Letters to Live Poets

1969 poetry collection by Bruce Beaver

0901760013Preceded byOpen at Random : Poems Followed byLauds and Plaints : Poems (1968-1972) 

Letters to Live Poets (1969) is the fourth poetry collection by the Australian poet Bruce Beaver. It won the Grace Leven Prize for Poetry in 1970.[1]

The collection consists of 34 poems, all of which are published in this collection for the first time.[1]

Contents

All of the poems in the collection are titled and numbered in sequence using Roman numerals, except for the first which is titled "Letters to Live Poets : Frank O'Hara". Frank O'Hara was an American poet who was killed in a car accident in 1966.

Critical reception

The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature called it Beaver's "major work" and noted that the book formed a "livre composé", a volume designed not as a collection of poems, but as a single poem, sustained through changing moods and verse-forms. They also note that the book was written "with obsessional purpose and speed, because Beaver believed he was losing his rationality".[2]

In a long essay examining the book's legacy and influence, Robert Savage notes, "The American influences on Letters to Live Poets, particular the influence of American confessional poetry, are well documented, and prompt James Tulip to call Letters «the most American work to have come out of Australia.»"[3]

Awards

See also

  • 1969 in Australian literature
  • 1969 in poetry

References

  1. ^ a b Letters to Live Poets by Bruce Beaver, Austlit
  2. ^ The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature, 2nd edition, pp461-462]
  3. ^ "The Politics of Influence: Bruce Beaver's Letters to Live Poets" by Robert Savage, Colloquy, issue six, 2001
  • v
  • t
  • e
1947–1949
  • Pacific Sea by Nan McDonald (1947)
  • A Drum for Ben Boyd by Francis Webb (1948)
  • Woman to Man by Judith Wright (1949)
1950–1959
  • No award (1950)
  • The Great South Land : An Epic Poem by Rex Ingamells (1951)
  • Between Two Tides by R. D. Fitzgerald (1952)
  • Tumult of the Swans by Roland Robinson (1953)
  • Thirty Poems by John Thompson (1954)
  • The Wandering Islands by A. D. Hope (1955)
  • No award (1956)
  • Elegiac and Other Poems by Leonard Mann (1957)
  • Antipodes in Shoes by Geoffrey Dutton (1958)
  • The Wind at Your Door by R. D. Fitzgerald (1959)
1960–1969
1970–1979
1980–1989
1990–1999
  • No award (1990)
  • Dog Fox Field by Les Murray (1991)
  • Empire of Grass by Gary Catalano (1992)
  • Peniel by Kevin Hart (1992)
  • The End of the Season by Philip Hodgins (1993)
  • No award (1994)
  • New and Selected Poems by Kevin Hart (1995)
  • Flying the Coop : New and Selected Poems 1972-1994 by Rhyll McMaster (1995)
  • Path of Ghosts: poems 1986-93 by Jemal Sharah (1995)
  • No award (1996)
  • The Undertow: New and Selected Poems by John Kinsella (1997)
  • No award (1998)
  • No award (1999)
2000–2009
  • No award (2000)
  • Darker and Lighter by Geoff Page (2001)
  • Versary by Kate Lilley (2002)
  • Lost in the Foreground by Stephen Edgar (2003)
  • Totem by Luke Davies (2004)
  • Next to Nothing by Noel Rowe (2005)
  • The Past Completes Me: Selected Poems 1973-2003 by Alan Gould (2006)
  • The Goldfinches of Baghdad by Robert Adamson (2007)
  • The Australian Popular Songbook by Alan Wearne (2008)
  • No award (2009)
2010–present
  • Phantom Limb by David Musgrave (2010)
  • No award (2011)
  • Another Fine Morning in Paradise by Michael Sharkey (2012)