Includes bibliographical references (pages 350-352) and index.
Contents:
Pt. 1. Journeys -- 1. The journey of a poem and the journey of reading it -- 2. The two-thousand-year-old complaint -- 3. Different ways of being difficult -- 4. What's wrong with Cliche? : and why shouldn't 'most popular' mean 'best'? -- 5. 'The syllable, that fine creature' and one of its favourite relationships : rhyme -- 6. Poetry is movement -- 7. Making strange : the leap of metaphor -- 8. Metaphor we live by : the journey of life -- 9. Adventure, quest, pilgrimage and homecoming; treasure-seeking, asylum-seeking, exile -- 10. The path within : journey to the underworld -- 11. 'To be your guide' : the words, the book, the poem -- 12. So ... -- Pt. 2. Poems -- Prologue : beginning the journey -- 1. Machines / Michael Donaghy -- 2. The flaggy shore / Gwyneth Lewis -- 3. The old gods / John Burnside -- 4. Disturbing the tarantula / Christopher Middleton -- 5. Taxing the rain / Penelope shuttle -- 6. Midnight salvage : poem 6 / Adrienne Rich -- 7. Breakfrost / W. N. Herbert -- 8. Granny scarecrow / Anne Stevenson -- 9. Salopian / Peter Reading -- 10. Brazil, January 1, 1502 / Elizabeth Bishop -- 11. Second poem from What is the language using us for? / W. S. Graham -- 12. District and circle / Seamus Heaney -- 13. Mercian hymns VI / Geoffrey Hill -- 14. Smoke / Jacob Polley -- 15. No / Mark Doty -- 16. Baptism / Jean 'Binta' Breeze -- 17. Swim right up to me / Katherine Pierpoint -- 18. Vita Nova / Louise Gluck -- 19. Broken moon / Carole Satyamurti -- 20. Making friends with ties / Hugo Williams -- 21. Swami Anand / Sujatta Bhatt -- 22. O / Ciaran Carson -- 23. Blackbird / R. S. Thomas -- 24. Prayer / Jorie Graham -- 25. Mesoplodon pacificus / Helen Parish -- 26. Mahout / Mimi Khalvati -- 27. A Martian sends a postcard home / Craig Raine -- 28. Mantles / Kit Wright -- 29. The evening of Greuze / John Ashbery -- 30. Moving house / Robin Robertson -- 31. Sighting the slave ship / Pauline Stainer -- 32. The Lammas hireling / Ian Duhig -- 33. Serious / James Feton -- 34. On/off / Jamie McKendrick -- 35. Badly-chosen lover / Rosemary Tonks -- 36. Portrait of a lady / Alan Jenkins -- 37. The holy city / J. H. Prynne -- 38. Wedding / Alice Oswald -- 39. Two lighthouses / Julia Darling -- 40. On the table / Andrew Motion -- 41. Poem XVI from marriage / David Harsent -- 42. That the science of cartography is limited / Eavan Boland -- 43. When you cried / Kate Clanchy -- 44. From a conversation during divorce / Carol Rumens -- 45. Time out / Maurice Riordan -- 46. Trapped dingo / Judith Wright -- 47. from Book XXI of Homer's Iliad / Christopher Logue -- 48. Poems XV and XXVI from The notebook of uprisings / Carolyn Forche -- 49. Oswiciem / Nick Laird -- 50. How the world split in two / Moniza Alvi -- 51. Frogs / Kathleen Jamie -- 52. The orange tree in Cordoba / Jane Duran -- 53. Birthday / Simon Armitage -- 54. Child burial / Paula Meehan -- 55. The wrong beds / Roger McGough -- 56. 'Dogs, would you live for ever?' / Bernard O'Donoghue -- 57. Timer / Tony Harrison -- 58. Black silk / Tess Gallagher -- 59. Rembrandt's late self-portraits / Elizabeth Jennings -- 60. Orpheus and Eurydice / Czeslaw Milosz
Summary:
Ruth Padel uses 60 poems by some of our finest poets to look at the idea of the journey, through literature and through life. She highlights the ways in which the best poets find a balance between rhymed formal verse and modernism's freer styles, using a traditional, formal craft to convey genuinely felt, up-to-the-minute experience.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.