Francis: A Life in Songs

Francis: A Life in Songs

by Ann Wroe (Author)

Synopsis

A life of St Francis in verse Throughout her career Ann Wroe has constantly confounded expectations, following her own unique path. Now, in Francis, she turns to verse to tell the life of St Francis of Assissi. This is a sequence only Ann Wroe could write, combining a troubadour's musicality with full grasp of the moment, and a luminous sense of Francis as both myth and man, across history and culture, in nature and community. It is a remarkable and immensely beautiful book. St Francis was one of the most compelling spirits the world has seen. He was also a poet, a musician and a dancer. His world was coloured by troubadour lays, brightened by birdsong, ordered by the bells and chants of the Church and transfigured by the angel-lyres he heard about him. For Ann Wroe, this seems a good reason to write his life in songs. It is also an excuse to record, in songs, the many ways his presence and his music still linger round us. They surprise us in chance encounters in city streets; they waylay us amid the humdrum banalities of working life; they persist in the beauties of nature. Great spirits never leave us. They echo on and on.

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More Information

Format: Hardcover
Pages: 208
Publisher: Jonathan Cape
Published: 08 Nov 2018

ISBN 10: 1787331482
ISBN 13: 9781787331488
Book Overview: A life of St Francis in verse

Media Reviews
The most beautiful book I have read in a long time. -- Emma Duncan * The Times *
This passionate series of engagements with the life of St Francis will stay in my mind for a very long time - I hope forever... This is a poet with a distinctive voice, a command of form and a lightness of touch matched by a depth of heart... Wroe so triumphantly [exercises the imagination] in poem after poem. -- A. N. Wilson * Spectator *
A superb verse biography of St Francis, by the queen of the unexpected life-in-brief... This is a book to press into the hands of anyone who has decided they have given up on difficult modern poetry . It's so quietly traditional, so unashamedly lovely, that it seems almost radical... [Wroe] recalls John Clare in her close attentiveness to the natural world and the way she conveys a sense of spontaneous joy. -- Tristram Fane Saunders * Telegraph **Poetry Book of the Month** *
This extraordinary book... is quite haunting... [Francis] is one of the saints who is appealing even in a secular age... this isn't a book just for the faithful; it's for lovers of poetry in life and literature... a wonderful little book. -- Melanie McDonagh * Evening Standard *
Ms Wroe's is a rare and beautiful telling. She takes the miracles of St Francis and sings them in four keys. -- Laura Freeman * Economist *
Author Bio
Ann Wroe is the Briefings and Obituaries editor of The Economist. She is the author of six previous works of non-fiction, including Pilate: The Biography of an Invented Man, which was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Award and the W.H. Smith Award. She lives in north London.