Northern Summer: New and Selected Poems 1963-1983

John Matthias

ISBN 10: 0856461148 / ISBN 13: 9780856461149

Published by Anvil Press Poetry Ltd., London, 1984

About this Item

Warmly SIGNED AND INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR on title page to a colleague and friend. Near Fine, small corner bumps, ina Near Fine dust jacket, spine faded. Size: 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall.

Seller Inventory # 007405

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Northern Summer: New and Selected Poems 1963-1983
• Publisher: Anvil Press Poetry Ltd., London
• Publication Date: 1984
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0856461148
• ISBN 13: 9780856461149
• Binding: Cloth
• Edition: First British Edition.
• Condition: Near Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine
• Signed: SIGNED AND INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR
• Book Type: Book
• Seller catalogs:
  • Poetry

About this title

Synopsis

`Northern Summer' is a representative selection from John Matthias's previous books, together with a group of poems written since 1980. Robert Duncan wrote of his first book, `Bucyrus', that in part "Matthias is a Goliard - one of those wandering souls out of a dark age in our own time." The present selection includes the three epistolary poems from `Turns' - hailed as "major art" by Arthur Oberg in `Western Humanities Review' - as well as the long "Poem for Cynouai" from `Crossing', which extends and modifies their idiom. The book reprints entire "The Stefan Batory Poems", written on a Polish liner while Matthias travelled to America after a year in England during the last stages of the Watergate controversy, along with three sections of "The Mihail Lermontov Poems", written two years later while returning on a Russian ship to England. The comic vision of these poems has been widely acknowledged since the publication of `Crossing', a book the `TLS' found "bursting with masterful intelligence" and `Thames Poetry' called "packed with poetic thought, devilment, and complexities of spirit."

The new work in `Northern Summer' culminates in the title poem, a personal and historical meditation set in Scotland. In it a new landscape and history - that of Fife and "The Matter of Scotland" - join the East Anglian and mid-western American concerns of his earlier work. It is a poem that bears out Neil Corcoran's observation in `PN Review' that Matthias is a poet "whose exceptionally original work has something of David Jones's magpie eclecticism and much of his sustaining interest in specific re-imagined historical occasions."

About the Author

John Matthias was born in Columbus, Ohio in 1941. He has lived in California, Indiana, Suffolk, Cambridge and Scotland. He is Professor of English at the University of Notre Dame, and has been Visiting Fellow in poetry at Clare Hall, Cambridge. He has published four previous volumes of poetry - `Bucyrus', `Turns', `Crossing' and `Batory & Lermontov' - and has edited `23 Modern British Poets', `Five American Poets' and `Introducing David Jones'. With Göran Printz-Påhlson, he has edited and translated `Contemporary Swedish Poetry', and a collection of poems, `Rainmaker', by Jan Östergren.