Millennial Fables (Oxford Poets) - Softcover

Porter, Peter

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0192823914 ISBN 13: 9780192823915

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1995

Synopsis

In the countdown to the Third Millennium, time and events tend to be scrutinized apprehensively. Ordinary human fear of portents and oracles becomes intensified. Peter Porter's new collection acknowledges this pressure, and protests against it. More than ever, his poems express contemporary
life in its present flux, while forecasting a turbulent future.

The second part of the book, entitled `Homage to Robert Browning', is a series of monologues and character pieces in which individual voices speak to us from a wide range of occasions and places. An imaginary notebook kept by Bach's first wife, Maria Barbara, a poem called `Aesop's Dressing Gown',
`Berenson Spots a Lotto': these give an idea of Porter's ranging curiosity and knowledge, which he displays with great generosity and humour.

About this title

About the Author:

Peter Porter was born in Brisbane in 1929. He came to England in 1951 and, apart from short periods as writer-in- residence at English, Scottish, and American Universities, has lived in London ever since. His collections for Oxford poets includes The Automatic Oracle, The Chair of Babel, Collected Poems, The Cost of Seriousness, Fast Forward, A Porter Selected and Possible Worlds.

Review:

On The Chair of Babel (1992):

Peter Porter...is one of the few poets equal to our serious' Christopher Wordsworth, Observer

...this melliflous, yet coolly classical, perceptive poet Elizabeth Jennings, Daily Telegraph

'Few living poets can match Porter's ambitiousness of theme; he tackles the most complex of issues with angry, rueful intelligence. He steels himself against the likely sleaziness of this millennium's close with solemn warnings and exuberant satires which leave most recent verse looking
plaintively inadequate.'
Sunday Times Jan '95

'... shows not only that he is in fine form but that his muse is more than generous to a poet now in his mid-sixties.'
Vernon Scannell Sunday Telegraph Jan '95

On The Chair of Babel (1992):

Peter Porter...is one of the few poets equal to our serious' Christopher Wordsworth, Observer

...this mellifluous, yet coolly classical, perceptive poet Elizabeth Jennings, Daily Telegraph

'he is a poet who just seems to get better the older he gets ... his Millennial Fables is tremendously accomplished'
Books of the Year

'More than ever, his poems set up densely interactive dialogues between past and present. This engrossing, densely packed book confirms that Porter is among the few living poets with the ability to identify those points of light and have a stab at joining the dots.'
Times Literary Supplement

'shows not only that he is in fine form but that his muse is more than generous to a poet now in his mid-sixties'
Vernon Scannell, Sunday Telegraph

'his poems set up densely interactive dialogues between past and present ... a very distinctive poet ... This engrossing, densely packed book confirms that Porter is among the few living poets with the ability to identify those points of light and have a stab at joining the dots.'
Times Literary Supplement

`the whole argument of the book is summoned in five superb closing stanzas which make much of what's come before look entangled ... Perhaps, then, this really is a book of our times.'
Adam Thorpe, The Observer

On The Chair of Babel (1992):

...this mellifluous, yet coolly classical, perceptive poet Elizabeth Jennings, Daily Telegraph

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0192823914
• ISBN 13: 9780192823915
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 94