The First Poets - Annotated by Michael Schmidt (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A dazzling literary exploration by acclaimed poet and critic Michael Schmidt, The First Poets brings to life for the general reader the great Greek poets who gave our poetic tradition its first bearings and whose works have had an enduring influence on our literature and our imagination.

Starting with the legendary and possibly mythical Orpheus and with Homer, Schmidt conjures a host of our literary forebears. From Hipponax, "the dirty old man of poetry," to Theocritus, the father of pastoral; from Sappho, who threw herself from a cliff for love, to Hesiod, who claimed a visit from the Muses-the stories in The First Poets masterfully merge fact and conjecture into animated and compelling portraits of these ancestors of our culture.

Review Quotes

"Exhilarating. . . . It's hard to be temperate about Michael Schmidt's loving, informed and deeply engaging survey. . . . It would be difficult to imagine a better introduction to its subject."
-The Washington Post

"Exhilarating . . . a learned feast. . . . Schmidt knows and loves poetry and has a marvelous feel for it." -Newsday

About the Author

Michael Schmidt is the editor of PN Review, and editorial and managing director of Carcanet Press. He lives in Manchester, England, where he is the director of the Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University.