Most Read... Rebecca WattsThe Cult of the Noble Amateur
(PN Review 239)
John McAuliffeBill Manhire in Conversation with John McAuliffe
(PN Review 259)
Patricia CraigVal Warner: A Reminiscence
(PN Review 259)
Eavan BolandA Lyric Voice at Bay
(PN Review 121)
Vahni CapildeoOn Judging Prizes, & Reading More than Six Really Good Books
(PN Review 237)
Christopher MiddletonNotes on a Viking Prow
(PN Review 10)
Next Issue Kirsty Gunn re-arranges the world John McAuliffe reads Seamus Heaney's letters and translations Chris Price's 'Songs of Allegiance' David Herman on Aharon Appelfeld Victoria Moul on Christopher Childers compendious Greek and Latin Lyric Book Philip Terry again answers the question, 'What is Poetry'
Poems Articles Interviews Reports Reviews Contributors
Reader Survey
PN Review Substack

This review is taken from PN Review 77, Volume 17 Number 3, January - February 1991.

Jeremy HookerGATHERING ALL IN David Jones: Man and Poet, edited by John Matthias (The National Poetry Foundation, University of Maine) n.p.

David Jones: Man and Poet, edited by John Matthias, is a welcome addition to the National Poetry Foundation series of books on modern poets. As John Matthias says in his Introduction, it differs in format from other volumes in the series in discussing visual art alongside poetry, and in being 'abundantly illustrated' with reproductions of David Jones's visual work. The book consists of original and previously published contributions by more than thirty writers, together with a bibliography and a list of visual and plastic works of art. Many of the contributors are poets. A few, such as R.S. Thomas and John Montague, are represented by poems, and others, including Eliot, Auden, Spender, MacDiarmid, Kathleen Raine and John Peck, by more or less substantial essays on David Jones. Apart from the poets and with a few exceptions, such as Neil Corcoran, most of the criticism of the writings comes from scholars in North America. Of this scholarly work, Thomas Dilworth's contributions, and the two essays on David Jones the thinker, by Kathleen Henderson Staudt and Thomas R. Whitaker respectively, are especially valuable. The writers on the art, Eric Gill, Kenneth Clark, Arthur Giardelli and Paul Hills, are all from this side of the Atlantic. Each writes effectively on his chosen subject but there is no one essay in the book that explores, in depth, the imaginative world common to David Jones's writings and paintings. Elsewhere, Paul Hills, David Blamires and Thomas Dilworth have all writen about David Jones artist and ...


Searching, please wait... animated waiting image