The title-poem of George Szirtes' The Burning of the Books and Other Poems is the core of this collection of narrative sequences by a writer who came to Britain as a child refugee after the Hungarian Uprising. Book burning is often associated with the Nazis' actions in 1933, but the practice has a long history, right down to our own day. In this particular case the burning refers to the library of Kien, the scholar in Elias Canetti's novel Auto da F. The poems follow and expand from the events of Canetti's book in a variety of forms not previously used by Szirtes.
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'A brilliantly virtuosic collection of deeply felt poems concerned with the personal impact of the dislocations and betrayals of history. The judges were impressed by the unusual degree of formal pressure exerted by Szirtes on his themes of memory and the impossibility of forgetting' - DOUGLAS DUNN on Reel, winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize. 'A major contribution to post-war literature - Using a painter-like collage of images to retrieve lost times, lives, cities and betrayed hopes, Szirtes weaves his personal and historical themes into work of profound psychological complexity' - ANNE STEVENSON, Poetry Review.
About the Author
George Szirtes was born in Budapest in 1948, and came to England with his family after the 1956 Hungarian uprising. He was educated in England, training as a painter, and has always written in English. In recent years he has worked as a translator of Hungarian literature, producing editions of such writers as Otto Orban, Zsuzsa Rakovszky and gnes Nemes Nagy. He co-edited Bloodaxe's Hungarian anthology The Colonnade of Teeth. His Bloodaxe poetry books are The Budapest File (2000); An English Apocalypse (2001); Reel (2004), winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize; New & Collected Poems (2008) and The Burning of the Books and other poems (2009). Bloodaxe has also published John Sears' critical study Reading George Szirtes (2008). Szirtes lives in Norfolk and teaches at the University of East Anglia.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Written by a student of Hungarian literature and witness to the unstable Hungarian state,
By Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Burning of the Books and Other Poems (Paperback)
Written by a student of Hungarian literature and witness to the unstable Hungarian state, "The Burning of the Books" is a collection of poetry from George Szirtes offering much insight to the Hungarian people through his work. "The Burning of the Books" is a solid pick to world poetry collections. "Howard Hodgkin Considers a Small Thing But His Own": Darkness frames small things, so I rejoice/in spluttering some colour into life./Do I stay in bed and mope, lament my choice//of partner or pigment? Not my style./See, If I cup this hand the light shines through it/and no amount of moping will undo it.//Or so I say to myself last thing at night/when it is dark, as the blackest dog despair/can find, sheds her silky hair//pretty well everywhere.
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