Got myself a copy of Ralph Maud's "counter-biography", Charles Olson at the Harbor (critical of Tom Clark's previous bio). Looking forward to this. Heard about it in Kenneth Warren's magazine, House Organ.

*

Continuing with G. Hill's essays. Two of them, toward the end, basically take-downs of TS Eliot. Eliot gets no respect from nobody, nowhow, these days. Sometimes the animus on Hill's part seems a little heavy-handed. He puts too much weight, seems to me, on offhand comments Eliot made to a reporter at some verse theater festival in Scotland (part of his evidence for asserting steep decline in quality of Eliot's later poetry).

But right now, Hill's powerful attention & intellect carries a lot of weight with me... just seems pretty obviously to be shaping his British canon - & shoving Eliot down a notch. Maybe he's right. Pointed toward a book by Eliot contemporary Charles Williams (English poetic mind, c. 1932), which sounds pretty good, based on the bits quoted.