Poetry in Boston

The Fading Smile: Poets in Boston from Robert Lowell to Sylvia Plath is a poignant, lyrical, and revealing memoir on Boston area poets like Lowell, Plath, Anne Sexton, and others. Peter Davison seems to have known or met everyone. He dated Plath briefly, attended Harvard with many of these writers, and as the poetry editor of The Atlantic Monthly and a publisher and editor, published many of these writers.
I like his decision to organize this book around the Boston literary scene. Though he usually only devotes a chapter to a particular poet, I think his portraits are often superior to book-length treatments of these writers. An admirable combination of literary analysis and memoir.
I actually met Davison once when he came to read his own poetry at Reed College. A very intelligent, friendly, and gracious man.
Czar