Deaths of the Poets - Hardcover

Roberts, Michael Symmons; Farley, Paul

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0224097547 ISBN 13: 9780224097543

Publisher: Jonathan Cape, 2017

Synopsis

From Chatterton’s Pre-Raphaelite demise to Keats’ death-warrant in a smudge of arterial blood; from Dylan Thomas’ eighteen straight whiskies to Sylvia Plath’s desperate suicide in the gas oven of her Primrose Hill kitchen or John Berryman’s leap from a bridge onto the frozen Mississippi, the deaths of poets have often cast a backward shadow on their work.

The post-Romantic myth of the dissolute drunken poet – exemplified by Thomas and made iconic by his death in New York – has fatally skewed the image of poets in our culture. Novelists can be stable, savvy, politically adept and in-control, but poets should be melancholic, doomed and self-destructive. Is this just a myth, or is there some essential truth behind it: that great poems only come when a poet's life is pushed right to an emotional knife-edge of acceptability, safety, security? What is the price of poetry?

In this book, two contemporary poets undertake a series of journeys – across Britain, America and Europe – to the death places of poets of the past, in part as pilgrims, honouring inspirational writers, but also as investigators, interrogating the myth. The result is a book that is, in turn, enlightening and provocative, eye-wateringly funny and powerfully moving.

About this title

About the Author:

Michael Symmons Roberts (Author)
Michael Symmons Roberts’s fourth book of poetry, Corpus, was the winner of the 2004 Whitbread Poetry Award, and was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Forward Prize, and the Griffin International Prize. His sixth collection, Drysalter, was the winner of both the Forward Prize and the Costa Poetry Prize in 2013. His Selected Poems was published in 2016. He is a regular broadcaster, and librettist, working many times with the composer James MacMillan. He has published two novels, and is Professor of Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Paul Farley (Author)
Paul Farley is the author of four collections of poetry and has won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, the Whitbread Poetry Award and the E.M. Forster Award. He broadcasts regularly on radio and presents The Echo Chamber on Radio 4. Edgelands, cowritten with Michael Symmons Roberts, received the Royal Society of Literature’s Jerwood Award and the 2011 Foyles Best Book of Ideas Award and was serialised as Radio 4 Book of the Week.

Review:

"A rollicking mixture of literary biography, commentary, travelogue and anecdotage, much of it deeply amusing." -- Claire Harman * Evening Standard * "So much material of such innate interest is presented with just the right balance of panache, wit, insight and elegy... A good, clever, kindly and enjoyable book it is, like eavesdropping on two smarter friends when they are sparking off each other... Farley and Roberts are always entertaining and illuminating, gentle guides and quixotic questers." -- Stuart Kelly * Scotland on Sunday * "Deaths of the Poets is packed with anecdotes and macabre frisons; its forays through some of poetry's more sensational edge-lands make for a compelling read." -- Nicholas Roe * Literary Review * "A terrifically entertaining book: thoughtful, funny, informative, with an eye for good quotes and anecdotes, and wide-ranging in both the distance it travels and the material on which it draws." -- Blake Morrison * Guardian * "Deaths of the Poets is a gripping, witty read, but also asks serious questions about the way the post-Romantic myth of the doomed poet skews the way we interpret their work." -- Kathryn Hughes * Mail on Sunday * "It is a thoughtful book, structured as a series of pilgrimages to the places where poets have died." -- Lara Feigel * Irish Independent * "The authors are agreeable, well-informed and slyly humorous company." -- Dan Brotzel * UK Press Syndication * "Poets Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts make a comic routine out of their own relative longevity... An absorbing, if melancholy trip." -- Suzi Feay * Financial Times * "On their pilgrimage, Michael and Paul honour their poetic heroes, but also investigate and interrogate the myth, sending themselves up in the process. The result is a book... that is enlightening and provocative, eye-wateringly funny and powerfully moving." * About Manchester * "The book is a fascinating if slightly ghoulish examination of poets' deathbeds, and sometimes their last words, such as Philip Larkin's bleak remark, "I am going to the inevitable"... Deaths of the Poets is highly readable, informative and resonating with a literary hinterland." -- Francis Philips * Catholic Herald * "It's an undertaking that explores the often linked ideas of poetry and mortality, but with a questing humour." -- Carl Wilkinson * Financial Times * "A witty and erudite journey into the characters of doomed poets using location as a steer." -- Melvyn Bragg * Observer *

About this edition

• Publisher: Jonathan Cape
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 0224097547
• ISBN 13: 9780224097543
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 432