Poems 1955-2005

New
Paperback
2005
$22.01

Anne Stevenson is a major American and British poet. Born in Cambridge of American parents, she grew up in the States but has lived in Britain for most of her adult life. Rooted in close observation of the world and acute psychological insight, her poems continually question how we see and think about the world. They are incisive as well as entertaining, marrying critical rigour with personal feeling, and a sharp wit with an original brand of serious humour. Poems 1955-2005 is a remaking of Anne Stevenson's earlier Collected Poems, drawing on over a dozen previous collections as well as new poems, with this book's new thematic arrangements emphasising the craft, coherence and architecture of her life's work. 'While Anne Stevenson is most certainly, and rightly, regarded as one of the major poets of our period, it has never been by virtue of this or that much anthologised poem, but by the work or mind as a whole. It is not so much a matter of the odd lightning-struck tree as of an entire landscape, and that landscape is always humane, intelligent and sane, composed of both natural and rational elements, and amply furnished with patches of wit and fury, which only serve to bring out the humanity' - george szirtes, London Magazine 'One of the most important poets active in England today...she presents us with a complex reality where an intently sensory world inhabited by wilful resistant people is overlaid by ghosts, ideas, and spectral emissions: the historical, philosophical, and scientific - all dimensions of what obviously isn't there and yet can't be denied' - emily grosholz, Michigan Quarterly 'Her knowledge of botany, ornithology and other natural sciences is impressive, but her talent is for fusing the disciplines into an honest and humane account of our world, and expressing this through rhythm and form...She is wise without portentousness, her technique faultless and her imagination fiery, political and fresh' - carol rumens, Independent

Synopsis

Anne Stevenson is a major American and British poet. Born in Cambridge of American parents, she grew up in the States but has lived in Britain for most of her adult life. Rooted in close observation of the world and acute psychological insight, her poems continually question how we see and think about the world. They are incisive as well as entertaining, marrying critical rigour with personal feeling, and a sharp wit with an original brand of serious humour. Poems 1955-2005 is a remaking of Anne Stevenson's earlier Collected Poems, drawing on over a dozen previous collections as well as new poems, with this book's new thematic arrangements emphasising the craft, coherence and architecture of her life's work. 'While Anne Stevenson is most certainly, and rightly, regarded as one of the major poets of our period, it has never been by virtue of this or that much anthologised poem, but by the work or mind as a whole. It is not so much a matter of the odd lightning-struck tree as of an entire landscape, and that landscape is always humane, intelligent and sane, composed of both natural and rational elements, and amply furnished with patches of wit and fury, which only serve to bring out the humanity' - george szirtes, London Magazine 'One of the most important poets active in England today...she presents us with a complex reality where an intently sensory world inhabited by wilful resistant people is overlaid by ghosts, ideas, and spectral emissions: the historical, philosophical, and scientific - all dimensions of what obviously isn't there and yet can't be denied' - emily grosholz, Michigan Quarterly 'Her knowledge of botany, ornithology and other natural sciences is impressive, but her talent is for fusing the disciplines into an honest and humane account of our world, and expressing this through rhythm and form...She is wise without portentousness, her technique faultless and her imagination fiery, political and fresh' - carol rumens, Independent

$22.01

Quantity

10 in stock

More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 413
Publisher: Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Published: 26 May 2005
ISBN 10: 1852246995
ISBN 13: 9781852246990

Author Bio

anne stevenson was born in Cambridge, England, in 1933, of American parents, and grew up in New England and Michigan. She studied music, European literature and history at the University of Michigan, returning later to read English and publishing the first critical study of Elizabeth Bishop. After several transatlantic switches, she settled in Britain in 1964, and has since lived in Cambridge, Scotland, Oxford, the Welsh Borders and latterly in North Wales and Durham. She has held many literary fellowships, and was the inaugural winner of Britain's biggest literary prize, the Northern Rock Foundation Writer's Award, in 2002. As well as her numerous collections of poetry, Anne Stevenson has published a biography of Sylvia Plath (1989), a book of essays, Between the Iceberg and the Ship (1998) and two critical studies of Elizabeth Bishop's work, most recently Five Looks at Elizabeth Bishop (1998).