Don't Ask Me What I Mean: Modern poets in their own words

by Don Paterson (Author), Clare Brown (Author), Clare Brown (Author), Don Paterson (Author), Don Paterson (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  2003

  $5.19

  Don't Ask Me What I Mean is a comprehensive guide to the last 50 years of British poetry - written by the poets themselves. In this collection of short essays, the reader will find the last words Louis MacNeice wrote before his death, Ted Hughes on The Hawk in the Rain, Paul Muldoon on the etymology of 'quoof', Carol Ann Duffy on difficulties with gonks, and Simon Armitage on the Dead Sea Scrolls - and rare contributions from Seamus Heaney, Philip Larkin, Kingsley Amis, U. A. Fanthorpe, Jo Shapcott, Geoffrey Hill, Michael Donaghy, Elizabeth Jennings and many others. Together they comprise a candid, funny, intellectually brilliant and deeply personal account of one the most turbulent and fascinating periods in recent literary history. Unprecedented in its scope - and its scoops - Don't Ask Me What I Mean is essential reading, both for the poetry aficionado and the uninitiated - and provides a unique insight into some of the most remarkable minds of our time.

• Used

  Paperback
  2004

  $9.11

  Four times each year, the Poetry Book Society selects the best poetry titles being published and asks the poet to write 500 words on their own work at the time of its publication. The PBS bulletin has published some of the most revealing, candid and insightful statements these poets have ever made. Don't Ask Me What I Mean selects the best of these pieces. A genuine Who's Who of late 20th-century verse - Auden, Raine, Gunn, Hughes (who also contributes a remarkable short essay on Sylvia Plath's Ariel), Heaney, R.S. Thomas, Betjeman, Larkin, Merwin, Hecht, Paul Muldoon, Craig Raine, Norman McCaig, Geoffrey Hill, Tom Paulin, Derek Mahon, Sean O'Brien, up to and including contemporary notables such as Simon Armitage, Shapcott, Glyn Maxwell, Lavinia Greenlaw, Carol Ann Duffy, Wendy Cope, Michael Donaghy and Paul Farley.