|
Biographical note: Richard Berengarten was born in London into a family of musicians. He has lived in Italy, Greece, Serbia, Croatia and the USA. He now lives in Cambridge, where he is a Bye-Fellow at Downing College. A former Fellow of the Royal Literary Fund, he has published more than 25 books.
BIC Basic
EAN13: 9781844714575
ISBN: 9781844714575
Author: Richard Berengarten
Title: The Manager
Series: Salt Modern Poets
Product class: BB
Language: eng
Audience: General/trade
BIC subject category: CTCH1
Publisher: Salt Publishing
Pub date: 23-Nov-08
Extent: 192pp
Height: 216 mm
Width: 140 mm
Thickness: 18 mm
Weight: 288 gms
Supplier: Gardners Books
Supplier: Ingram Book Group
Supplier: Inbooks (James Bennett)
Availability: NP
Price: GBP 14.99
Price: USD 26.95
Rights: World
See also
Richard
Berengarten
For the Living
Richard
Berengarten
The Blue Butterfly
Richard
Berengarten
In a Time of Drought
Richard
Berengarten
Under Balkan Light
|
Short
description/annotation: The action of this book-length poem unfurls in the public and private worlds of corporate man. The Manager is a poet’s response to challenges thrown down by T. S. Eliot more than eighty years ago in The Waste Land. Its ground is identity, sexuality and vision. Its occupation is mind, heart and spirit. The Manager pleads for, and insists on hope, life and renewal.
Main description: The action of this book-length poem unfurls in the public and private worlds of corporate man. The Manager is a poet’s response to challenges thrown down by T. S. Eliot more than eighty years ago in The Waste Land. Its ground is identity, sexuality and vision. Its occupation is mind, heart and spirit. The Manager pleads for, and insists on hope, life and renewal.
This revised edition of The Manager is the second volume in the Salt series of his Selected Writings.
Richard Berengarten used to be known as RICHARD BURNS. With the publication of this book, he now repossesses the family name of his father, the cellist and saxophonist Alexander Berengarten.
Table of contents:
Editor’s Preface
Acknowledgements
Under the plane tree an old woman knits
Part One
1. Gemini
2. Our evenings together
3. Dad I can’t get to sleep
4. Well Charles what’ll it be
5. Day invades the curtains
6. Dancing half canned at Miriana’s party
7. I yet myself continually
8. How I piss myself off
9. Confidential Memo
10. In tele-sales she said
11. It has never been like this
12. Prospectus
13. Hello, she sighs
14. October then
15. It was love perfect passion
16. Boarded the Twin Com
17. As a child on the playground edge
18. Coming in Wintersfield
19. As she stripped
20. Am I stealing you from your husband
21. Some people you can tell
22. One Thursday I skipped school
23. He’s a lurcher not a whippet
24. You are a true blue brick Tony
25. Your silence squeezes me dry
26. Am I interrupting you
27. She had a curious way
28. You’re pretending again
29. What’s a woman like me to do
30. My name???Homo aspirans
31. She’s watching The Holocaust
32. This morning every object
33. Is that the telephone ringing
34. Gasparo Napolitano in fullest flight
35. So that afternoon she flits
36. Yes hello there Looie hello
37. A lecture
38. Tonight she’s in bed with her Cypriot
39. Cover me Manoula
40. Now it’s autumn
41. Sipping Earl Grey in the Orangerie
42. Far too many years
43. Dozing, half past something
44. Room 1409
45. If I may make so bold as to speak
46. This bed smells of Eleni Deirdre Jane
47. Once in bed you said
48. Well this Adam Kadmon mate
49. My arms have been amputated
50. Hello. Hello. Are you there
51. I sit behind my desk
Curriculum Vitae
Part Two
52. Last night I was kept awake
53. Through the aerial arrival gate
54. Why you must to tell me
55. A polythene green dragon
56. The Saturday before they left
57. Memo. To: Psychometric Testing Evaluation Unit
58. There go the dead again
59. If I were to speak I’d call up the dead
60. I lift myself from despair
61. And if I were to greet you
62. To say Mummy again
63. Snowfall, two feet, at Green Hedges
64. The car turning the corner
65. I have spent much of my time looking
65. What I have lost is perpetual
66. I have searched all over this house
68. Sir. Since the living
69. Here my darling is the house
70. Chill east wind from Poland
71. Nobody calls
72. The minister has been tainted
73. He chats to me cheerily
74. Adam Kadmon hangs upside down
75. Cedar Ward
76. Damnedness and madness
77. This is a Reassessment Unit
78. Hip Know sissies
Hypnosis is
79. Fax: Urgent
80. We thought things might get better
81. After betrayal and after bereavement
82. This limestone cavern has the hugest mouth
83. Through heathered acres
84. I have tried to make sense of my life
85. Email
86. All the people I need to talk to
87. A hidden agenda
88. When did I last see myself
89. Auntie Mimi has died
90. Oh my cousin
91. Closed the front door quietly
92. I cannot make it cohere
93. To be not here, or anywhere
94. One street on my citymap always eludes me
95. In the parks and among the flowering gardens
96. This is a petition
97. Do not approach
98. The aeon lies torn in pieces
99. I’ve been trying to get through for ages
100. You who sit waiting for me
Noon. A sky of jade
Postscript
Notes View excerpt as PDF:  Click here to view a sample (176 KB)
Excerpt from book:
Forty-one
Sipping Earl Grey in the Orangerie at the Park Lane Four Seasons, she crosses and recrosses her legs and recounts her latest escapades. Stephanie, she says,
You know my lovely friend Stephanie. Well she’s just getting over five children and Dicky just ups and walks out on her. They’ve a charming little place somewhere
Up near Chipping Camden. And of course she can’t afford the repayments poor thing, not all by herself. Might even get repossessed. So while she’s kicking her heels and being reshaped and manicured
Waiting for that so-called husband of hers to sort himself out – or at least show up and do something marginally useful – Stephanie zooms down to London to mingle with weekend Sloanes.
Sometimes she stays over at my place. Sometimes with someone else. Then she bumps into Old Thingummy at some do or other. Peter Townley-Warner or Rupert Patchwork-Quilt,
I can’t remember which but you know the one I mean. Bête grise and eminence noire alias Ghastly Warthog. Yes frightfully bald these days but still absolutely reeking of pheromones.
Well, he calls her up the other day on his dinky mobile. Probably while stuck in some traffic jam. Says, Darling, Isn’t that absolutely charming daughter of yours coming out at last.
I can’t afford that, she snaps. I’ve got enough on my plate with five of them to look after. And I’m not a miracle worker. It’s Dicky who’s coming out. Next month. Out of
Ford Open. After three years ruminating that multi-million fraud of his. What an absolute scream. Well she’s got to get back at him somehow hasn’t she. One certainly does get around.
I say. Don’t look now darling. But over there by the coconut palm. To the left of the chandelier. There’s a small impotent-looking man. And he’s wearing my daughter’s knickers.
Unpublished endorsement: A strange and impressive work. It ought to be admired and widely discussed. Frank Kermode Unpublished endorsement: Berengarten is master supreme of images. His images speak, and they speak of truth that cannot be grasped in any other way. Zygmunt Bauman Review quote: A savage paean of praise for life. The protagonist becomes a giant force. NICHOLAS MOSLEY Review quote: I suspect, quite genuinely, that The Manager may be a masterpiece and posterity will regard it as such. Giles Gordon Review quote: A fabulous work. Its tense hysterical edges and jagged rhythms are just what we need. Barry MacSweeney Review quote: A wonderful and very special piece of work, something new and deep. Alan Sillitoe |
Contact
us
