Poet in America: Winfield Townley Scott Review

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(More customer reviews)What a joy to discover that Scott Donaldson's masterful biography of Winfield Townley Scott, POET IN AMERICA, is available again! Scott was never considered more than a second-rank poet in his lifetime, and today is entirely forgotten; and yet, ever since discovering his poems "O Lyric Love" and "Five for the Grace of Man" in the landmark anthology THE VOICE THAT IS GREAT WITHIN US back in my Peace Corps days, he has been one of my favorites. (Readers new to Scott's work should begin, I think, with CHANGE OF WEATHER or NEW AND SELECTED POEMS.) The real delight is that Donaldson has provided us with a biography fully worthy of Scott, sympathetic but unflinching. The opening pages--set on the last day of Scott's life--are among the most powerful and moving I have ever read in a biography. Indeed, POET IN AMERICA should be required reading for anyone venturing into the field of literary biography--it is a beautifully balanced and memorable piece of work.
Now, if only Scott's own poetry could be brought back into print!

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As James Dickey observed, Winfield Scotts story is truer of the typical destruction of an American poet than the accounts of all the Poets, Hart Cranes, and other excessives put together.

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