Robert Graves and the White Goddess: 1940-1985

Rating:
Summary: fascinating look into the creative life
Review: The third book on the life of poet and novelist Robert Graves is the story of his achievement of great public success, and then what? So many poets have achieved greatness only to spend the rest of their lives in a hapless chase to regain it. Graves' unique pursuit of his path should be a salutory example to all that it need not be so. Along the way we also find out about his new muses and other new relationships both with his growing family as well as with the world. Particularly interesting are his lectures and synopses of his remarks on other poets including Lawrence, Hopkins, Yeats, Pound, Eliot, Auden, Thomas and Byron, most of whom earned his displeasure to a greater or lesser degree. There are also amusing vignettes such as Graves' introducing J.R.R. Tolkien to Ava Gardner when neither one had ever heard of the other. Although Graves' last decade is almost too sad and his pursuit of younger women sometimes a bit pathetic, overall it is always a moving, intriguing and enjoyable story. The second volume of this work does not seem to be on Amazon, which I find a horrible omission.

Rating:
Summary: fascinating look into the creative life
Review: The third book on the life of poet and novelist Robert Graves is the story of his achievement of great public success, and then what? So many poets have achieved greatness only to spend the rest of their lives in a hapless chase to regain it. Graves' unique pursuit of his path should be a salutory example to all that it need not be so. Along the way we also find out about his new muses and other new relationships both with his growing family as well as with the world. Particularly interesting are his lectures and synopses of his remarks on other poets including Lawrence, Hopkins, Yeats, Pound, Eliot, Auden, Thomas and Byron, most of whom earned his displeasure to a greater or lesser degree. There are also amusing vignettes such as Graves' introducing J.R.R. Tolkien to Ava Gardner when neither one had ever heard of the other. Although Graves' last decade is almost too sad and his pursuit of younger women sometimes a bit pathetic, overall it is always a moving, intriguing and enjoyable story. The second volume of this work does not seem to be on Amazon, which I find a horrible omission.