The Holy Life And Death Of Concrete Grady (by James K Baxter)

•  1974 edition. 99 pages
• Publisher.  Oxford
• Softcover. Format B. 
• Condition. Good.

This is the raw, undiluted account of his early years in Dunedin. The cover artwork is way ahead of its time. This man is a poet studied at Oxford University a fact he would probably detest. He ended his life bearded, shoeless and magnificent. Guttural poetry that is littered with learned reference points. Had he lived in the UK he would rival Eliot.

Poet Michael Schmidt has claimed that Baxter was 'one of the most precocious poets of the century' whose neglect outside of New Zealand is baffling. His writing was affected by his alcoholism. His work drew upon Dylan Thomas and Yeats; then on MacNeice and Lowell. Michael Schmidt identifies 'an amalgam of Hopkins, Thomas and native atavisms' in Baxter's 'Prelude N.Z