![]() Quote of the Day
Your list has always been interesting, idiosyncratic, imaginative and your translations [...] have been a source of pleasure to me.
Al Alvarez
|
|
Book Search
Subscribe to our mailing list
|
|
Flying BluesRodney Pybus![]()
It was only Icarus he'd come upon, wings unmelted,
still on sea-holly leaves, yet, opening, they seemed to him at last no small invention, those smalted fliers pausing there, common as sky. from 'Pieces of Fire and Heaven'
Flying through the first half of this new, two-in-one collection of poems by Rodney Pybus are the butterflies and birds which took over his creative life for several years. These are 'the creatures with wings that make us cry' -- for their vulnerable beauty, the agile persistence of their will to survive. Here they are celebrated for themselves and for their ability to emblematise human desire, loss, obsession and sensuous delight. They range from Norfolk and 18th-century London to Scotland, Bohemia and Australia. The Blues themselves often turn out to be both the family of small butterflies and a variety of that familiar human response to 'the tears of things'.
'Words of a Feather', part two of the book, is a creature of a new and different kind: a poem for voices, an epistolary novella that tells the story of a 1930s marriage disrupted by the husband's absence in Mauritius where his life is overwhelmed by new experiences of art, nature and erotic love. Verse letters, the husband's poems, and the intervening reflections of a present-day narrator tell the tale. This inventive tour de force explores moral and artistic themes, a rich development of the technique Pybus deployed in The Loveless Letters.
Praise for Rodney Pybus
'So pure and sinuous and all of a piece... Wonderfully graceful... words that seem natural and moving at the mind's speed -- like improvisation but everything spot on.'
Ted Hughes
You might also be interested in:
![]() Glass is Elastic
Jon Glover
|
Share this...
Quick Links
Carcanet Celebrates 50 Years!
Anvil Press Poetry
Aspects of Portugal
Carcanet Classics
Carcanet Fiction
Carcanet Film
Carcanet Poetry
Fyfield Books
Lintott Press
Little Island Press
Lives and Letters
OxfordPoets
PN Review
Sheep Meadow Press
The Carcanet Blog
PN Review 265: Editorial
read more
Patrick Worsnip: On Translating Saba
read more
In the Quaker Hotel: Helen Tookey
read more
Caroline Bird: Rookie
read more
PN Review 264: Editorial
read more
The Lascaux Notebooks: Philip Terry
read more
![]() |
![]() We thank the Arts Council England for their support and assistance in this interactive Project.
|
|
This website ©2000-2022 Carcanet Press Ltd
|