The Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History at the University of Kentucky Libraries has a 43-minute interview with Guy Davenport from 1992–the only recorded one on the internet (click “Access”).

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From Questioning Minds: The Letters of Guy Davenport and Hugh Kenner, edited by Edward M. Burns

Michael Dirda review in The Washington Post

Hugh Kenner was to edit a Wiley Anthology of 20th Century Literature. He asked Guy Davenport for suggestions.

HK first mentions this anthology in his letter of 16 September 1976. As I indicate in a note to that letter, I will only annotate where necessary for clarity. HK writes Adaline Glasheen about the anthology and some of its contents in his letter of 23 November 1976 (Edward M. Burns, ed., A Passion for Joyce: The Letters of Hugh Kenner and Adaline Glasheen, University College Dublin Press, 2008, pp. 205–7). HK enclosed three typed pages with this letter. “(Draft #1, 30 October 1976)”:

PART SIX THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Unit One Century’s Turn

1. The Narrative Inheritance

H. G. Wells, THE TIME MACHINE

Joseph Conrad, HEART OF DARKNESS

Henry James, THE JOLLY CORNER

2. Post-Symbolist Verse

Symonds, Dowson, Wilde, some early Yeats, &c. Emphasis on importations from France,

and on prevailing pictorial analogies.

Unit Two Early Modernism

1. The New Poetry

T. S. Eliot, PRELUDES, THE LOVE SONG OF J. ALFRED PRUFROCK ,SWEENEY AMONG THE NIGHTINGALES

Ford Madox Hueffer, ON HEAVEN

Ezra Pound SESTINA: ALTAFORTE, THE SEAFARER

Imagism (selections from Pound, HD, Aldington, etc.)

2. Manifestoes

Ezra Pound, SOME DON’T’S FOR IMAGISTS

T. S. Eliot, REFLECTIONS ON VERS LIBRE

Ernest Fenollosa, THE CHINESE WRITTEN CHARACTER AS A MEDIUM FORPOETRY

Wyndham Lewis, INFERIOR RELIGIONS

T. E. Hulme, ROMANTICISM AND CLASSICISM

Virginia Woolf, MR. BENNETT AND MRS. BROWN

3. The New Narrative

James Joyce, A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN (Ch. V)

Wyndham Lewis, CANTLEMAN’S SPRING MATE

D. H. Lawrence, excerpt from THE RAINBOW

Unit Three The Three Provinces

1. Ireland

Sean O’Casey, I KNOCK ON THE DOOR (Ch. 1)

George Moore, AVE (excerpt: reminiscences of Yeats at Coole)

J. M. Synge, RIDERS TO THE SEA

William Butler Yeats, CATHLEEN NI HOULIHAN, Comprehensive selection of poems, AUTOBIOGRAPHY: excerpts on Moore and on sense of the time.

James Joyce: GRACE, GAS FROM A BURNER

Austin Clarke, Selection of poems

Patrick Kavanagh, Selection of poems

John Montague, THE ROUGH FIELD (excerpts)

Edna O’Brien, MOTHER IRELAND (excerpt).

2. America

William Carlos Williams, THE WHITE MULE (ch. 1), Selection of short poems, incl. “The Crimson Cyclamen”, PATERSON (Book III), FOUR BOTTLES OF BEER, IN THE AMERICAN GRAIN (excerpt)

Louis Zukofsky, “A”-4

Robert Frost, Selection of poems

Ezra Pound, N.Y.

Henry James, AMERICAN SCENE (excerpt on New York)

Edward Dorn, GUNSLINGER (excerpt)

Robert Lowell, Selection of poems

Charles Tomlinson, AMERICAN LANDSCAPES (selections)

Ronald Duncan, A SHORT HISTORY OF TEXAS

Archibald MacLeish, FRESCOES FOR MR ROCKEFELLER’S CITY

James Baldwin, polemic excerpt

Gilbert Sorrentino, chunk of sardonic fiction

William Faulkner, WAS

F. Scott Fitzgerald, THE RICH BOY

George Oppen, selection of poems.

3. England (Order of the following is undetermined)

D. H. Lawrence (unchosen)

George Orwell (unchosen)

Evelyn Waugh (unchosen)

Basil Bunting, BRIGGFLATTS

Ezra Pound, HUGH SELWYN MAUBERLEY

OLE KATE

T. S. Eliot, EAST COKER

John Betjemen, WESTMINSTER ABBEY

Charles Tomlinson, selection of poems

W. H. Auden, IN PRAISE OF LIMESTONE, selection of other poems

Ford Madox Ford, A MAN COULD STAND UP (war chapter)

Unchosen set of war poems, Owen, Sassoon, etc.

R. S. Thomas, selection of poems

Alan Neame, THE SACK OF NEW SARUM

Wyndham Lewis, TIME THE TIGER

Unit Four International Modernism

T. S. Eliot, THE WASTE LAND, ADDENDA: (1) draft of “typist” section, (2) Pound letter to TSE about the poem

James Joyce, ULYSSES (Lestrygonians)

FINNEGANS WAKE (final monologue)

Ezra Pound, A “Noh” Play, unchosen, RELIGIO, THE CANTOS (selections)

William Butler Yeats, AT THE HAWK’S WELL, BYZANTIUM

Samuel Beckett, ENDGAME (if available)

Otherwise, FOOTFALLS and selection from MALONE DIES

Wallace Stevens, selections

Wyndham Lewis, MALIGN FIESTA (excerpt)

Miscellany from MacLeish, Stein, Hemingway, Crosby, etc.

Unit Five Translation and Refraction

Robert Fitzgerald, ODYSSEY (Book xii)

James Joyce, ULYSSES (Wandering Rocks)

Ezra Pound, HOMAGE TO SEXTUS PROPERTIUS (selections), CONFUCIAN ODES (selections)

Louis Zukofsky, CATULLUS (#8, #11)

Charles Olson, A NEW HOMERIC HYMN

Guy Davenport, SAPPHO (selections)

HERAKLEITOS (from TATLIN!)

Unit Six Explications

F. R. Leavis, THE WASTE LAND (from NEW BEARINGS)

John Peck, one of his Pound explications (to be chosen)

Hugh Kenner, “A”-11 (and the text of the poem)

Adaline Glasheen, WHO IS WHO WHEN EVERYBODY IS SOMEBODY ELSE? (on Finnegans Wake)

Unit Seven Clarities

Marianne Moore, VIRGINIA BRITANNIA, MARRIAGE, (a few other poems)

D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson, GROWTH AND FORM (pp. 26–37, + illustrations)

R. Buckminster Fuller, WHAT IS A BUBBLE?

Donald Barthelme, (one of his short fables)

The Whole Earth Catalogue (excerpt on laying stones in a wall)

Sylvia Plath (poems, including DADDY)