Al Alvarez
Alvarez in 2006
Born	(1929-08-05) 5 August 1929 (age 82) London
Occupation	poet, author, critic
Nationality	British
Period	1956–

Al Alvarez (born London, 5 August 1929) is an English poet, novelist, essayist, writer and critic who publishes under the name A. Alvarez and Al Alvarez.

Born Alfred Alvarez, he was educated at Oundle School and Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he took a First in English. After teaching briefly in Oxford and the USA, he became a fulltime writer in his late twenties. From 1956 to 1966, he was the poetry editor and critic for The Observer, where he introduced British readers to John Berryman, Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, Zbigniew Herbert, and Miroslav Holub.

Alvarez is the author of many non-fiction books. He is best known for his study of suicide, The Savage God, which gained added resonance from his friendship with Plath. He has also written on divorce (Life After Marriage), dreams (Night), and the oil industry (Offshore), as well as his hobbies of poker (The Biggest Game In Town) and mountaineering (Feeding the Rat, a profile of his frequent climbing partner Mo Anthoine). His 1999 autobiography is entitled Where Did It All Go Right?

His 1962 poetry anthology The New Poetry was hailed at the time as a fresh departure. It championed the American style, in relation to the perceived excessive 'gentility' of British poetry of the time. In 2010 he was awarded the A.C.Benson Medal by the Royal Society of Literature.^[1]

Alvarez was portrayed by Jared Harris in the 2003 film Sylvia, which chronicles the troubled relationship between Plath and her husband Ted Hughes.

Selected works[link]

• The Shaping Spirit (1958)
• The School of Donne (1961)
• The New Poetry' (1962)
• Under Pressure (1965)
• Beyond All This Fiddle (1968)
• The Savage God (1972)
• Beckett (Fontana Modern Masters, 1973)
• Hers (1974)
• Hunt (1979)
• Life After Marriage (1982)
• The Biggest Game in Town (1983)
• Feeding the Rat (1989)
• Day of Atonement (1991)
• Night (1995)
• Where Did It All Go Right? (1999)
• Poker: Bets, Bluffs, and Bad Beats (2001)
• New & Selected Poems (2002)
• The Writer's Voice (2005)
• Risky Business (2007)

See also[link]

Poetry portal

• Confessional poetry
• List of British Jews

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Al Alvarez

• Book Review of 'The Biggest Game In Town'

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Dante and Beatrice gaze upon the highest heavens; from Gustave Doré's illustrations to the Divine Comedy.

Heaven, the Heavens or Seven Heavens, is a common religious, cosmological or metaphysical term for the physical or transcendent place from which heavenly beings (such as a Sky deity, God, angels, King or Queen of Heaven, Heavenly Father or Heavenly Mother or Son of Heaven, heavenly saints or venerated ancestors) originate, are enthroned or inhabit. It is commonly believed that heavenly beings can descend to earth or take on earthly flesh and that earthly beings can ascend to Heaven in the afterlife or in exceptional cases enter Heaven alive. Heaven is often described as a "higher place", the holiest place, a Paradise, in contrast to Hell or the Underworld or the "low places", and universally or conditionally accessible by earthly beings according to various standards of divinity, goodness, piety, faith, or other virtues or right beliefs or simply the Will of God. Some believe in the possibility of a Heaven on Earth in a World to Come or of a World Tree which connects the heavens, the world, and the underworld. Another belief is in an Axis mundi which connects heaven and earth.