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Poets is part of her journey into autonomy. Its very composition is a quiet act of unfolding triumph; it's both a memorial to the men Simpson admired and an admonitory epitaph on lives lived at often false and ugly odds with their own aspirations toward truth and beauty. Read now, it seems like a fitting herald of our own time, when blustering male declarations of high moral principle are giving way to more convincing portrayals of social relations from women artists. Lee Siegel, The New York Times Book Review An indispensable memoir. Christopher Merrill, Los Angeles Review of Books It is as powerful and knowing an account of the literary muse and its effects as one could hope to read, and the neglect into which it seems to be sliding is a genuine injustice . . . Poets in Their Youth . . . never sensationalizes these brilliant but wildly erratic young men, only seeks to understand them . . . Poets in Their Youth has more to tell us about the minds and lives of poets than anything else I've read--except, of course, the poems themselves. Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post Mrs. Simpson has added a good deal to the stock of available reality . . . Reading the early chapters of this memoir, I found it hard to believe that Berryman would leap to his death from a bridge; Jarrell, a probable suicide, be run over by a car; Schwartz end his life a virtual derelict in a midtown Manhattan hotel; Lowell, worn out by manic-depressive episodes and alcohol, be found dead in a New York taxicab . . . Eileen Simpson, a shrewd manager of her unhappy saga, doesn't belabor its melodrama, only foreshadows its culmination here and there . . . While the writers talked, Mrs. Simpson listened, and her record of their conversation is unfailingly plausible. James Atlas, The New York Times Simpson's book is absorbing and transporting, one of the best windows we have back to a significant and somewhat magical time . . . it is Simpson's position as a listener which helps make her book as rich as it is. Lisa Levy, Full Stop A whole doomed generation of writers, the nights of wine, dancing, and brilliant talk giving way to paranoia, envy, madness, and death. The Times Literary Supplement Discerning, often probing, and remarkably free of rancor . . . The book is loving, at long distance, and from the remove of forty years . . . Berryman is given every latitude by Mrs. Simpson, who understood him very well at close range. Howard Moss, The New York Review of Books

Praise for Poets in Their Youth An indispensable memoir. --Christopher Merrill, Los Angeles Review of Books It is as powerful and knowing an account of the literary muse and its effects as one could hope to read, and the neglect into which it seems to be sliding is a genuine injustice . . . Poets in Their Youth . . . never sensationalizes these brilliant but wildly erratic young men, only seeks to understand them . . . Poets in Their Youth has more to tell us about the minds and lives of poets than anything else I've read--except, of course, the poems themselves. --Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post Mrs. Simpson has added a good deal to the stock of available reality . . . Reading the early chapters of this memoir, I found it hard to believe that Berryman would leap to his death from a bridge; Jarrell, a probable suicide, be run over by a car; Schwartz end his life a virtual derelict in a midtown Manhattan hotel; Lowell, worn out by manic-depressive episodes and alcohol, be found dead in a New York taxicab . . . Eileen Simpson, a shrewd manager of her unhappy saga, doesn't belabor its melodrama, only foreshadows its culmination here and there . . . While the writers talked, Mrs. Simpson listened, and her record of their conversation is unfailingly plausible. --James Atlas, The New York Times Simpson's book is absorbing and transporting, one of the best windows we have back to a significant and somewhat magical time . . . it is Simpson's position as a listener which helps make her book as rich as it is. --Lisa Levy, Full Stop Discerning, often probing, and remarkably free of rancor . . . The book is loving, at long distance, and from the remove of forty years . . . Berryman is given every latitude by Mrs. Simpson, who understood him very well at close range. --Howard Moss, The New York Review of Books A whole doomed generation of writers, the nights of wine, dancing, and brilliant talk giving way to paranoia, envy, madness, and death. -- The Times Literary Supplement

Praise for Poets in Their Youth It is as powerful and knowing an account of the literary muse and its effects as one could hope to read, and the neglect into which it seems to be sliding is a genuine injustice . . . Poets in Their Youth . . . never sensationalizes these brilliant but wildly erratic young men, only seeks to understand them . . . Poets in Their Youth has more to tell us about the minds and lives of poets than anything else I've read--except, of course, the poems themselves. --Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post Mrs. Simpson has added a good deal to the stock of available reality . . . Reading the early chapters of this memoir, I found it hard to believe that Berryman would leap to his death from a bridge; Jarrell, a probable suicide, be run over by a car; Schwartz end his life a virtual derelict in a midtown Manhattan hotel; Lowell, worn out by manic-depressive episodes and alcohol, be found dead in a New York taxicab . . . Eileen Simpson, a shrewd manager of her unhappy saga, doesn't belabor its melodrama, only foreshadows its culmination here and there . . . While the writers talked, Mrs. Simpson listened, and her record of their conversation is unfailingly plausible. --James Atlas, The New York Times Discerning, often probing, and remarkably free of rancor . . . The book is loving, at long distance, and from the remove of forty years . . . Berryman is given every latitude by Mrs. Simpson, who understood him very well at close range. --Howard Moss, The New York Review of Books A whole doomed generation of writers, the nights of wine, dancing, and brilliant talk giving way to paranoia, envy, madness, and death. -- The Times Literary Supplement

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Eileen Simpson (1918-2002) was a writer and psychologist. Her books include The Maze, a novel; Reversals: A Personal Account of Victory over Dyslexia; Orphans: Real and Imaginary; and Late Love: A Celebration of Marriage After Fifty.

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