Patrick J. Keane: A Wild Civility: Interactions in the Poetry and Thought of Robert Graves

Abstract

In keeping with the format of the Literary Frontiers Editions, Patrick Keane in this lucid and compact monograph makes a meaningful critical statement about his subject. This volume is not an introduction to the poetry of Robert Graves. Taking for granted the reader’s prior knowledge of his work, Keane examines the mixture of precision and passion in the poetry and thought of Graves and his interactions with the past, his uses, that is, of his literary and mythological heritage. He also examines Graves’s hostility to Yeats and comes to the conclusion that Yeats was Graves’s closest literary relative.