Another Wow - please take the time to read just this one! The poetry of Northern Irelands Michael Longley... Longley’s 10th collection weaves his classical themes of war, family and flaura and fauna into measured songs of commemoration for those he has loved. Paul McCartney, Sunday Times Sibelius, 1956 An iceberg in the dark Where we kiss, my bristly Chin reddening her chin. Shes a rock-n-roller. I want to share with her Symphonic fragments Snowdrifting towards their Theme. She sits on my knee After a sixth-form hop: Plastic necklace, bangles That icicle-tinkle Sugar-stiff petticoats Rustling aroma. Oh, Its a whole new world Down there, a friend says: Birdcalls in her throat, flute Notes our finlandia, Piccolo passerines. In The Stairwell, his tenth collection, Michael Longley’s themes and forms reach a new intensity. The second part of the book is a powerful sequence of elegies for his twin brother, Peter, and the dominant mood elsewhere is elegiac. Longley is well-known for his Homeric versions, and the Iliad is a presiding presence – both in poems about the Great War and in the range of imagery that gives his twin’s death a mythic dimension. Shortlisted for the 2014 T.S. Eliot Prize It is…the warmth in Longley’s writing that marks his poems out, makes them cherishable. Never forced, that affection is simply there. Observer --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted on: Sat, 30 Aug 2014 17:26:30 +0000
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