Poet-Critics and the Administration of Culture

After the Great Depression and the Second World War, literary writers could no longer rely on wealthy benefactors, so they turned to private foundations, universities, and government organizations — but when they did so, they needed to justify their work to those who would support them. Writers needed to be critics as well, as Evan Kindley *12 explains in Poet-Critics and the Administration of Culture (Harvard University Press), in which he traces the important work and loves of pioneering American poet-critics including T. S. Eliot, Marianne Moore, W. H. Auden, and others.