.