Al Alvarez

Al Alvarez (b. 5 August 1929 in London; † 23 September 2019 ibid) was a British poet, writer and literary critic who also published under the name A. Alvarez.

Born Alfred Alvarez, he was educated at Oundle School and Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he graduated with distinction in English. After a brief teaching career in Oxford and the United States, he concentrated on writing in his late twenties. From 1956 to 1966 he was literary critic and poetry editor for the British newspaper The Observer. In this capacity he introduced the works of John Berryman, Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, Zbigniew Herbert, and Miroslav Holub to the British public.

Alvarez was the author of many non-fiction books. Best known is his study of suicide, The Savage God, which gained additional resonance through his friendship with Sylvia Plath. He has also written about divorce (Life After Marriage), dreams (Night), and the oil industry (Offshore), as well as his hobbies of poker (The Biggest Game In Town) and mountain climbing (Feeding the Rat). His autobiography, published in 1999, is entitled: Where Did It All Go Right?

Alvarez's 1962 poetry anthology The New Poetry was hailed by the British public as a fresh departure. In the introduction, Alvarez expressed his displeasure with the narrow sociographical perspective of the English New Lines poets of the 1950s and the ideology of tradition-conscious English "gentility" that they had shaped. Instead, as an aesthetic manifesto, he called for a more uncompromising new poetry in response to the new age of social mobility and cultural anxiety ("a manifesto for a tough new poetry that was responsive to a new age of social mobility and cultural anxiety"). In order to deliberately distinguish and clarify his literary-critical position, he accordingly gave wide space in his collection to contemporary American poets such as John Berryman and Robert Lowell in particular, in addition to Ted Hughes and Thom Gunn. Shortly after the publication of his anthology, Alvarez was one of the first to become acquainted with the poems of the American lyricist Sylvia Plath, later published in the anthology Ariel, which he classified as brilliant. He repeatedly regretted that Plath's poems came just a little late to be included in his anthology.

In the 2003 feature film Sylvia, Alvarez was portrayed by Jared Harris. The film focuses on the troubled relationship between Sylvia Plath and her husband Ted Hughes.

Bibliography (selection)

• The Shaping Spirit (1958)
• The School of Donne (1961)
• The New Poetry (1962)
• Under Pressure (1965)
• Beyond All This Fiddle (1968)
• The Savage God (1972, German: Der grausame Gott)
• Samuel Beckett (1973, German: Samuel Beckett)
• Hers (1974)
• Hunt (1979)
• Life After Marriage (1982)
• The Biggest Game in Town (1983)
• Feeding the Rat (1989, German: Wandsüchtig)
• Day of Atonement (1991)
• Night (1995, German: Die Nacht)
• Where Did It All Go Right? (1999)
• Poker: Bets, Bluffs, and Bad Beats (2001).
• New & Selected Poems (2002)
• The Writer's Voice (2005)
• Risky Business (2007)