The Complete Poems of William Empson

by William Empson

"[An] almost wantonly magnificent edition."-- Frank Kermode, London Review of Books

"Immaculate and exemplary."-- The Times (London)

"Haffenden has done Empson proud."-- The Guardian

William Empson’s poetry occupies a central place in 20th-century literature. Acclaimed as the brilliant author of Seven Types of Ambiguity, published when he was only 24, Empson has been applauded for the dazzling intelligence and emotional passion of his poems. T. S. Eliot praised the "brain power" and "intense feeling" of his poetry; F. R. Leavis hailed him as the first true successor to John Donne. Robert Lowell told Empson: "I think you are the most intelligent poet writing in our language and perhaps the best. I put you with Hardy and Graves and Auden and Philip Larkin."

Empson’s poems have a range of themes from metaphysics to melancholy, social climbing to political satire, love to loss. Above all, he was stimulated by the implications of modern science, which he called "the only fertile part of the contemporary mind."

This volume brings together for the first time all the poems that Empson published in his lifetime and several more discovered since his death. Drawing on unpublished papers, interviews, readings, and broadcasts, John Haffenden’s introduction and annotations identify manuscript sources, allusions, and intertexts. The volume also includes Empson’s own notes, which he regarded as a vital complement to the poetry.

Sir William Empson was educated at Winchester and Cambridge and taught at Tokyo University, Peking National University, and the University of Sheffield, where he was chair of English literature from 1952 until his retirement in 1971. He was knighted in 1979 and died in London in 1984.

John Haffenden is professor of English literature at the University of Sheffield and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. His books include The Life of John Berryman; W. H. Auden: The Critical Heritage; Viewpoints: Poets in Conversation; Interviews with Novelists; and several editions of William Empson’s work.

Genres: Poetry

504 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Sir William Empson was an English literary critic and poet.

He was widely influential for his practice of closely reading literary works, fundamental to the New Critics. Jonathan Bate has said that the three greatest English Literary critics of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries are Johnson, Hazlitt and Empson, "not least because they are the funniest".

Empson has been styled a "critic of genius" by Sir Frank Kermode, who qualified his praise by identifying willfully perverse readings of certain authors; and Harold Bloom has stated that Empson is among a handful of critics who matter most to him, because of their force and eccentricity. Empson's bluntness led to controversy both during his life and after his death, and a reputation in part also as a "licensed buffoon" (Empson's own phrase).

Reviews

[Buck · Rating 4 out of 5]

Odd poet, Empson. Insanely recondite one minute, gruff and memorable the next. His 'Bacchus', for instance, is an epic condensed into three impenetrable pages and meriting -in this edition - twenty pages of notes, every single one of them absolutely necessary, I feel. And still the poem comes off as grotesquely stylized, a hyper-articulate freakout. Too often, Empson out-Eliots Eliot and out-Does Donne.

So that's one side. On the other, there's the sombre beauty of the great villanelles:

'Slowly the poison the whole bloodstream fills.
It is not the effort nor the failure tires.
The waste remains, the waste remains and kills.'

There are the dozens of lines that get into your brain and rattle around like candy in a plastic container ('You don't want madhouse and the whole thing there' has been repeated prophylactically by me and many others who felt themselves drifting in that direction).

Anyway, if you're interested in Emspson's poetry, this is the edition to buy. It's been lovingly put together by John Haffenden, who knows more about Empson and Empson's writings than can be quite healthy. Notoriously, the book is about two-thirds commentary, but that's alright, too, since it's such useful and fascinating commentary. Besides, Empson himself was a lavish appender of notes to his own poems, and ably defended the practice in a 'Note on Notes', which Haffenden couldn't resist including here.

[Ben · Rating 5 out of 5]

CAMPING OUT

And now she cleans her teeth into the lake:
Gives it (God’s grace) for her own bounty’s sake
What morning’s pale and the crisp mist debars:
Its glass of the divine (that Will could break)
Restores, beyond Nature: or lets Heaven take
(Itself being dimmed) her pattern, who half awake
Milks between rocks a straddled sky of stars.

Soap tension the star pattern magnifies.
Smoothly Madonna through-assumes the skies
Whose vaults are opened to achieve the Lord.
No, it is we soaring explore galaxies.
Our bullet boat light’s speed by thousands flies.
Who moves so among stars their frame unties;
See where they blur, and die, and are outsoared.

[Patricia N. McLaughlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Favorite Poems:

[Mark Bellerophon · Rating 4 out of 5]

This edition of Empson's poems, a few of which had been previously unpublished, collects all of his poems that are available to us into a single book. While wonderful and strange, Empson's poems are very difficult to understand, which is why this edition, edited by Haffenden, is indispensable for the reader of these poems. In the introduction, Haffenden sketches out Empson's biography as a poet and, while not easy reading, stressed that Empson very much "was anxious to help" the reader understand his poetry through the use of notes. This edition contains Empson's original notes on his poems and Empson's thoughts and notes, both on his own poems and on notes in poems (like Eliot in "The Waste Land") in general, and Haffenden's commentary on both Empson's poems and notes and on Empson's notes on his poems! It is wonderful! Having read Haffenden's commentary and how well he put together brief selections of Empson's essays, letters, and notes and Empson on poems and notes in poems, I can confidently say that this book is like the Rosetta Stone for understanding the poetry of Empson. Do not read the poetry of Empson without it!

[Mitch · Rating 3 out of 5]

Actually, I think I have the FSG version, or is it Viking
?