Selected Poems (Spie Proceedings Series; 2790) - Softcover

Sisson, C. H.

  • 3.71 out of 5 stars
    7 ratings by Goodreads
 
9780811213271: Selected Poems (Spie Proceedings Series; 2790)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0811213277 ISBN 13: 9780811213271
Publisher: New Directions, 1996

Synopsis

C. H. Sisson's Selected Poems presents a half century's work by the writer deemed "England's finest living poet" by the London Times. Sisson's poems are characterized by a mastery of speech rhythms and imagery learned from Eliot, Pound, and T. E. Hulme. Serious and highly charged, they are steeped in literary tradition (Sisson is one of the great translators of Dante, Horace, Lucretius, and Virgil), and they draw on Sisson's remarkable knowledge of history and culture. Starting with poems written on a troopship and ending on home ground in Somerset, England, Selected Poems provides a comprehensive selection of Sisson's work, including "Tristan," a sequence written in the poet's eighty-first year.

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From the Back Cover

C. H. Sisson's Selected Poems presents a half century's work by the writer deemed "England's finest living poet" by the London Times. Sisson's poems are characterized by a mastery of speech rhythms and imagery learned from Eliot, Pound, and T. E. Hulme. Serious and highly charged, they are steeped in literary tradition (Sisson is one of the great translators of Dante, Horace, Lucretius, and Virgil), and they draw on Sisson's remarkable knowledge of history and culture. Starting with poems written on a troopship and ending on home ground in Somerset, England, Selected Poems provides a comprehensive selection of Sisson's work, including "Tristan", a sequence written in the poet's eighty-first year.

Reviews

Sisson is the quintessential English litterateur: career civil servant, poet with over 20 collections published since 1959, essayist, editor, novelist, critic and translator (Latin and other languages). The first poems here date from WW II; the last, a sequence, was written in 1995 when Sisson was 81. Throughout, his concerns are similiar: identity; mind and body; age; culture; landscape. His judgments of himself, and of humanity generally, are often harsh. "I have no person fit for resurrection," he says in an early poem; in one of the latest he writes, "So fumbling bodies try to make/ Friendship and love as best they can:/ None ever was without mistake/ and lies by woman and by man." Sisson is consistently plain, if not always clear; in these poems, he is rarely adventurous in meter or language. Individual poems?"On My 51st Birthday" and "The Mappemonde"?are outstanding, but the collection overall has a one-note tone and seems somewhat dated and weighty.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.

Publisher
New Directions
Publication date
1996
Language
English
ISBN 10 
0811213277
ISBN 13 
9780811213271
Binding
Paperback
Number of pages
94
Rating
  • 3.71 out of 5 stars
    7 ratings by Goodreads

Other Popular Editions of the Same Title

9781857542196: Poems, selected

Featured Edition

ISBN 10:  1857542193 ISBN 13:  9781857542196
Publisher: Carcanet Press, 1995
Softcover