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Collected Poems, 1935-1992
Collected 1935-1992 contains the life work of the great English outsider poet F. T. Prince. Often working in forms that are deceptively traditional, Prince has a special genius for the lost and often unseen details of experience. His presence has been felt by a succession of English and American poets who, despite their working in more open forms, often arrive at a terrain already occupied by him. Selected by Harold Bloom as part of his canon of world literature.
- GenresPoetry
318 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1979
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
February 23, 2015
F. T. Prince is one of those poets whose chief claim to fame seems to be his obscurity. (Obscurity from fame, that is, not from meaning.) I have given this review four stars, rather than five, largely because one feels that Prince would have been embarrassed by excessive praise.
Prince's obscurity seems undeserved from the very opening of his collected works. The first poem of his first collection, ‘Letter to a Patron’, written when he was twenty six, unfolds with wonderfully sinuous and understated elegance – one can see why T. S. Eliot admired and chose to publish it. Eliot, however, passed on Prince’s next collection, which wasn’t published until 1954, even though it contained what was to become his best-known poem, ‘Soldiers Bathing’, based on his wartime experience and often considered one of the best poems of the Second World War.
(It isn’t the best of his poems, but not a lot of great poetry came out of that particular conflict. One of its strengths is that is not as excruciating as its premise - Oxford educated officer watching a bunch of naked men come and go, whilst thinking of Michelangelo - might suggest.)
Prince was born in South Africa, of a Jewish father and Scots Presbyterian mother, but educated by Christian Brothers. He became a Catholic, but never renounced his mixed origins. Jewishness plays an important role in his later poetry: it is moving to see him explicate an issue relating to his Catholic faith by reference to the teachings of an obscure Hasidic preacher of the eighteenth century. There is no sense of conflict. His most unique work, the beautiful long poem ‘Drypoints of the Hasidim’, is deeply immersed in Jewish history and scholarship, and entirely self-sufficient, and yet Prince saw it as a contribution to the post Second Vatican Council discussion.
There is a kind of passionate reticence about Prince’s classically-inflected poems, which probably accounts for their obscurity, although others have written in a similar vein with greater acclaim. It may be that his voice is just a little too quiet to be heard above the noise. It is good to see that Carcanet Press are making his voice audible again.
Prince's obscurity seems undeserved from the very opening of his collected works. The first poem of his first collection, ‘Letter to a Patron’, written when he was twenty six, unfolds with wonderfully sinuous and understated elegance – one can see why T. S. Eliot admired and chose to publish it. Eliot, however, passed on Prince’s next collection, which wasn’t published until 1954, even though it contained what was to become his best-known poem, ‘Soldiers Bathing’, based on his wartime experience and often considered one of the best poems of the Second World War.
(It isn’t the best of his poems, but not a lot of great poetry came out of that particular conflict. One of its strengths is that is not as excruciating as its premise - Oxford educated officer watching a bunch of naked men come and go, whilst thinking of Michelangelo - might suggest.)
Prince was born in South Africa, of a Jewish father and Scots Presbyterian mother, but educated by Christian Brothers. He became a Catholic, but never renounced his mixed origins. Jewishness plays an important role in his later poetry: it is moving to see him explicate an issue relating to his Catholic faith by reference to the teachings of an obscure Hasidic preacher of the eighteenth century. There is no sense of conflict. His most unique work, the beautiful long poem ‘Drypoints of the Hasidim’, is deeply immersed in Jewish history and scholarship, and entirely self-sufficient, and yet Prince saw it as a contribution to the post Second Vatican Council discussion.
There is a kind of passionate reticence about Prince’s classically-inflected poems, which probably accounts for their obscurity, although others have written in a similar vein with greater acclaim. It may be that his voice is just a little too quiet to be heard above the noise. It is good to see that Carcanet Press are making his voice audible again.
December 20, 2009
As odd and beautiful as the very early Auden. Prince doesn't belong anywhere except in the club-that-is-not-one. Each of his books is very different from the others yet all are recognizably his work. He was a master.
November 15, 2016
Worth it for 'Soldier's Bathing'
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews