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Things Unsaid

New and Selected Poems 1960-2005

Tony Connor

Imprint: Anvil Press Poetry
Publisher: Carcanet Press
Available as:
Paperback (336 pages)
(Pub. Jun 2006)
9780856463853
Out of Stock
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    Kitchen Work

    To give a dull day meaning
    I set radishes draining,
    upright on a chopping board,
    unnatural and absurd
    as their extravagant dew
    from the supermarket’s spray.

    Each balanced on its lopped end,
    they formed a portly, red band
    of voiceless vegetables
    speaking to human troubles
    that stood like ugly heirlooms
    in my waking mind and dreams.

    I left the counter tableau
    and bore my burdens away
    on small, everyday errands
    to stores, and sensible friends
    who’d straighten me out at once,
    if I gave them half a chance.

    But secrets of the kitchen
    told my tongue not to begin:
    meaning might brighten the day
    when the radishes were dry,
    and my heirlooms disappear
    in silent, eloquent air.

    Things Unsaid is the author’s own choice of poems from a writing career that spans nearly half a century. It draws on seven published collections and includes many uncollected and new poems. Tony Connor–s poems – often, as he terms it, quasi-autobiographical – combine memory, experience and imagination with firm craftsmanship. The results are remarkable for their precision, their wry humour and broad human sympathies.

    Tony Connor was born in 1930. He left school at the age of fourteen and worked as a textile designer in Manchester for many years. His first collection of poems appeared in 1962; he is also a playwright and librettist. Since 1971 he has lived mainly in Middletown, Connecticut where he ... read more
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