Poems, 1960-2000

Author: Fleur Adcock
Publisher: Bloodaxe Books Limited
ISBN: 9781852245306
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 287

Book Description
Fleur Adcock is one of Britain's most accomplished poets. Her poised, ironic poems are tense and tightly controlled as well as shrewdly laconic, and often chilling as she unmasks the deceptions of love or unravels family lives. Disarmingly conversational in style, they are remarkable for their psychological insight and their unsentimental, mischievously casual view of personal relationships. Born in New Zealand, she has explored questions of identity and rootedness throughout her work, both in relation to her personal allegiances to her native and adopted countries as well as her family history, whose long-dead characters she brings to life. She has also written movingly of birth, death and bereavement, and has tackled political issues with honest indignation and caustic wit. This first Collected edition of her poetry replaces her Selected Poems, with the addition of work from her later Oxford collections The Incident Book, Time-Zones and Looking Back. All her most celebrated poems are here, from the highly entertaining 'Against Coupling', 'Smokers For Celibacy' and 'The Prize-Winning Poem' to modern classics such as 'The Ex-Queen Amongst the Astronomers' and 'Things' - as well as the notorious one about kissing John Prescott...; 'Adcock has a deceptively laid-back tone, through which the sharper edge of her talent is encountered like a razor blade in a peach' - Carol Ann Duffy, Guardian 'Most of Fleur Adcock's best poems have something to do with bed: she writes well about sex, very well about illness, and very well indeed about dreaming...; Her imagination thrives on what threatens her peace of mind, and only when she is unguarded can these threats have their full creative effect. Hence the importance of bed: it is the place where the elegant artful barriers that she builds from day to day are most easily over-thrown...; Throughout her writing life, she has made a fine art from holding on to principles of orderliness and good clear sense; but she has made an even finer one from loosening her grip on them' - Andrew Motion, TLS 'Adcock's reputation has been founded on her spare, conversational poems, in which the style is deceptively simple, apparently translucent...;those who see in such poems only flatness are missing the power of a voice which teases both reader and subject' - Jo Shapcott, TLS

Open World

Author: Kenneth White
Publisher: Birlinn Publishers
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 658

Book Description
His vision is a remarkably consistent one and the same elements recur again and again—rocks, sea, mist, gulls and the natural world. The sheer range of influences reflect the extraordinary range and depth of his reading—Rimbaud, Nietzche, and Whitman amongst many others—and it is a measure of the strength of his work that such a personal voice emerges. The book is arranged chronologically and many of the poems are appearing in English for the first time. Notated and introduced by the author, this collection for the first time presents his poetry as a coherent and cross-referenced whole.

Cool, Calm, and Collected

Author: Carolyn Kizer
Publisher: Copper Canyon Press
ISBN: 1556591810
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 530

Book Description
Selected as a "Best Book of the Year" by the Los Angeles Times and Booklist magazine, and winner of the Independent Publisher Book Award, Cool, Calm, and Collected is a tour de force from one of the nation's premier poets. For four decades, Carolyn Kizer has been one of the most influential, controversial, and recognizable figures in American poetry. A feminist practically before the term existed, she has never been afraid to say what is on her mind, writing poems infused with sexual politics, social awareness, and literary irreverence. Cool, Calm, and Collected was reprinted four times in cloth and became one of Copper Canyon Press's bestselling titles. It features new poems, work from all of Kizer's previous volumes, translations "from a dizzying number of poets" (New York Times), and several prose pieces, including "Pakistan Journal" and "My Good Father." . . . We women, Outside, breathing dust, are still the Other. The evening sun goes down; time to fix dinner. "You women have no major phiolosophers." We know. But we remain philosophic, and say with the Saint, "Let me enter my chamber and sing my songs of love." --from "Pro Femina" "We cannot do without Kizer and never could--here are four decades of compelling reasons why."--Los Angeles Times "Carolyn Kizer is a national treasure."--San Francisco Chronicle "The book will appeal to poetry lovers and activists of all stripes."--Publishers Weekly "No library should be without this collection."--Booklist (starred review) Carolyn Kizer, recipient of the Pulitzer Prize, was educated at Sarah Lawrence College. She co-founded Poetry Northwest; served as the first director of the Literature Program at the National Endowment for the Arts; was a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets; and has been a poet-in-residence at Columbia, Stanford, and Princeton. Kizer lives in Sonoma, California.

The Vintage Book of African American Poetry

Author: Michael S. Harper
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 030776513X
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 450

Book Description
In The Vintage Book of African American Poetry, editors Michael S. Harper and Anthony Walton present the definitive collection of black verse in the United States--200 years of vision, struggle, power, beauty, and triumph from 52 outstanding poets. From the neoclassical stylings of slave-born Phillis Wheatley to the wistful lyricism of Paul Lawrence Dunbar . . . the rigorous wisdom of Gwendolyn Brooks...the chiseled modernism of Robert Hayden...the extraordinary prosody of Sterling A. Brown...the breathtaking, expansive narratives of Rita Dove...the plaintive rhapsodies of an imprisoned Elderidge Knight . . . The postmodern artistry of Yusef Komunyaka. Here, too, is a landmark exploration of lesser-known artists whose efforts birthed the Harlem Renaissance and the Black Arts movements--and changed forever our national literature and the course of America itself. Meticulously researched, thoughtfully structured, The Vintage Book of African-American Poetry is a collection of inestimable value to students, educators, and all those interested in the ever-evolving tradition that is American poetry.

