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| CRISP DAY CLOSING ON MY HAND : The Poetry of M Travis Lane ((Laurier Poetry Series)) [Jeanette Lynes (ed)] This collection of thirty-five of Lane’s best poems is selected with an introduction by Jeanette Lynes. An environmentalist, feminist, and peace activist, M. Travis Lane is known for witty and meticulously crafted poems that explore the elusive nature of 'home' in both historical and present contexts and reflect on the identity of the woman poet and what it means to be a writer. Lane’s poems exhibit impressive range and variety -- long poems, short lyrics, serial poems, poems inspired by visual art -- and are richly attentive to the landscapes, both urban and wild. In her introduction 'As Opportunity for Grace, This Life May Serve', editor Jeanette Lynes discusses how Lane’s poetry integrates an eco-poetic vision with explorations of the artist’s task of mapping her world. Lane’s afterword reinforces her sense of the poet’s project as a form of mystical play, a search for patterns in the 'unified disunities' of all things. { 82pp, 155x230mm, February 2008; PB, £8.50, 1554580250:9781554580255 , Wilfrid Laurier University Press } |
| JOHN BETJEMAN : Reading the Victorians [Greg Morse] John Betjeman was undoubtedly the most popular Poet Laureate since Tennyson. But beneath the thoroughly modern window on Britain that he opened during his lifetime lay the influence of his nineteenth-century forbears. This book explores his identity through such Victorianism via the verse of that period, but also its architecture, religious faith and -- more importantly -- religious doubt. It was, nevertheless, a process which took time. In the 1930s Betjeman's work was tinted with modernism and traditionalism. He found Victorian buildings 'funny' and wrote much in praise of the Bauhaus style, even though his early poetry was peppered with Victorian references. This leaning was incorporated into a greater sense of purpose during World War 2, when he transformed himself from precious humorist into propagandist. The resulting sense of cohesion grew when the dangers of post-war urban redevelopment heightened the need to critique the present via the poetics of the past, a mood which continued up to and beyond his gaining the Laureateship in 1972. This duty proved to be a millstone, so the 'official' poems are thus explored by the author more fully than hitherto. The conclusion of looks back to Betjeman's 1960 verse-autobiography, 'Summoned by Bells', which is seen as the apogee of his achievement and a snapshot of his identity. Included here is the first critical appreciation of the lyrics embodied within the text, which are taken as a map of the young poet's literary growth. Larkin's 1959 question 'What exactly is Betjeman?' then leads to a final appraisal of his originality, as evidenced by his glances towards postmodernism, feminism, and post-colonialism. The fact is that Betjeman never quite fits in anywhere. He is always a square peg in a round hole or a round peg in a square hole -- often for the sheer enjoyment of so being. In a sense, his desire to be as non-conformist as a Quaker meeting house makes him a radical, rather than the reactionary that his interests imply. He was a champion of beauty and the British Isles, and clearly did much to make us see the worth of our Victorian forebears. Greg Morse's book highlights this important facet of his work. { 272pp, 152x229mm, June 2008; HB, £49.99, 1845192710:9781845192716 , Sussex Academic Press } |
| REFIGURING THE SACRED FEMININE : The Poems of John Donne, Aemilia Lanyer, & John Milton [Theresa DiPasquale] Theresa DiPasquale’s study of John Donne, Aemilia Lanyer, and John Milton demonstrates how each of these seventeenth century English poets revised, reformed, and renewed the Judeo-Christian tradition of the sacred feminine. All three poets are deeply invested in the ancient, scripturally authorized belief that the relationship between God and humankind is gendered: God is father, bridegroom, king; the human soul and the Church as corporate entity are daughter, bride, and consort. All three poets, DiPasquale demonstrates, thus engage in literary projects that modify, expand upon, challenge, or rethink the natures of men and women, the duties and privileges of the female sex, and the essential role played by feminine powers and influences in healing the sin-forged rift between God and humanity. { May 2008; HB, £48.50, 0820704059:9780820704050 , Duquesne University Press } |
| VIS & RAMIN [Fakhraddin Gorgani; Introduction & Notes by Dick Davis] VIS & RAMIN is one of the world's great love stories. it was the first major Persian romance, written between 1050 and 1055 in rhyming couplets. This remarkable work has now been superbly translated into heroic couplets (the closest metrical equivalent of the Persian) by the poet and scholar Dick Davis. VIS AND RAMIN had immense influence on later Persian poetry and is very probably also the source for the tale of Tristan and Isolde, which first appeared in Europe about a century later. The plot, complex yet powerfully dramatic, revolves around royal marital customs unfamiliar to us today. shahru, the married queen of mah, refuses an offer of marriage from King mobad of marv but promises that if she bears a daughter she will give the child to him as a bride. she duly bears a daughter, Vis, who is brought up by a nurse in the company of mobad's younger brother Ramin. By the time Vis reaches the age of marriage, shahru has forgotten her promise and instead weds her daughter to Vis's older brother, Viru. The next day mobad's brother Zard arrives to demand the bride, and fighting breaks out, during which Vis's father is killed. mobad then bribes shahru to hand Vis over to him. mobad's brother Ramin escorts Vis to her new husband and falls in love with her on the way. Vis has no love for mobad and turns to her old nurse for help... Told in language that is lush, sensual and highly inventive, VIS AND RAMIN is a masterpiece of psychological perceptiveness and characterisation: shahru is worldly and venal, the nurse resourceful and amoral (she will immediately remind Western readers of the nurse in shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet), Vis high-spirited and determined, Ramin impetuous and volatile. and the hopeless psychological situation of Vis' husband, mobad, flickers wearily from patience to self-assertion to fury and back again. The origins of VIS AND RAMIN are obscure. The story dates from the time of the Parthians (who ruled Persia from the third century BCE to the third century CE), and certainly existed in oral and perhaps written form before the eleventh century Persian poet Fakhraddin Gorgani composed the version that has come down to us. { 576pp, 125x205mm, April 2008; HB, £29.99, 1933823178:9781933823171 , Mage Publishers } |