Rationalism, scepticism, fastidiousness, fair-mindedness: the qualities which Donald Davie has claimed for himself over the years are not the qualities we have been taught to expect of a poet. Part of Davie's task has been to persuade us, and himself, that we have been wrongly taught—that our conception of the poet as a daring and passionate outsider is historically foreshortened, and that a broader, pre-Romantic conception of the poet could be profitably restored. From the earliest poems Davie has presented himself as an opposite, or anti-type, of the Romantic poet: as a "bride of reason", a "winter talent", "an even tenor", a "good fellow" but "pertinacious to a fault". Occasionally stung by suggestions that he is too cerebral and academic in his poetry, he has been troubled by self-doubt: in 1957 he accused himself in a note of failing to be "a natural poet", and as recently as 1975 admitted to being one of the "steely trimmers" whose suspicion of pretension in art is not always distinguishable from mean-mindedness. But on the whole Davie has felt confident enough to assert that the characteristics prized in academic circles can also be the characteristics of the poet….

The publication of The Poet in the Imaginary Museum, a selection of Davie's critical writings between November 1950 and October 1977, is the best opportunity we have had so far to observe the relationship between the concerns of the critic and the achievement of the poet…. With the exception of a discussion of Beckett's fiction, all the essays are concerned with poetry. They are arranged in chronological order, allowing Davie's development to be clearly discerned, and they have been preserved in their original form—there is no tampering with the historical record….

The first thing to note is that Davie is far more than, and sometimes far less than, the rigorous rationalist which his self-caricatures might imply. There is in his criticism a use of rhetoric, a readiness to take speculative risks, and an appropriation of other writers which makes it clear that there is as much a poet in the critic as there is a critic in the poet. This is not to say that Davie's criticism altogether lacks the qualities of "steely trimming"; far from it. The bluff commonsense tone which was the mark of several critics in the 1950s, John Wain in particular, is evident in "Remembering the Movement" (1959)…. The desire to steer a sensible middle course (trimming of another kind) can be seen in "The Translatability of Poetry" (1967)…. And a distrust of irrationalism underlies his essay on the criticism of R. P. Blackmur, "Poetry, or Poems?" (1955)….

These essays are consistent with the image of Davie as a pragmatist with a high regard for close textual analysis and careful weighing of evidence. Some of his favourite phrases—"On this showing …", "It begins to look as if …", "If this is true, then …"—create the same impression of a man moving tentatively from analysis to conclusion.

In fact, such phrases are nearly always a sign that from meticulously gathered evidence, Davie is about to move to some highly speculative and quite undemonstrable theory. A famous example is his connection between Pound's fascism and his handling of syntax: "one could almost say, on this showing, that to dislocate syntax is to threaten the rule of law in the community". This is a challenging but surely untenable equation of poetic and political behaviour: it suggests how interested Davie is in the political implications of poetic form, but would be difficult to uphold. Similarly questionable is his suggestion that the unreliability of Yeats, Eliot and Pound as historians has forced subsequent poets to turn their attention to topography: "it begins to seem as if a focus upon scenery, upon landscape and the areal, relations in space, are a necessary check and control upon the poet's manipulation of the historical record". This, like many of Davie's critical theories, originates in his own poetic development; and it confirms that Davie likes to situate his own work by reference to earlier poets….

Davie admits that his readings of other poets are often readings of himself: "I am my own favourite author and often when I seem to be studying another writer, it's myself I'm studying really."…

The Poet in the Imaginary Museum provides important clues about Davie's poetic development. In the earliest essay, "The Spoken Word" (1950), he recommends to "the young English poet resentful of the tyranny of the 'image'" the poetry of Yvor Winters and his followers, and makes large claims for a "renewed poetry of statement"; the essay reads like an early manifesto for the Movement poets with whom Davie was to be associated, and whose main target was the "tyranny of the image" imposed by Dylan Thomas. "The Poetic Diction of John M. Synge" (1952) … and "Professor Heller and the Boots" (1954) … are further important texts for this period.

"Common Mannerism" (1957) is a turning point: Davie rejects the "ugly" and "philistine" Movement tone, and in the title essay of the same year develops Malraux's idea that what distinguishes the modern artist from his predecessors is a freedom (created by technological advance) to wander through an imaginary museum containing art from all ages and cultures. For Davie this means that poetry must become more pluralistic: "the modern style in poetry is the arrangement in new patterns of the styles of the past". At the time, Davie's thesis that the poet simply "picks and chooses" from all manner of styles aroused considerable controversy…. But perhaps the chief importance of the essay is its indication that Davie was broadening his scope: in the late 1950s and early 1960s there is a greater concern with translation, an exploration of the relationship between poetry and other arts, and a new respect for poetry which concentrates on the non-human world "bodied over" against us.

Davie has maintained these interests, but it is possible to detect a third phase in his career dating from the late 1960s. "Poetry and Other Modern Arts" (1968) qualifies the imaginary museum thesis by suggesting that poetry has remained a conservative art, unaffected by many of the technological changes which have influenced painting and music; and another essay of that year, "Landscape as Poetic Focus", shows a new sensitivity to topography in poetry and to the open forms of Charles Olson and Edward Dorn. Davie has always been interested in American poetry (the 1953 essay in which an "austere" Davie measures up to the "panache" of Wallace Stevens is another useful piece reprinted here), but in recent years he has become more conscious of the need for someone to act as a negotiator between British and American cultures.

Attention to a steady development in Davie's work can be misleading, however, if it conceals the ebb and flow of his critical judgments. Nowhere in his criticism is there a parallel to Leavis's change of heart about Dickens or to Eliot's about Milton. Rather than dramatic reversals, there is a constant pulsing between acceptance and rejection, admiration and detestation….

The postscript to his discussion of Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1961) warns that "I by no means preclude the possibility that, after three attempts to give an account of it, I may some time venture on a fourth!" The failure to provide a consistent perspective may look perverse, even self-indulgent, and there are moments when honest and instructive uncertainty about a writer's worth threatens to dissolve into confusion and self-contradiction. But for the most part Davie's arguments with himself are meaningful and useful: he has the power to identify the key issues of the modern era, to put the case of both sides, and to provide temporary solutions. Here again rhetoric is a key weapon, Davie's means not only of persuading his readers but of dispelling his own doubt. Davie is a more volatile critic than he pretends, and one of the virtues of The Poet in the Imaginary Museum is that it enables us to observe his fluctuations more clearly than before….

The sharpness of Davie's insights in this collection reassures one that complaints about omissions are worth making: we do need a record of all that he has written…. He has helped radically alter our views of Hardy, has put questions about Pound which those too busy taking sides have forgotten to ask, and has struggled with most of the major figures in the modern period. Above all, he has kept his options open, responding to new developments in poetry while so many of his contemporaries remain entrenched. The price for this is occasional waywardness in critical judgment, but so long as his poetry continues to renew itself this should be a price we are willing to pay.