No Respect

Author: Gerard Malanga
Publisher: David R. Godine Publisher
ISBN: 9781574231625
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 308

Book Description
In 1964, at age 21, Gerard Malanga was already a celebrity poet-photographer in Andy Warhol's Factory; he'd starred in Warhol movies and his poetry had appeared in such prestigious literary magazines as Poetry, Art & Literature, Partisan Review and The New Yorker. This monumental retrospective volume includes all the major highlights of Malanga's previously published work, plus many new or rediscovered poems appearing here in book form for the first time.

Them Poems

Author: Mason Williams
Publisher: UW-Madison Libraries Parallel Press
ISBN: 9781893311114
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 48

Book Description
Written during the 1960s, Williams's Them Poems were so widely diffused into folk culture that they are often presumed to be another product of that prolific author "anonymous." Here they are for the first time collected and selected by their creator, Mason Williams. Them Poems is a bold, brassy collection that captures the free and easy antics of the 1960s. Smart, rhythmic stanzas have readers snickering through each knee-slapping stanza. Mason Williams is perhaps most widely known as a composer and musician. He has recorded more than a dozen albums, including the single Classical Gas which won three Grammys in 1968. Twenty years later a single, Country Idyll, from his album Classical Gas was nominated for a Grammy. The album went gold by selling over 500 thousand copies. In addition to his pop concerts, his Of Time & the River Flowing, Symphonic Bluegrass and Christmas conerts have been performed by more than forty symphony orchestras. Mr. Williams has written over a dozen books of prose, poetry, and music including The Mason Williams Reading Matter and Flavors (Doubleday), The Mason Williams FCC Rapport (Liverite), and a music book Classical Gas -- The Music of Mason Williams (CPP Belwin). As a comedy writer, he was a prime creative force in CBS television's controversial Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour and in 1980 he was the head comedy writer for NBC's Saturday Night Live.

Selected Poems

Author: Fleur Adcock
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN:
Category : New Zealand poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 148

Book Description
Fleur Adcock's poetry has been widely admired for its combination of verbal precision and technical control with a wide range of subject matter and tone. This volume includes a selection of early work from her first two collections. together with a substantial representation from her three most recent collections, High Tide in the Garden, The Scenic Route, and The Inner Harbour, all now unavailable. In addition, this volume includes 26 new poems. "Her poems seem to rest on the page with a special lenient grace."--Peter Porter, Observer. "The most talented woman poet now writing in Britain."--Gavin Ewart

The Land Ballot

Author: Fleur Adcock
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781780371474
Category : New Zealand
Languages : en
Pages : 95

Book Description
A land ballot was the means by which Fleur Adcock's grandparents, immigrants from Manchester during World War I, were able to bid for a piece of native bush on the slopes of Mount Pirongia in the North Island of New Zealand. Their task was to turn this unpromising acreage into a dairy farm. When things didn't work out as they had hoped much of the responsibility for running the farm and engineering their eventual escape fell on their teenage son, Adcock's father. This sequence of poems follows the course of their efforts and builds up a portrait of a small, isolated community.

A Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Poetry, 1960 - 2015

Author: Wolfgang Gortschacher
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118843207
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 656

Book Description
A comprehensive and scholarly review of contemporary British and Irish Poetry With contributions from noted scholars in the field, A Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Poetry, 1960-2015 offers a collection of writings from a diverse group of experts. They explore the richness of individual poets, genres, forms, techniques, traditions, concerns, and institutions that comprise these two distinct but interrelated national poetries. Part of the acclaimed Blackwell Companion to Literature and Culture series, this book contains a comprehensive survey of the most important contemporary Irish and British poetry. The contributors provide new perspectives and positions on the topic. This important book: Explores the institutions, histories, and receptions of contemporary Irish and British poetry Contains contributions from leading scholars of British and Irish poetry Includes an analysis of the most prominent Irish and British poets Puts contemporary Irish and British poetry in context Written for students and academics of contemporary poetry, A Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Poetry, 1960-2015 offers a comprehensive review of contemporary poetry from a wide range of diverse contributors.

The Mermaid's Purse

Author: Fleur Adcock
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781780375700
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

Book Description
Fleur Adcock wrote these poems during the four years before the COVID-19 pandemic put a stop to them. The two chief settings are New Zealand, with its multi-coloured seas, and Britain, seen in various decades. There are foreign travels, flirtations, family memories, deaths and conversations with the dead. Katherine Mansfield, incognito, dodges an academic conference; there's a lesson in water divining as well as a rather unusual Christmas party. We meet several varieties of small mammal, numerous birds, doomed or otherwise, and some sheep. The book ends with a sequence in memory of her friend, the poet Roy Fisher.