Selected Poems [Paperback]

James Fenton (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0374260656 | ISBN-13: 978-0374260651 | Publication Date: October 17, 2006 | Edition: 1st

Listen to what they did.
Don't listen to what they said.
What was written in blood
Has been set up in lead.
--from "Blood and Lead"

The leading poet of his generation, James Fenton has over the course of his career built a body of work breathtaking in its range and sensibility. From the passionate political poems that launched him into fame to the intimate illuminations of love--and loss of love--in his later work, Fenton's poetry has always been marked by formal daring, wit, and an abiding empathy for the victims of war and political oppression. With selections from all of his published work since The Memory of War, the entire text of his libretto The Love Bomb, and new, previously uncollected poems, Selected Poems is an imaginative and formal tour de force.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Proving there are still plenty of poetic miles left in rhythm and rhyme, as well as in Larkinesque cynicism, this career-spanning collection offers an introduction to the work of a leading British poet and former professor of poetry at Oxford. Love and menace are the principal muses for Fenton's dark wit. Whether describing how an ex is safe because she's no longer loved ("What belongs to the wind and rain/ Is out of danger from the storm") or narrating war's awful arithmetic ("One man shall wake from terror to his bed/ Five men shall be dead"), the control behind these lines is often terrifying. Many of the most powerful poems memorialize the lingering effects of war. Fenton has a knack for capturing awful thoughts and moments, which one wants to forget but can't:"...he forgot to say to me/ How an honest man should die." There's also a punch to the love poems; in one singsong piece, a husband commands his wife to be happy, or he'll leave. Also included is the libretto for The Love Bomb, in which a woman leaves her lover for a cult, then tries to recruit him. It's hard to argue with formal, deeply biting lyricism done so well. (Oct.)
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From Booklist

Fenton's poetry is rhythmically powerful, full of skillfully deployed repetitions of sound and word, and very largely concerned with the experiences of common people. This is fully true of his earlier poems on war and its aftermath--"A German Requiem," on how war's enormities can make unspeakable, if not unrealizable, any attempted atonement; "Children in Exile," on the displaced memories of the youngest Vietnamese and Cambodian refugees; and the many poems on the killing fields of Cambodia--and of the songlike protests in the middle of this selection, whose immediate subjects range world history from semilegendary Persia to Tiananmen; in their bitterness and intensity as well as their steady tramp, these suggest Brecht, and a strong anti-Christian current courses through them. All of this is highly accomplished verse made greater by the resonant simplicity of Fenton's diction. The musical-play libretto that follows, however, is tepid, but the concluding new poems concerned with a dissolved affair or marriage plumb individual psychology more deeply than anything before them. Throughout, Fenton's prosodic skill is consummate. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1st edition (October 17, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374260656
• ISBN-13: 978-0374260651
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #476,076 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic read, September 27, 2010

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S - See all my reviews

This review is from: Selected Poems (Paperback)

People are correct to name Fenton as Auden's successor-- but by no means does Fenton live in Auden's shadow. Though much of Fenton's poems are centered on themes he saw first hand as a journalist in many conflicted states, this does not limit readability to those with an interest in war. A German Requiem is, I think, the most powerful poem I have ever read. I would recommend this slim volume to anyone who is interested in modern poetry, and it is a volume I revisit fairly regularly.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars pastoral lost and the false pastor, June 13, 2011

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Case Quarter (CT USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Selected Poems (Paperback)

with quatrains and ballads, fenton startles in the true tradition of the ballad, the song, the pastoral setting and the blood tragedy. he updates the blood tragedy by tearing from notebooks of war correspondents and journalists in vietnam, tiananmen square, cambodia and iran. he writes of children thrust from innocence to become victims or killers.

between old poems and new poems, fenton has included a verse libretto, The Love Bomb, which is a pretty good story about a religious cult.

the new poems, his recent work, speak of personal love, romantic love.