Robert Conquest, poet …

… TLSRobert Conquest, sensual muse. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

The poets of the “Movement”, which Conquest could almost be said to have invented, are studied in British schools, and Conquest’s poetry has readers in the United Kingdom. In the United States, however, where he had made his home for decades, his poetry is little known – along with that of the poets he fostered with his anthology, New Lines (1956). Yet two events were held in the US earlier this year that might alter the picture. One unlikely champion for Conquest’s poetry had a major role in both: the poet R. S. Gwynn of Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas, a genial bear of a man with a pronounced Southern drawl.