Selected Poems [Paperback]

David Gascoyne (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 17, 1995

Includes a substantial selection of Gascoyne's poems from the early 1930s to the present. Included are examples of his earliest work in Roman Balcony (1932, published when he was sixteen) to Hölderlin's Madness (1938); all poems from his most famous volume, Poems 1937-1942, and the best-known poems from his post-war collections, including Night Thoughts (1956) in its entirety. There is a section of light verse and one section of recent poems. He established his name when he was a schoolboy, and his association with the Surrealists drew him into the orbit of Max Ernst, André Breton, and Dalí in Paris. He lived in France in the 1930s, and again in the 50s and 60s, and is revered there, both as a poet and as a translator.

Editorial Reviews

Review

After Twenty Springs
Amor Fati
And The Seventh Dream Is The Dream Of Isis
Antennae
Apologia
Artist
An Autumn Park
Baptism
Beware Beelzebub
Birth Of A Prince
The Bomb-site Anchorite
The Cage
Camera Obscura
Cavatina
Chambre D'hotel
Charity Week
The Cold Renunciatory Beauty
Concert Of Angels
The Cubical Domes
The Decay Of Decency
Demos In Oxford Street
The Descent
The Diabolical Principle
Dichters Leben
Direct Response
Educative Process
Elegiac Improvisation On The Death Of Paul Eluard
Elegy (in Memoriam - June 1941, R. R.)
Elsewhere
The End Is Near The Beginning
Entrance To A Lane
Epilogue
Epode
Eros Absconditus
Eve
Evening Again
Evening Prayer
The Fabulous Glass
Farewell Chorus
The Fault
Fete
Figure In A Landscape
Five Netsukes Of Hottara Sonja
The Fortress
Fragments Towards A Religio Poetae
From A Diary
A Further Frontier
Future Reference
Germinal
Gnu Opaque
The Goose-girl
The Grass In The Waste Places
The Gravel-pit Field
Half-an-hour
The Hero
I.m. Benjamin Fondane
In Defense Of Humanism
In Helen's Land
Inferno
Innocence And Experience
Insurrection
Jardin Du Palais Royal
Landscape
The Last Head
Le Dejeuner Sur L'herbe: A Pastoral
Legendary Fragment
Light Of The Sun Over Arctic Regions
Lines
A Little Zodiak For Kathleen Raine
Lost Wisdom
Lowland
Lucubration
Marrow
Miserere: De Profundis
Miserere: Ecce Homo
Miserere: Ex Nihilo
Miserere: Kyrie
Miserere: Lachrymae
Miserere: Pieta
Miserere: Sanctus
Miserere: Tenebrae
Morning Dissertation
Mountains
Mozart; Sursum Corda
Night Thoughts: 1. The Nightwatchers
Night Thoughts: 2. Megalometropolitan Carnival
Night Thoughts: 3. Encounter With Silence
No Solution
Noctambules
November In Devon
Odeur De Pensee
On Rereading Jacob Boehme's Aurora
On The Terrace
The Open Tomb
Orpheus In The Underworld
The Other Larry
Oxford: A Spring Day
Phantasmagoria
Photograph
Plethora
The Plummet Heart
The Post-war Night
Prelude To A New Fin-de-siecle
Purified Disgust
Reflected In Jet
Reintegration
Reported Missing
Requiem
Rex Mundi
The Rites Of Hysteria
Rondel For The Fourth Decade
The Sacred Hearth
A Sarum Sestina
Seaside Souvenir
The Second Coming
Sentimental Colloquy
September Sun: 1947
Signs
Slate
Snow In Europe
Sonnet: From Morn To Mourning
Sonnet: The Uncertain Battle
Spring Mcmxl
A Sudden Squall
The Supposed Being
The Symptomatic World
Tenebrae
Three Cabaret Songs
Three Remanences
The Three Stars
Three Venetian Nocturnes: 1. Barcarolle
Three Venetian Nocturnes: 2. Lido Gala Fireworks
Three Venetian Nocturnes: 3. On The Grand Canal
Three Verbal Sonatinas
To A Contemporary
A Tough Generation
'the Truth Is Blind'
The Unattained
An Unsagacious Animal Or The Triumph Of Art Over Nature
A Vagrant
Variations On A Phrase
Venus Androgyne
The Very Image
Walking At Whitsun
The Wall
A Wartime Dawn
Winter Garden
With A Cornet Of Winkles
World Without End
The Writer's Hand
Yves Tanguy
Zero
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

About the Author

David Gascoyne's death in November 2001 was marked by the lead obituaries in all the British broadsheets as well as in Le Monde. As a poet and translator he had been internationally renowned since the 1930s. He was the first chronicler in English of the Surrealist movement, and an essayist and reviewer of dazzling range. His association with Enitharmon dates back to 1970 and in the past decade there have been eight publications which will be a lasting testament of his importance.

Product Details

• Paperback: 254 pages
• Publisher: Enitharmon Pr; First Edition edition (October 17, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1870612345
• ISBN-13: 978-1870612340
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,530,229 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Christ of Revolution and of Poetry..", October 17, 2008

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This review is from: Selected Poems (Paperback)

David Gascoyne, perhaps the most neglected British poet in history, accomplished with his fevered poetic career what most of us would be writers can only dream of: a record of his visionary psyche irrevocably intertwined with the chaos of his generation--the era of WWII, the Cold War, and the Great Depression.

The Catholic equivalent of a Rimbaud or Baudelaire, Gascoyne's tragic life and career as poet maudite par excellance and search for God amidst the ashes of a nearly destroyed world is reflected unconsciously in the painstaking passion of his work: "What day can ever end/the night of those from whom/God turns away his face/or what rays finger pierce/The depths of wherein they drown?" ("Noctambules", pg 121).

The obvious didacticism of Gascoyne's poetry does not overshadow his explosive poetic gift, given full expression in mind bending and gorgeous turns of phrase such as the following: "the shadows in the pools turn grey/the pearls dissolve in the shadow/and I return to you.." (The Cage, pg 43).

This collection spans from Gascoyne's early career as a youthful convert to Surrealism right on through to his most defining work, "Night Thoughts", to the intermittently broken silence represented by two decades of depression and madness resulting from amphetamine abuse.
David Gascoyne is the best kept secret of poetry's vast world, and it is high time he emerges from the shadows he fought so valiantly against.