Al Alvarez

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Al Alvarez, 2006

Al Alvarez (born August 5, 1929 in London ; † September 23, 2019 there ) was a British poet , writer and literary critic who also published under the name A. Alvarez .

Born Alfred Alvarez , he was educated at Oundle School and Corpus Christi College , Oxford , where he graduated with honors in English. After teaching briefly in Oxford and the USA, he concentrated on writing in his late twenties. From 1956 to 1966 he was a literary critic and editor of poetry for the British newspaper The Observer . In this role he introduced the works of John Berryman , Robert Lowell , Sylvia Plath , Zbigniew Herbert and Miroslav Holub to the British public.

Alvarez was the author of many non-fiction books. The best known is his study of suicide The Savage God (German: The cruel god ), which received additional resonance through his friendship with Sylvia Plath. He also wrote about divorce (Life After Marriage) , dreams ( Night , German: Die Nacht ) and the oil industry (Offshore) as well as about his hobbies: Poker (The Biggest Game In Town) and mountaineering ( Feeding the Rat , German: Wall addict ). His autobiography, published in 1999, is entitled: Where Did It All Go Right?

The anthology of poetry The New Poetry , published by Alvarez in 1962, was welcomed by the British public as a fresh start. In the introduction, Alvarez expressed his displeasure with the narrow sociographic perspective of the English New Lines poets of the 1950s and the ideology of traditional English “gentility” that they shaped . Instead, as an aesthetic manifesto , he called for a more uncompromising new poetry in response to the new age of social mobility and cultural anxiety (“a manifesto for a tough new poetry that was responsive to a new age of social mobility and cultural anxiety”) . In order to deliberately delimit and clarify his position on literary criticism, he accordingly gave, in addition to Ted Hughes and Thom Gunn, particularly contemporary American poets such as John Berryman and Robert Lowell in his collection . Shortly after the publication of his anthology, Alvarez was one of the first to get to know the poems of the American poet Sylvia Plath, which he later published in the anthology Ariel , and which he classified as brilliant. He repeatedly regretted that Plath's poems came only a little late in order to be included in his anthology.

In the 2003 film Sylvia , Alvarez was portrayed by Jared Harris . The focus of the film is the turbulent relationship between Sylvia Plath and her husband Ted Hughes.

Bibliography (selection)

  • The Shaping Spirit (1958)
  • The School of Donne (1961)
  • The New Poetry (1962)
  • Under Pressure (1965)
  • Beyond All This Fiddle (1968)
  • The Savage God (1972, German: The cruel god )
  • Samuel Beckett (1973, German: Samuel Beckett )
  • Hers (1974)
  • Hunt (1979)
  • Life After Marriage (1982)
  • The Biggest Game in Town (1983)
  • Feeding the Rat (1989, German: Wall addict )
  • Day of Atonement (1991)
  • Night (1995, German: Die Nacht )
  • Where Did It All Go Right? (1999)
  • Poker: Bets, Bluffs, and Bad Beats (2001)
  • New & Selected Poems (2002)
  • The Writer's Voice (2005)
  • Risky Business (2007)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ William Grimes: A. Alvarez Dies at 90; Poet Elevated Both Sylvia Plath and Poker. In: The New York Times , September 23, 2019. Retrieved September 25, 2019.
  2. ↑ See the entry Al Alvarez on Poetry Foundation , accessed on August 31, 2017.
  3. ↑ See Hans Ulrich Seeber, Hubert Zapf and Annegret Maack: Die Lyrik nach 1945 . In: Hans Ulrich Seeber (Ed.): English literary history . 4th ext. Aufl. JB Metzler, Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-476-02035-5 , pp. 365–379, here p. 371. See also the review by Jonathan Bate : The New Poetry selected and introduced by A Alvarez, book of a lifetime . In: The Independent , October 29, 2015. Retrieved August 31, 2017.
personal data
SURNAME Alvarez, Al
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Alvarez, Alfred; Alvarez, A.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British lyric poet, writer and literary critic
DATE OF BIRTH August 5, 1929
PLACE OF BIRTH London , UK
DATE OF DEATH 23 September 2019
Place of death London , UK