Collected Plays

James K. Baxter

Oxford University Press, 1982 - Drama in English - New Zealand writers, 1907- - Texts - 336 pages

Contents

• Mr Brandywine Chooses a Gravestone: 65
• Three Mimes: 322
• Programme note to The Bureaucrat: 336

About the author

Considered New Zealand's most significant poet, James K. Baxter has also been called one of the most remarkable English-language poets of the mid-twentieth century. Born into an educated family in New Zealand, he spent most of his life there and became a much-loved and respected figure in his homeland. Starting out as something of a boy prodigy in the field of poetry, Baxter went on to face alcoholism, then to convert to Catholicism. In his last years, some considered him a saint as he wandered around New Zealand "barefoot, long-bearded, patched and baggy." Baxter published his first poetry in 1944. He also wrote about 20 plays-many of them produced successfully-four books of literary commentary and criticism, numerous religious essays, and fiction. His Collected Poems is still available, but most of his work in other genres is out of print. Collected Poems won a 2016 Publishers Association of New Zealand (PANZ) Book Design Awards, Gerard Reid Award for best book and Best non-illustrated book (designed by Spencer Levine and Fergus Barrowman). Believing strongly in the poet's vocation, in the poet as a prophet, Baxter was also a skilled artist. His work, which is characterized by a technical conservatism and an adherence to formality, reflects his familiarity with a wide range of poets, including the English romantics, Greek and Latin poets, and modernists, such as Yeats, Hopkins, and Hardy.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Collected Plays
• Author: James K. Baxter
• Editor: Howard McNaughton
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1982
• Original from: the University of Michigan
• Digitized: Jan 24, 2007
• ISBN: 0195580931, 9780195580938
• Length: 336 pages