 |
Biographical note: Peter Abbs was born and grew up on the North Norfolk coast in England. He has written and lectured widely on the nature of creativity and the poetics of culture. In 2004 he was Writer-in-Residence at Lyon College, Arkansas. He is the Poetry Editor of Resurgence and Editor of Earth Songs, the first Anglo-American anthology of contemporary eco-verse. He has published six volumes of poetry including Icons of Time, Personae and Love After Sappho. He is currently Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Sussex.
BIC Basic
EAN13: 9781844710898
ISBN-10: 1844710890
ISBN-13: 9781844710898
Author: Peter Abbs
Title: Viva la Vida
Series: Salt Modern Poets
Product class: BC
Language: eng
Audience: General/trade
BIC subject category: CTCH1
Publisher: Salt Publishing
Pub date: 01-Mar-05
Extent: 108pp
Height: 216 mm
Width: 140 mm
Thickness: 7 mm
Weight: 162 gms
Supplier: Gardners Books
Supplier: Ingram Book Group
Supplier: Inbooks (James Bennett)
Availability: IP
Price: GBP 8.99
Price: USD 14.95
Rights: World
|
|  See larger image
PAPERBACK 
20% off at the UK Bookstore!
£8.99
£7.19
20% off at the US Bookstore!
$14.95
$11.96
| |
Short
description/annotation: This is the seventh volume of Peter Abbs’ poetry. Dana Gioia, the American poet and critic, described Peter Abbs as ‘the rarest of writers – a philosophical poet with a genuine lyrical gift’. The poems gathered here continue to range broadly with a philosophical eye. They include a new group of autobiographical poems, some elegant love poems, and a powerful and disturbing sequence on the breakdown and madness of Nietzsche. The final sequence, Ars Poetica, affirms the power of poetry – of cadence and metaphor, of silence and heteroglossia.
Main description: This is the seventh volume of Peter Abbs’ poetry. Dana Gioia, the American poet and critic, described Peter Abbs as ‘the rarest of writers – a philosophical poet with a genuine lyrical gift’. The poems gathered here continue to range broadly with a philosophical eye. They include a new group of autobiographical poems, some elegant love poems, and a powerful and disturbing sequence on the breakdown and madness of Nietzsche. The final sequence, Ars Poetica, affirms the power of poetry – of cadence and metaphor, of silence and heteroglossia.
Table of contents:
Child of Pisces
Child of Pisces
Falling Like Gulls
Head Gardener
Aspen Leaves
Grandmother Reading at Myrtle Cottage
The Glass Dome of Childhood
A Catholic Childhood
The White Gull’s Beatitude
Moving Statues
Injured Gull
Other Gifts
The Silent One
A Raw Planting
Flowering Gorse
Out of Touch
It Returns
Ancestor Worship
On the Further Side of Speech
Prometheus Bound
Owl of Minerva
The Last Journey of Odysseus
A Northern Sappho
Saint Augustine’s Quill
The Search of Rumi
In which Dante Meets the Pragmatists in the Ice of Hell
In which the Damned Lovers Answer Dante
After the Burning of Books
The Genius of Turner
Gerard Manley Hopkins among the Bluebells
The Storm Cloud
The Glorious Surgeon
Last Things
The Last Days of Kafka
Song of Frida Kahlo
Homage to Pierre Bonnard
In Exile
Out of Water Drowning
Viva la Vida
Blowing Dandelion Clocks at Seaford Head
Red Fox
Badge of Shame
Bunch of Nasturtiums
Wind Chimes
Our Place
On a Hot Summer Afternoon
The Naming of Love
Inconceivable Lives
Small Love Poem
Winter Love Poem
Falling into Love’s Shadow
Love
The Flowering of Flint
Ecce Homo: On Nietzsche’s Madness
Against the Cold
If You Should Meet Socrates
Life as Dance
Under the Bell-Tower in Genoa: Summer 1877
Seiltänzer
At the Foot of the Alps
In the Piazza: Turin, 3rd January 1889
Prometheus and the Eagle
In the Psychiatric Clinic: Jena, 19th January 1889
Übermensch
Requiescat in Pace
Ars Poetica
Return of the House-Martins
The Day of the Paraclete
Hallowed Be Thy Name
It Haunts
Agon
Without the Gods
Ariel’s Task
Speaking of a Plain Geography
Drive In
Ars Poetica View excerpt as PDF:
 Click
here to view a sample (64 KB)
Excerpt from book:
Blowing Dandelion Clocks at Seaford Head
As fledgling gulls glide over us
We leave the cliff’s worn paths
For untrod grass, vetch, pink scabious,
Clover, dandelion – seeding late.
Casually, we blow their small freight
Over the cliff’s ledge. Almost as delicate
As the air they ride, the seeds take flight –
Frail diaspora, an unlikely exodus –
Into the thunderous crashings of the tide.
How carelessly nature takes her chance
At the last moment, last gasp –
And we are part of that haphazard dance,
Walking together between seasons at
The high white edge, precarious too,
Blindly puffing ephemeral seeds, black
Specks of hope into the amorphous blue.
The sun sweats in the palm of our hands
Yet the breeze burns cool. And can you
Feel the winter coming in? I ask,
Wrapping my white warm scarf
Around your neck. Exquisitely, you adjust
The gift until it warms your naked skin.
You do not speak but stand suspended,
Floating, as we sense the future sweeping in,
A dance, at least, for us. We pluck and free
Another rounded globe of seeds and watch
Them fly. A random light is blazing on the sea.
Review quote: Peter Abbs is the rarest of writers – a philosophical poet with a genuine lyric gift. His poems are equally arresting for their substance as their style. Abbs is one of the few contemporary poets sufficiently tough-minded to be able to borrow from Dante, Mandelstam, Rilke and Seferis without being bested by the inevitable comparisons. Dana Gioia Review quote: A real body of work. Seamus Heaney Review quote: These are some of the finest poems written by any poet of Peter Abbs’ generation Kathleen Raine Review quote: The poetry is impressive. The Independent Review quote: These poems offer constant raids on the inarticulate, conducted with energy and resourcefulness on a range of fronts, from the familial to the cosmic. PN Review |
|
Contact
us
