All You Who Sleep Tonight - Hardcover

Seth, Vikram

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 039458516X ISBN 13: 9780394585161

Publisher: Knopf, 1990

Synopsis

Vikram Seth's novel in verse, The Golden Gate, was hailed by Gore Vidal as "the Great California Novel" and by the New Republic as "a tour de force of the transcendence of the mere tour de force." Now he brings his romance with the English language, his effortless access to the deepest reservoirs of feeling, and his ability to light up the plain surfaces of everyday life to this stunning collection of poems.

In All You Who Sleep Tonight Seth delves into the varieties of love -- love lost, remembered, and deferred. He evokes the unspeakable ironies of Auschwitz and the light-blasted streets of Hiroshima. He conducts the reader through Lion Grove in Suzhou, China, and across the Golden Gate Bridge on its fiftieth anniversary. Throughout, he displays the lyricism and attentiveness that distinguish the best poets of every era.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

About this title

From the Inside Flap

s novel in verse, <b>The Golden Gate</b>, was hailed by Gore Vidal as "the Great California Novel" and by the New Republic as "a tour de force of the transcendence of the mere tour de force." Now he brings his romance with the English language, his effortless access to the deepest reservoirs of feeling, and his ability to light up the plain surfaces of everyday life to this stunning collection of poems.<br><br>In <b>All You Who Sleep Tonight</b> Seth delves into the varieties of love -- love lost, remembered, and deferred. He evokes the unspeakable ironies of Auschwitz and the light-blasted streets of Hiroshima. He conducts the reader through Lion Grove in Suzhou, China, and across the Golden Gate Bridge on its fiftieth anniversary. Throughout, he displays the lyricism and attentiveness that distinguish the best poets of every era.<br><br><br><i>From the Trade Paperback edition.</i>

Reviews

This collection fails because Seth's lockstep meter and corny rhymes keep his poetry stylistically on the level of that awful stuff many of us wrote in junior high school. This would be excusable if he had anything to say. But his poems are utterly devoid of subtext; what little meaning exists is all on the surface. Even this would be excusable if the surface were beautiful. It isn't. The surface meanings, and the forms that express them, are hackneyed and dull. This collection should not have seen the light of day. It certainly should not be seen in your library.
- Steven Hupp, Chicago
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Knopf
• Publication date: 1990
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 039458516X
• ISBN 13: 9780394585161
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 61