As Bruce Bawer wrote in Bookforum, "the late Guy Davenport (1927-2005) left behind an oeuvre that is one long lesson in the history of civilization...
read full description
reviews
Feb 11, 2012
Eric
rated it: 
I've lost count of the times I read his essay on Whitman.
Within a few miles of each other in the 1880s, Whitman was putting the last touches to his great book, Eadweard Muybridge was photographing movements milliseconds apart of animals, naked athletes, and women, and Thomas Eakins was painting surgeons, boxers, musicians, wrestlers, and Philadelphians. In a sense Muybridge and Eakins were catching up with Whitman’s pioneering. Their common subject, motion, the robust real, skilled aMore...
4 comments
like
(14 people liked it)
Jan 07, 2008
Stacia
rated it:
Shifting perceptions of landscape from topographical features we encounter in space to milemarkers in whole though cannons, Davenport brings readers across bridges linking Olson, Pound, Greek myth, Joyce, traditional symbolism of the Angles, and the revival of Old Russian...in the first two essays. A total mindflare.
0 comments
like
(3 people liked it)
Nov 25, 2007
Alexander
rated it:
Reading these essays is like getting a short master class in each topic, while being in the presence of an extraordinary prose style. Sentence for sentence, Davenport is one of the most incredible writers we've produced. This book of essays of his is essential, I think, if you're at all interested in him.
0 comments
like
(3 people liked it)
Apr 30, 2011
Black Cynocephalus
rated it: 
Some of these essays really aren't for me. Case 'n point: Another Odyssey. Davenport breaks down various lines from multiple translations of Homer's epic to show how the translator will always recreate his own version of the original. That, in every translation, you get a lot of translator to go along with your Homer. It's not a profound observation in itself, but in his hands he showcases the variety of subtleties that each translator employs in his spin on the language of the original. It's th
More...
0 comments
like
(1 person liked it)
Sep 17, 2008
I think I'm going to be "currently reading" this for the rest of my life. It's intellectually a bit thick, and not a cover-to-cover experience. The author finds it necessary to quote in foreign languages. I"m an American - no fair!
0 comments
like
(2 people liked it)
Dec 04, 2010
Kitty
rated it:
I wish every English teacher read this book and shared the insights with their students -- hopefully with shades of enthusiasm and passion like Guy Davenport.
This is the sort of book that celebrates humanism and leaves the reader breathless, as if having attended a reception where everybody who was anybody from Homer and all his characters to Wittgenstein and beyond has been present and asked you some probing question. I love the chapters that deal with translation, and appreciate all the More...
This is the sort of book that celebrates humanism and leaves the reader breathless, as if having attended a reception where everybody who was anybody from Homer and all his characters to Wittgenstein and beyond has been present and asked you some probing question. I love the chapters that deal with translation, and appreciate all the More...
0 comments
like
(1 person liked it)
Aug 24, 2007
Caroline
rated it:
I am laying/lying (?) on the floor and dying.
Though, parts do suck.
Though, parts do suck.
0 comments
like
(1 person liked it)
Mar 02, 2010
David R.
rated it:
"There is no way to prepare yourself for reading Guy Davenport. You stand in awe before his knowledge of the archaic and his knowledge of the modern. Even more, you stand in awe of the connections he can make between the archaic and the modern; he makes the remote familiar and the familiar fundamental."
— Los Angeles Times Book Review
"As a critic, Davenport shines as an intrepid appreciator, an ideal teacher. By preference, he likes to walk the reader through a pa More...
— Los Angeles Times Book Review
"As a critic, Davenport shines as an intrepid appreciator, an ideal teacher. By preference, he likes to walk the reader through a pa More...
0 comments
like
(1 person liked it)
Apr 04, 2008
Gabriel
rated it:
Davenport's collection, particularly in the first section dealing mostly with Pound, might have been scaled back a bit in the interest of a tighter selection of essays, or edited to reflect the inclusion of so many essays on the same subject making similar points.
