The Snake-Haired Muse: James K. Baxter and Classical Myth

James K. Baxter’s use of Greek myth has often been treated as a critical embarrassment, a tedious and anachronistic burden of classical baggage. Geoffrey Miles, John Davidson and Paul Millar argue that it is in fact close to the heart of his poetic vision.

Drawing on Baxter’s whole career, and mounting the first ever sustained investigation of his vast corpus of unpublished poems, they explore the mythic figures and ambiguous symbols to which he repeatedly returned in his attempts to ‘make a pattern out of the chaos of his experience’. Among the figures discussed in detail are the seaborn Venus; Dionysus the liberating and destructive god of alcohol; the alienated voyager Odysseus; Theseus in his political Labyrinth; and the hideous Gorgon who also functions as the poet’s dangerous Muse. An alphabetical Who’s Who catalogues the full range of Baxter’s classical allusions.

Illuminating the complexity, adventurousness, imaginative energy, and unexpected wit of Baxter’s dealings with classical mythology, The Snake-Haired Muse sheds a new light on this iconic poet.

Geoffrey Miles is the author of Shakespeare and the Constant Romans, and editor of Classical Mythology in English Literature.

John Davidson has had a long-standing research interest in the work of James K. Baxter, alongside his extensive publications on Greek tragedy, mythology, and Homer.

Paul Millar has published extensively on Baxter’s early years and has edited a number of selections of Baxter’s poetry. His most recent book is the literary biography No Fretful Sleeper: A Life of Bill Pearson.