Selected Poems - Softcover

Tomlinson, Charles

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0811213692 ISBN 13: 9780811213691

Publisher: New Directions, 1997

Synopsis

An accessible retrospective of the great poet.

In the tradition of Wallace Stevens, Charles Tomlinson's Selected Poems―encompassing his work from 1955 to 1997―records the logic of human perception, embodying aspects of both tragedy and possibility. Here is the long-awaited compendium of the work of one of England's contemporary masters and one of this century's great poets.

About this title

Review

The English poet Charles Tomlinson has undergone a long apprenticeship to American poetry and the American landscape, and has even produced a memoir called Some Americans. It's curious, then, that he's not more of a household word in this country, as are Ted Hughes or Philip Larkin. Perhaps he's paid the price for the lack of dirty laundry in his art. In any case, his is a capacious spirit, a journeying mind. Tomlinson's intuition has always been to look outward, to identify the object in order to make the inner self transparent. The tone is modest, the intonation subtle. He is invariably a man for whom, as one of his book titles reaffirms, seeing is believing.

Something at the edge of things attracts Tomlinson's imagination. He likes to position himself in extreme situations, seeking out the physical side of extremity while keeping tight control over his verse. He makes the value of awareness palpable, and in his "language of water, light and air" there is a refreshing absence of the first-person pronoun. Indeed, having published his work since the dawn of the Elvis era, Tomlinson has supplied a helpful corrective to the postwar emphasis on the ego. Even the heavenly bodies are seen not on the poet's terms, but on their own, "like the full / Moon slowly given to the night, / A possession that is not to be possessed." --Mark Rudman

About the Author

Charles Tomlinson read English at Queens College, Cambridge, has lived in Northern Italy and London, and has recently retired after thirty-six years of teaching at the University of Bristol. In 1993 he received the Bennett Award for achievement in literature from The Hudson Review of New York, and in 1991 the Premio Europeo di Cittadella. He is the editor of the classic anthology The Oxford Book of Verse in English Translation. He lives in Gloucester, England.

About this edition

• Publisher: New Directions
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0811213692
• ISBN 13: 9780811213691
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 226