Donald Davie

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Donald Alfred Davie (July 17, 1922—September 18, 1995) was an English poet and critic. He belonged to the Movement. His poems in general are philosophical and abstract, but often evoke various landscapes as well.

He was born in Barnsley, and served in the Navy before studying at the University of Cambridge. He then taught English at the University of Essex before teaching at Stanford University, where he succeeded Yvor Winters, and Vanderbilt University.

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

Davie's criticism and poetry are both characterized by his interest in both modernist and pre-modernist techniques. He writes eloquently and sympathetically about British modernist poetry in Under Briggflatts, for example, but 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.