Scenes from Seasons by Tom East

Scenes from Seasons by Tom East

Some of the stand-alone poems in Scenes from Seasons look at things uncompromisingly, too. Take, for instance, Michael Maine and the Demon of Youth. This is not for those of a sensitive position. There is indeed another called Poem to Spring. The setting is, in a sense, this time of year but the whole of the year and the whole of life is really the subject under consideration in what is only a short poem.

So I hope you understand, when I ask you in my innocence / why is it, each and every time, / when aim should be best cadence, / every line must rhyme?, Tom East wonders, contradicting Robert Frost who once said that writing free verse is like playing tennis without a netActually, in spite of all the constraints rhyming involves, East is equally comfortable with it, managing to give his poems the form that best suits them. Be they narrative or lyric, light or meditative, nostalgic or elegiac, they are the means by which the author, as a thorough tourist guide, takes the reader on a tour of his life which, like Shakespeare, he divides into seven stages and which, unlike the Bard, he calls The Seven Lies of Man. But don't be misled by the word lies. East uses it both as a noun and as a verb, in its various meanings, thus pointing to how devious one's destiny can be. The seasons he cuts scenes out of are not the four traditional ones either, although the latter do appear here and there to evoke events that only they can be the background of. His seasons are the time he spent attending pop festivals, going fishing or foxhunting, visiting war graves or art exhibitions or foreign countries, while the scenes include peculiar people he met, artists who have influenced him and whom he pays tribute to in a most original way, or just landscapes in which he is all by himself trying to merge with nature. Still, there are scenes where Tom East becomes Doubting Tom, getting angry, revolting against the Establishment and its inequalities. ;The adage - But Not That Sort of Season - that goes with the title refers, obviously, to death. Not that East fears it more than anyone else. To quote him: And the only dark place I fear / is the shadow in the corner / of my mind. More than that, although the poem that starts the collection is called A Prayer (hardly religious) and death is mentioned or hinted at several times, the book ends on a funny optimistic note - Now you'll be glad you went with me / Down that wandrin' Euphratee. / We'll take our tanks to the land of dreams: / It's essential ... yeah, we got a special relationship. A special relationship with a special poet who can find the shortcut to your mind and soul. PETRU IAMANDI ON GOODREADS.

The next publication from Tom East is the ELDRITCH novel, THE KA OF STEPHEN CHARLES. This will be available on 22nd May, 2022. Twelve books are currently available in paperback from TOM EAST or as eBooks. Apart from the latest, these include the controversial novel THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO St JUDAS and the unsparing non-fiction of LIGHTNING STRIKES TWICE, about recovery from two brain haemorrhages, Earlier Tom was the writer of many works of fiction, commercial features, essays, reviews, 'other prose' and poetry. He was also the author of six (print) books. He was born in London, although of Welsh family and has lived in Wales for many years. Still available as paperback and ebook are THE EVE OF ST ELIGIUS, THE GREENLAND PARTY, TOMMY'S WAR: July 1914, SCENES FROM SEASONS, THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT VERSE BRIGADE, THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST JUDAS, LYRICS, POLEMICS AND POETICS, WISH MAN'S WOOD, A FIFTIES' CHILDHOOD, LIGHTNING STRIKES TWICE, WHY WRITE HAIKU? and THE LOWELL LETTERS

SKU	Nicht verfügbar
ISBN 13	9781916494282
ISBN 10	1916494285
Titel	Scenes from Seasons
Autor	Tom East
Buchzustand	Nicht verfügbar
Bindungsart	Paperback
Verlag	Benybont Books
Erscheinungsjahr	2019-04-22
Seitenanzahl	65
Hinweis auf dem Einband	Die Abbildung des Buches dient nur Illustrationszwecken, die tatsächliche Bindung, das Cover und die Auflage können sich davon unterscheiden.
Hinweis	Nicht verfügbar