The Long Public Life of a Short Private Poem

“Meticulously maps the eddies and currents that have defined this vexing poem’s vexed history of neglect, rediscovery, and canonization . . . grippingly unusual.” — Renaissance Quarterly   Thomas Wyatt didn’t publish “They Flee from Me.” It was written in a notebook, maybe abroad, maybe even in prison. Today it is in countless poetry anthologies. How did it survive?    That is the story Peter Murphy tells—in vivid and compelling detail—of the accidents of fate that