Against Oblivion

The idea for Ian Hamilton's unorthodox new book was sparked by a rereading of Samuel Johnson's classic Lives of the English Poets. Johnson included appraisals of 52 poets, but of these only a tiny handful - four or five, perhaps - are still remembered. What, then, of the 20th century? How many English-language poets of that epoch will we be admiring 200 years from now? How many will resist oblivion? Hamilton takes 45 dead 20th-century poets and offers a personal - and sometimes highly critical - response to each of them. And in the process he constructs a portrayal of what the living of a 20th-century poetic life has actually involved.