I only write this because I wanted to get to the essays that crown the book sooner. With re-reading, Davenport's essays all have something unique to say, even when their tangents meet frequently, and the net they form in this boo More...
I only write this because I wanted to get to the essays that crown the book sooner. With re-reading, Davenport's essays all have something unique to say, even when their tangents meet frequently, and the net they form in this boo More...
Aug 07, 2010
Quite an experience: almost certainly the most erudite, uncompromising essays I have read. Davenport wears his erudition -- even abstruseness -- like a badge, but without the arrogance that one would expect. He's an elitist in the best, most productive way. He alludes without bothering to translate, effortlessly recalls sparkling anecdotes, ranges as widely as anyone I've read (but definitely hunkers on his few touchstones: Joyce, Tchelitchew, Brakhage, Zukhovsky, the Dogon, Lascaux, Marianne Mo
More...
0 comments
like
(1 person liked it)
Feb 15, 2009
Jeff
rated it:
he's at his best talking about ancient greece or modernist poetry; when he can combine the two (like when he's talking about pound) he's absolutely incredible. otherwise, at best: its of passing interest and cute; at worst: its hardly readable and impossibly dull.
still gets four stars because the essays on pound, johnson, zukofsky, et al, the title piece, and some of the opening pieces are the best essays i've ever read.
besides: he writes about ronald johnson and tolkien More...
still gets four stars because the essays on pound, johnson, zukofsky, et al, the title piece, and some of the opening pieces are the best essays i've ever read.
besides: he writes about ronald johnson and tolkien More...
0 comments
like
(1 person liked it)
Jan 06, 2012
Douglas
rated it:
I’ve had a hard time with Guy Davenport’s fiction but his criticism and essays are excellent and reward multiple readings. He brings a sort of geological perspective to literature, a sense (in John McPhee’s phrase) of “deep time” that you don’t often find in American letters. I consider Geography of the Imagination one of the treasures of my home library.
Aug 11, 2010
Dan
rated it:
A selection of well-written essays on modernist writers like Ezra Pound, James Joyce, Charles Olson and Marianne Moore. One thing I particularly like is that the points Davenport makes about the works he discusses seem exclusive to him—I have not seen them mentioned in work by other commentators. Both in his focus (the modernists, and particularly Pound) and in his writing style, Davenport’s work resonates with that of Hugh Kenner.
More...
0 comments
like
(1 person liked it)
Jun 15, 2009
Tasha
rated it:
What a terrific collection! I love the way Davenport bridges all the arts together with such ease! I loved reading about his funny literary run-ins with Pound and Sartre. Highly recommended.
0 comments
like
(1 person liked it)
Apr 29, 2011
Mark
rated it:
One of only a few books I can say for certain changed my life. I was twenty years old and had just moved to NYC, where I found a job within a couple weeks at Endicott Booksellers. I bought THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE IMAGINATION my first week there... and through it I discovered many of the writers -Louis Zukofsky, Charles Olson, Ronald Johnson, Jonathan Williams (and through Williams, with whom I struck up a correspondence, dozens more writers)- that I would spend my early 20s exploring.
More...
More...
Aug 02, 2008
Emilymcmc
rated it:
I go back to this book when I am feeling too tired to read anything new, or feeling dull or complacent. Most of these essays involve making connections among writers and books and ideas, getting to the heart of a book I've never read in a way that gets me excited to pick it up.
0 comments
like
(1 person liked it)
Dec 22, 2011
Erik
rated it:
Very good selection of essays covering Davenport's varieties of interests: reminisces, analysis, and questions about things, particularly literary subjects.
Feb 23, 2009
Tyler
rated it:
I'm always reading this. The essays, and Davenport's mind, are a stunning display of learning and synthesis.
0 comments
like
(1 person liked it)
Nov 28, 2007
Peter
rated it:
Among the three prose books about poetry essential to me.
0 comments
like
(1 person liked it)
Feb 12, 2012
Feb 12, 2012
Feb 11, 2012
Feb 10, 2012
Feb 10, 2012
