Country Australia Publication date 1969 Pages 64 pp ISBN 0901760013 | Language English Media type Print Originally published 1969 Genre Poetry | |
Publisher South Head Press, Sydney Poetry books My Black Me, I like stars, The mercy seat | ||
Letters to Live Poets (1969) is the fourth poetry collection by Australian poet Bruce Beaver. It won the Grace Leven Prize for Poetry in 1970.
Contents
The collection consists of 34 poems, all of which are published in this collection for the first time.
Contents
All poems in the collection are titled and numbered in sequence using Roman numerals, except for the first which is titled "Letters to Live Poets : Frank O'Hara". Frank O'Hara was an American poet who was killed in a car accident in 1966.
Critical reception
The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature called it Beaver's "major work" and noted that the book formed a "livre composé", a volume designed not as a collection of poems, but as a single poem, sustained through changing moods and verse-forms. They also note that the book was written "with obsessional purpose and speed, because Beaver believed he was losing his rationality."
In a long essay examining the book's legacy and influence, Robert Savage notes "The American influences on Letters to Live Poets, particular the influence of American confessional poetry, are well documented, and prompt James Tulip to call Letters «the most American work to have come out of Australia.»"