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Biographical note: John James was born 1939 in Cardiff and educated by the De La Salle Brothers at Saint Illtyd’s College there. He left in 1957 to read Philosophy and English Literature at the University of Bristol and later undertook postgraduate studies in American Literature at the University of Keele. He was a founder of The Resuscitator in Bristol in 1963 and Arts Council Creative Writing Fellow, University of Sussex, 1978–79. He is Head of Communication Studies at Anglia Polytechnic University, Cambridge.
BIC Basic
EAN13: 9781876857400
ISBN-10: 1876857404
ISBN-13: 9781876857400
Author: John James
Title: Collected Poems
Series: Salt Modern Poets
Product class: BC
Language: eng
Audience: General/trade
BIC subject category: CTCH1
Publisher: Salt Publishing
Pub date: 30-Sep-02
Extent: 380pp
Height: 216 mm
Width: 140 mm
Thickness: 21 mm
Weight: 570 gms
Supplier: Gardners Books
Supplier: Ingram Book Group
Supplier: Inbooks (James Bennett)
Availability: IP
Price: GBP 17.99
Price: USD 24.95
Rights: World
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Short
description/annotation: John James is one of the most highly respected poets of his generation. In this volume all his major works are gathered together from Mmm … Ah Yes (1967) to Schlegel Eats a Bagel (1996). In addition, a number of hard to obtain poems are also reprinted, including A Former Boiling (1979) and The Ghost of Jimi Hendrix at Stokesay Castle (1988).
Main description:
Table of contents:
Mmm … Ah Yes (1967)
Shades in a Conversation
Cool Evening
Plane Tree
On the Way Home
Chi è Questa Che Vien …
6:00 p.m.
While Listening to ‘Ah-leu-cha’
Hengrove
An Open Letter to Jim Workman, Landlord, at the Rose & Crown, Withy Mills, North Somerset
What Can You Do With a Bird Like That?
Walking on the Downs Near Avon Gorge
Flowering Shrub
To Allen Ginsberg
The Lovers
To a Young Art Student in London
Danny’s Plaque
Bathampton Morrismen at the Rose & Crown
The Welsh Poems (1967)
Exultation
Second Exultation
Heredity
Trägheit (1968)
Blues & Reverie
Runic
A Dream
Variations from the Same Cramped Postcard
Days Passing
Inventory
The Small Henderson Room (1969)
“… or as we wheel”
With Regard the Matter of Falling
On Leaving the Footpath
Written on Beginning Georg Büchner’s Lenz & While Waiting a Return
Poem of Inevitable September, or, I’m a City Boy at Heart
“Whatever You’ve Got, Someone Somewhere Needs it” – W.M.
Waiting
Coda to the Immediately Preceding Poems
Side Window
“There is a very slight relief in”
“Forsythia spatters the faint loops &”
A Public Self-address System
“This to be done”
Talking in Bed
The Postcard Sonata
In the Grass
Letters from Sarah (1973)
Striking the Pavilion of Zero (1975)
“for the snow”
Talking in Bed
“pointless …”
“uuhhh? …”
“a complete innocence …”
Rough
“the day writhes in an immense crater”
“drawing my chair closer to the speaker”
27 October 1969
The Dragon House
Good Old Harry
The Grace
“the trees are pliant to the wind”
“from the earth quite gratefully transmuted”
Going Back to Sleep 2:12 p.m.
“a dangerous wind & temptress to exalted nihilism …”
Proleptic
May Day Greetings 1971
A Theory of Poetry (1977)
War (1978)
A Former Boiling (1979)
Toasting (1979)
Inaugural Address (1979)
Berlin Return (1983)
Craven Images
Variations on ‘Today Backwards’
Two Sonnets
After Satie, a Concert, 13 June 1972, on the Beach, Aldeburgh
A Page
Karol in Tunisia
After Francis Amunatégui
Bye Bye Blackbird
Song
Wearing My Little Blue T-Shirt Again
One for Rolf
Narrative Graffiti
After Christopher Wood
Cambridge
Chute de Pierres
Sister Midnight
Shakin All Over
Poem for Bruce McLean (1983)
Lines for Richard Long (1988)
The Ghost of Jimi Hendrix at Stokesay Castle (1988)
Local (1990)
Dreaming Flesh (1991)
For the Safety of Lovers
The Conversation
From Pass to Pass
Song
After Rilke: December
A Letter to Paul
After Picasso
Polka
Nocturnal
On Romsey Rec
Eugène Boudin
Nijinsky
Sleep
Stacking
Song
Kinderlieder (1992)
After Thomas Hood
Sketches of a Day
Song
Israel
Anglo-Irish Relations
Anglo-Irish Relations (Slight Return)
Confession
That Old Piano
The Consciousness Raisers
From the Welsh
Colonial Medley
Gnome
Skip
Skip
Gender
The American President Addresses West Berlin
January 1983
The Sandwich
The Bee Code of Hywel Dda
Schlegel Eats a Bagel (1996)
February
Retro
Poem
Blue Scar Watch
Rune
Idyl View excerpt as PDF:  Click here to view a sample (56 KB)
Excerpt from book:
After Francis Amunatégui
The appearance
of a hot sausage
with its salad
of potatoes in oil
can leave nobody
indifferent …
it is pure, it
precludes
all sentimentality,
it is
the Truth
Review quote: Impossibly romantic and optimistic, miraculously avoiding gloom and didacticism to achieve a continuously surprising and euphoric surface … related to … classic simplicity of line. Andrew Duncan Review quote: This is ‘out and about’ poetry, inhabiting Cambridge pubs and Eastern European streets, embracing non-sequiturs and apparently-random thoughts into the smooth thought-flow of event and image and speculation. There’s a libidinal energy which resists gloom (hatred of the meagre portion/even the bars are closed when we leave the cinema) and the occasional break into what could almost be song lyric. Steve Spence
Terrible work Review quote: John James is an extremely enjoyable and charismatic poet. His work is like a vigorous breath of fresh air, full of variety, humour and surprise. It has a strong sense of lyricism and energy, a striking mixture of the experimental and the immediate that brings to mind the work of Mayakovsky or the New York poets of the 1950s and 60s. Charles Bainbridge
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