Donald Davie

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Donald Alfred Davie (July 17, 1922–September 18, 1995) was an English Movement poet, and literary critic. His poems in general are philosophical and abstract, but often evoke various landscapes.

Davie was born in Barnsley, Yorkshire, England, a son of Baptist parents. He began his education at Barnsley Hogate Grammar school, and he later attended St. Catherine's College, in Cambridge. His studies, however, were interrupted when he left to serve in the Royal Navy. After returning to Cambridge, he continued his studies and received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. He taught English at the University of Essex from 1964 until 1968, when he moved to Stanford University, where he succeeded Yvor Winters. In 1978, he relocated to Vanderbilt University, where he taught until his retirement in 1988.

He often wrote on the technique of poetry, both in books such as Purity of Diction in English Verse, and in smaller articles such as 'Some Notes on Rhythm in Verse'.

Davie's criticism and poetry are both characterized by his interest in modernist and pre-modernist techniques. He writes eloquently and sympathetically about British modernist poetry in Under Briggflatts, while in Thomas Hardy and British Poetry he defends a pre-modernist verse tradition. Much of Davie's poetry has been compared to that of the traditionalist Philip Larkin, but other works are more influenced by Ezra Pound. He is featured in the Oxford Book of Contemporary Verse (1980).