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All The Poems

Muriel Spark


Cover Picture of All The Poems Beads and jewels of long ago look out
from their dark shopwindows
like blackberries in a wayside bramble bush
holding out their arms:
Take me, pick me, I am dark and sweet,
ripe and moist with life.
    from 'The Dark Music of the Rue du Cherche-Midi'

Muriel Spark was a poet before she was a novelist: All the Poems presents the full range of the poetry of one of the most acclaimed modern British writers. Here are villanelles, ballads and epigrams, as well as freer forms, all marked by brilliantly precise observation and command of her medium. Her poems are witty, idiosyncratic and haunting, transforming the familiar into glittering moments of strangeness, revealing the dark music beneath the mundane. The edge of danger and wry insights in Muriel Spark's poems are equally unforgettable.

Although most of my life has been devoted to fiction, I have always thought of myself as a poet. I do not write poetic prose, but feel that my outlook on life and my perceptions of events are those of a poet. Whether in prose or verse, all creative writing is mysteriously connected with music and I always hope this factor is apparent throughout my work.

Muriel Spark

The National Library of Scotland holds the Muriel Spark archive and has just launched a dedicated website. Visit www.nls.uk/murielspark/ for more information.

Title Information:

Imprint: Carcanet Poetry
ISBN-10: 1 857547 73 X
ISBN-13: 978 1 857547 73 3

Edition: 1st
Format: Hardback
Published: October 2004
Dimensions: 215x135mm
Pages: 400pp
Publisher: Carcanet Press
Also available in: Paperback

RRP: GBP£ 14.95

Discount: 10%
You Save: GBP£ 1.50

Price: GBP£ 13.45

Status: Available

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Table of Contents

A Tour of London

The Dark Music of the Rue du Cherche-Midi

The Yellow Book

What?

Verlaine Villanelle

Edinburgh Villanelle

Holy Water Rondel

The Creative Writing Class

Authors' Ghosts

That Bad Cold

Leaning Over an Old Wall

Flower into Animal

Abroad

Going Up to Sotheby's

On the Lack of Sleep

The Grave that Time Dug

The Pearl-Miners

Omen

My Kingdom for a Horse

Intermittence

Letters

Holidays

Facts

Complaint in a Wash-Out Season

Litany of Time Past

The Fall

Faith and Works

Conundrum

The Messengers

Fruitless Fable

Note by the Wayside

Mungo Bays the Moon

Panickings

The Hospital

The Empty Space

Hats

Anger in the Works

Dimmed-Up

While Flickering Over the Pages

Standing in the Field

To the Gods of My Right Hand

That Lonely Shoe lying on the Road

The Victoria Falls

Conversation Piece

Elementary

Against the Transcendentalists

Shipton-under-Wychwood

Conversations

The Card Party

Chrysalis

Elegy in a Kensington Churchyard

Evelyn Cavallo

The Rout

Four People in a Neglected Garden

Like Africa

We Were Not Expecting the Prince To-day

Communication

Created and Abandoned

The Goose

A Visit

Bluebell Among the Sables

Industriad

Canaan

The Nativity

The Three Kings

Sisera

The Ballad of the Fanfarlo



From the Latin:



Persicos Odi

To Lucius Sestius in the Spring

Winter Poem

Prologue and Epilogue

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