![]() | Poets on Painters: Essays on the Art of Painting by Twentieth-Century Poets by J.D. McClatchy
Buy used from: £21.20 A fascinating anthology: Wallace Stevens, Elizabeth Bishop, Ted Hughes and other poets writing about art and artists (e.g. Matisse, Corot, Balthus&)
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![]() | Poiesis: Concerning Nature, Poem, the Infinite
Buy used from: £14.20 A beautiful exhibition linking artists and poets, containing an insightful essay by Thomas A Clark.
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![]() | Concrete Poetry: A World View
The classic concrete anthology, with an extensive and useful introduction.
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![]() | William Blake: The Complete Illuminated Books by David Bindman
Buy new: £18.21 / Used from: £19.99 The list would be incomplete without this.
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![]() | Sandro Botticelli: The Drawings for Dante's Divine Comedy: The Drawings for Dante's "Divine Comedy" by Dr. Hein Schultze Altcappenberg
Buy new: £34.97 / Used from: £28.00 Catalogue to the memorable Royal Academy exhibition.
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![]() | Gaudier-Brzeska: A Memoir by E Pound
Buy used from: £8.54 This is more than just a historical artefact of Vorticism and is a key document for anyone interested in Pound's poetics.
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![]() | Colours of Rhetoric: Problems in the Relation Between Modern Literature and Painting by Wendy Steiner
Buy used from: £22.95 Subtitled 'Problems in the Relation Between Modern Literature and Painting' a perceptive and interesting study.
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![]() | Ian Hamilton Finlay: A Visual Primer by Yves Abrioux
Buy used from: £29.00 The essential book on Ian Hamilton Finlay, covering both his art and his poetry.
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![]() | Calligrammes: Poems of Peace and War (1913-1916) by Guillaume Apollinaire
Buy used from: £11.51 Features his pioneering visual poems.
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![]() | Roni Horn (Contemporary Artists) by Lynne Cooke
Buy new: £21.21 / Used from: £18.25 Phaidon have produced here a wonderful celebration of Horn's art, including her re-workings of Emily Dickinson.
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![]() | The Aesthetics of Visual Poetry, 1914-28 by Bohn
Buy used from: £22.21 The best writer on 20th century visual poetry. This is my favourite one of his books.
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![]() | The Pattern Poems of George Herbert by George Herbert
Buy used from: £45.00 The most famous English poet to indulge in pattern poems. For more recent examples, read John Hollander.
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![]() | Letters on Cezanne by Rainer Maria Rilke
Buy new: £7.89 / Used from: £3.68 Rilke is one of many important writers who have studied Cezanne (my favourite is Merleau Ponty, but he is not a poet).
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![]() | Poems (Classics) by Wang Wei
Buy used from: £0.01 A good introduction to the great Chinese poet-painter - why have Penguin let it go out of print? Perhaps not the best translation though...
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![]() | William Morris: A Life for Our Time by Fiona MacCarthy
Buy used from: £12.99 I think this may be the most enjoyable biography I've ever read.
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![]() | Laocoon: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry (Johns Hopkins Paperbacks) by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
Buy new: £14.03 / Used from: £4.91 The classic argument for the separation of art and poetry.
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![]() | Collected Poems, 1942-77 by W.S. Graham
Buy used from: £6.87 Includes Graham's beautiful tributes to St Ives artists Wynter, Lanyon and Hilton.
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![]() | Leonardo's Nephew: Essays on Art and Artists by James Fenton
Buy used from: £0.01 Poet, foreign correspondent and polymath (now an expert on gardening it seems), Fenton's highly readable NYRB essays are worth buying just for the article on Thomas Jones.
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![]() | Frank O'Hara: Poet Among Painters by Marjorie Perloff
Buy used from: £29.95 Prolific Perloff is always worth reading (don't be put off by that embarrassing letter to the LRB) and her book 'Radical Artifice' is good on visual poetry.
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![]() | Collected Poems by S Mallarme
Buy new: £17.05 / Used from: £8.00 Includes 'Un Coup de des', the point where modern poetry becomes a visual art form.
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![]() | In Parenthesis by David Jones
Buy new: £13.73 / Used from: £8.49 A perennial cult writer and interesting artist, this was the book that impressed Eliot.
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![]() | The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry (Oxford World's Classics) by Walter Pater
Buy new: £4.77 / Used from: £1.22 W B Yeats thought his prose poetic enough to include in the Oxford Book of Verse. Highlights of this book are his essays on Leonardo and Giorgione.
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![]() | Selected Poems, 1955-97 (Oxford Poets) by Charles Tomlinson
Buy new: £8.96 / Used from: £5.00 A poet of vivid visual images who also paints and writes about art.
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![]() | Selected Writings on Art and Literature (Penguin Classics) by Charles-Pierre Baudelaire
Buy new: £9.88 / Used from: £7.70 Walter Benjamin's favourite art critic.
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![]() | The Complete Poems of Michelangelo by Michelangelo
Buy new: £9.45 / Used from: £11.08 These poems don't do much for me, but I can't leave out Michelangelo.
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