The Manager

Synopsis

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.

This revised edition of The Manager is the second volume in the ongoing Salt series of Richard Berengarten’s 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.

Praise for this Book

‘A savage paean of praise for life. The protagonist becomes a giant force.’ —NICHOLAS MOSLEY

‘A strange and impressive work. It ought to be admired and widely discussed.’ —Frank Kermode

‘Berengarten is master supreme of images. His images speak, and they speak of truth that cannot be grasped in any other way.’ —Zygmunt Bauman

‘I suspect, quite genuinely, that The Manager may be a masterpiece and posterity will regard it as such.’ —Giles Gordon

‘A wonderful and very special piece of work, something new and deep.’ —Alan Sillitoe

Reviews of this Book

‘A fabulous work. Its tense hysterical edges and jagged rhythms are just what we need.’ —Barry MacSweeney

‘[Berengarten] takes Charles Bruno from cynically philandering middle management through marital and mental breakdown to the point where he speaks as a prophet in the Old Testament sense, winning past death to endorse life.’ —Angus Calder, London Magazine