(Prince's Collected Poems 1935-1992 incorporates all the w...)
Prince's Collected Poems 1935-1992 incorporates all the work that he wished to preserve, from his earliest published poems to late, uncollected pieces.
Frank Prince was an English writer and educator. He was a prominent poet best known for his much-anthologized piece, Soldiers Bathing.
Background
Ethnicity:
Frank Prince's father was Dutch-Jewish, and his mother was Scottish.
Frank Prince was born on September 13, 1912, in Kimberley, Northern Cape, South Africa. He was the son of Henry (or Harry) Prince.
Education
Frank Prince studied at the Saint Patrick's Christian Brothers' College in Kimberley, and then at Balliol College, where he received a Bachelor of Arts in 1934.
Frank Prince published his first collection, Poems, in 1938. The war found him serving in the British Intelligence Corps as a cryptographer for six years. After returning home, he had some difficulty publishing his works.
Frank Prince joined the University of Southampton. He served as a lecturer in 1946, a reader in 1955, and then an English professor in 1957. He also served as dean of the art faculty from 1962 to 1967. The 1950s saw the release of his Soldiers Bathing and Other Poems and The Stolen Heart. Syntactically complicated, Prince's verses were usually free verse in form and were notable for their lyrical, often leisurely quality. Leaving Southampton in 1974, Prince became an English professor at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica from 1975 to 1978. His later career included two years at Brandeis University as Fannie Hurst Professor, and stints as a visiting professor at Washington University, Sana'a University in North Yemen, and Hollins College during the early 1980s. Prince retired in 1984.
It was around the 1970s when Frank Prince's poems began to gain a larger audience, yet many of his later collections were released by small presses. One of his most acclaimed books at this time was Drypoints of the Hasidim. Prince also was the author of over a dozen poetry books, including Memoirs in Oxford, Afterword on Rupert Brooke, Walks in Rome, and Collected Poems, 1935-1992. Besides, he edited several works by Shakespeare and Milton. Prince's book of literary criticism, The Italian Element in Milton's Verse, is considered by some to be one of the most important works of literature of the twentieth century.
Quotations:
"From the beginning, it seemed to me that I would have to go my own way. It takes a long time and varied experience to learn what one really thinks and feels - longer, if one is a poet, and if one lives in this century. Some of my past work looks strange to me now, but I have kept it because at the very least it can help towards an understanding of the better things."
Interests
Writers
Roy Campbell, Ezra Pound, Thomas Stearns Eliot, William Butler Yeats, Arthur Rimbaud