Description
Book SynopsisLawrence Sail's poetry is noted for its scrupulous combination of close observation and broader reflections. In Guises he builds on the strengths of twelve previous collections, writing 'in praise of perception', which brings its own challenges and delights, embodied in the shifts and layers of language. A sense of the precious and the precarious informs poems with widely differing subjects and settings. There is, too, a new awareness of the threat to the sumptuousness of the natural world posed by human profligacy. Sounding the provisional nature of our earth-bound experiences, Sail knows the closeness of eulogy to elegy, and his poems celebrating the immediacy of human affections and experience sit aptly alongside those remembering friends who have died. Forty-six years on from the publication of Sail's first book, Guises offers the fruits of fullness.
Trade ReviewThe poems can be demanding in their intricacy, inviting and rewarding rereading. They are highly reflective, thought made sensual via routes only poetry can take. * Poetry Book Society Bulletin *
It is through microscopic attention to minutiae that Sail sees furthest. -- Andrew McCulloch * Times Literary Supplement *
Though Sail's work is quietly lyrical and almost undemonstrative at first scan, the poems reveal more and more to the active reader prepared to work hard to mine the gold. -- Patrick Lodge * Envoi *
Table of Contents11 Anagrammatic 12 Radishes 13 Falling Back to Earth 14 Cloudlands 15 Samuel Palmer’s Yellow Twilight 16 Lundy Headland 17 Ribblehead Viaduct 19 A Stroll by the River 20 Taking Keriga Nyagwoko Home 21 Vendange 22 At the Equinox 23 The Smoke-tree 24 Winter Sketch 25 Lore 27 Sarabande 28 Soay Sound 29 A Summer Dream 30 Journey 31 Two-step 32 Olympic Cyclists 33 Heartsong 34 Lullaby 35 Pas de Trois 36 Notes on a Fossil Fish 37 Clues 38 Giacometti’s Cat 39 Zigzag 40 Moths Queuing 41 Thinking of Steve Sims 42 Smoke-rings 44 Birdcall 45 Female Head, about 1525 46 Four Late van Goghs 49 A Wedding Photo from 1975 50 Triggers 51 Three Time-signatures 53 Briefing Model for D-Day 54 Woodlice and Earthworm 55 Belonging 56 Cut Flowers 58 Shine 59 Triptych 62 At a Concert 64 Masquerade 66 Seafaring 67 Kepler’s Epitaph 68 Sentences for Vivaldi’s Gloria 69 Instances 70 Sea Pictures 72 Recognition 73 Mayflower 74 Rainer Maria Rilke’s Ninth Duino Elegy 77 Asphodels 79 Notes
