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Loading... The Stairwell (edition 2014)by Michael Longley
Work InformationThe Stairwell by Michael Longley
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. A return to some familiar Longley themes of nature, place, family and war. In particular, this volume has an emphasis on the poet's twin brother (weaving in Homeric analogies to his memories), and towards raging, loss and renewal. ( ) no reviews | add a review
Awards
Winner of the 2015 Griffin Poetry PrizeShortlisted for the 2014 T.S. Eliot PrizeIn 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. The title poem begins- 'I have been thinking about the music for my funeral ...? The two parts are also linked by Homer. 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. Yet funeral music can be life-affirming. Longley has built this collection on intricate doublings, not only when he explores the tensions of twinship. The psychologically suggestive word 'stairwell? is itself an ambiguous compound. These poems encompass birth as well as death, childhood and age, nature and art, the animal and human worlds, tenderness and violence, battlefield and 'homeland?. The Stairwellis a richly textured, immensely moving work. Michael Longley has the rare ability to fuse emotional depth with complicated artistry- to make them, somehow, the same thing. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)821.914Literature English & Old English literatures English poetry 1900- 1900-1999 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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