The park drunk -- Trysts -- At dawn -- What the horses see at night -- Primavera -- Cusp -- The eel -- The death of Actaeon -- Swimming in the woods -- Drowning in Co. Down -- Ghost of a garden -- Selkie -- Between the harvest and the hunter's moon -- Old ways -- Entry -- Samhain -- Still life with cardoon and carrots -- Strindberg in London -- Wormwood -- The glair -- Strindberg in Paris -- Heel of bread -- Entropy -- Sea-fret -- Myth -- New York spring -- The lake at dusk -- A seagull murmur -- Calcutta, Co. Armagh -- Mar-hawk -- The catch -- Actaeon : the early years -- To my daughters, asleep -- Firesetting -- Siesta -- La Stanza delle Mosche -- Lizard -- Ode to conger-eel broth -- Asparagus -- On Pharos -- Manifest -- Untitled (51) -- Net -- Crossing the Archipelago -- Bow -- Rainmaker -- The custom-house -- Leavings -- Donegal -- Trumpeter swan -- Answers -- Holding Proteus.
Summary:
"To "swither" means to suffer indecision or doubt, but there is no faltering in these poems; any uncertainty is not in the lines or the sounds or the images, but only in the themes of flux and change and transformation that thread their way through this powerful third collection. Robin Robertson has written a book of remarkable cohesion and range that calls on his knowledge of folklore and myth to fuse the old ways with the new. From raw, exposed poems about the end of childhood to erotically charged lyrics about the end of desire, from a brilliant retelling of the metamorphosis and death of Actaeon to the final freeing of the waters in "Holding Proteus," these are close examinations of nature--of the bright epiphanies of passion and loss. At times sombre, at times exultant, Robertson's poems are always firmly rooted in the world we see, the life we experience: original, precise, and startlingly clear."--Publisher's website.
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.