100 poems selected from 50 volumes

To be published by Liberalis Books on 24 September 2024

ISBN: 978-1-78904-585-7 (paperback)

ISBN: 978-1-78904-586-4 (e-book)

The back cover says

Between 1979 and 1982 Nicholas Hagger wrote three letters to the eminent literary critic Christopher Ricks about his poetic identity, and Ricks agreed with his final view that his verse blends the Romantic and Classical traditions within the Baroque tradition. In 1979 and again in 1982 Ricks asked him to select 30 poems. Forty years later A Baroque Vision presents a selection that shows his Baroque roots. Part One presents 30 poems written before 1979, and Part Two adds 70 poems written between 1979 and 2019.

A Baroque Vision presents 100 poems drawn from 50 volumes of his poems, verse plays and masques. The baroque style, which can be found in all European countries, combines the spiritual and the sensual, and features movement, transformation, the Mystic Way, the mysterious Light, the transcending of death, the divine soul and Heaven, as illustrated in Rubens’ The Apotheosis of James I (shown on the front cover); and blends the Romantic and Classical traditions. In his Preface Hagger shows very clearly that his Baroque vision was behind, and grew into, his Universalism, whose development can be traced in his Selected Letters and Collected Prefaces (both published by O-Books). These 100 poems confirm that his Baroque vision is inspired by the 17th century (by the Metaphysical poets, Milton and Dryden), but also by the 18th and 19th centuries (by Pope, Wordsworth and Tennyson).

Nicholas Hagger is a poet, man of letters, cultural historian and philosopher. He has lectured at universities in Iraq, Libya and Japan, where he was a Professor of English Literature, and has written 53 books. His substantial literary output includes 2,000 poems, two poetic epics, five verse plays, three masques, two travelogues and 1,200 short stories; and innovatory works on literature, history, philosophy and international politics. His archive of papers and manuscripts is held as a Special Collection in the Albert Sloman Library at the University of Essex. In 2016 he was awarded the Gusi Peace Prize for Literature, and in 2019 the BRICS silver medal for ‘Vision for Future’.