John Carey: A Little History of Poetry

<div>This week's Book Club podcast features one of the great wise men of the literary world: Professor John Carey - emeritus Merton Professor of English at Oxford, author of authoritative books on Milton, Donne and Dickens as well as the subject-transforming broadside <em>The Intellectuals and the Masses</em>. (He's also lead book reviewer for a publication we shall call only the S****y T***s, but we pass over that.) In his new book, <em>A Little History of Poetry</em>, he sweeps us with his usual elan from the Epic of Gilgamesh to the backyard of Les Murray. I asked him (among other things) what constitutes poetry, why 'Goosey Goosey Gander' has it all, what he discovered in his researches, and why the so-called New Criticism got old.  <br> <br> Presented by Sam Leith.</div>