Spacecraft Voyager 1: New and Selected Poems [Paperback]

Alice Oswald (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 30, 2007

Swirling like eddies in a river come the poems of Alice Oswald, who has quickly become one of the premier British poets writing today. Spacecraft Voyager 1 collects poetry from across her career --new poems, selections from her first and more recent books, and the entirety of her masterwork to date, Dart, winner of the 2002 T. S. Eliot Prize. Oswald's speaker--always curious, often whimsical, sometimes brash--becomes the river itself, as she gives voice to the natural world and the denizens along the river Dart in Devonshire, in their unique dialects and occupations. For the first time, Spacecraft Voyager 1 introduces American readers to an essential new poet..

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Equal parts eco-conscious reportage, childlike whimsy and intellectual exploration, this U.S. debut from an award-winning British poet will test how far the appeal of her language extends. Oswald's 1990s triumphs were her sonnets, devoted either to the seaside or to romantic love; the poems' naïve tones belied their serious invention: The sea is made of ponds—a cairn of rain/ It has an island flirting up and down/ like a blue hat. Her genre-defying long poem Dart, also included here, records sights and sounds collected on walks down the length of the river Dart, which flows through England's Southwest—the soundmarks of larks, corn-blue dinghies, a Royal Navy trainee who told Oswald he had serious equipment in his head. Oswald followed up with diverse short poems, some resembling nursery rhymes, others in the voices of woods, frogs, sheep, and others still in more abstract, speculative modes: there lay the world, she recalls in Field, wedged/ between its premise and its conclusion. While some Americans may not know what to make of this poet so closely tied to the English pastoral tradition, the scope of her imagination and the oddity of her talent should repay close listening, and this collection offers American readers their first view of Oswald's compelling career so far.. (Nov.)
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Review

"Oswald emerges as an inheritor of some of Britain's greatest poetic voices, an heir to Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney and Geoffrey Hill." --The Times (London)

 

Praise for Alice Oswald:

"Alice Oswald is making a new kind of poetry . . . she is in the front rank of writers, in poetry and prose, who are not content to work only with what exists already." --Jeanette Winterson

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 244 pages
• Publisher: Graywolf Press (October 30, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1555974821
• ISBN-13: 978-1555974824
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 4.9 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #476,774 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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