Madness the Price of Poetry

The imaginative pressure which drives a poet's genius often exacts a high price, pushing some poets to extremities of suffering or the brink of insanity. Here, the imaginatively gifted Reed writes of poets and their work from the inside. The total commitment of the poet to his art is explored. The poets range from John Clare and Gerard Manley Hopkins to Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Rilke, Robert Lowell, and Theodore Roethke, among others. Brilliant and deeply felt...a timely recall to that level of experience which it is the proper task of the poet to explore."" - Kathleen Raine. ""Full of rich and careful writing, dense with pleasure in words that pleasure the world and waken us to its lovely surprises."" - Seamus Heaney.