The Cyclopean Mistress by Peter Redgrove

The Cyclopean Mistress by Peter Redgrove

In this book's title-piece, the Cyclopean Mistress is a teacher with a single eye in the middle of her forehead, someone with 'unified vision'. The book too has unified vision: its short fictions and prose poems aren't separate forms but merge into each other like the continuous spectrum of colours in a rainbow. Redgrove begins with short fictions, but gradually withdraws the narrative scaffolding, asking the reader to respond instead to an alternative and possibly more dramatic pattern of imagery, where a narrative exists but is unspoken: 'It is like waking from a deep sleep and seeing the world new, but stripped of its procedures.' At the end of the rainbow, Redgrove's all-seeing eye penetrates the Esplumeor, Merlin's prison, variously interpreted as a bewitched bed, a house of glass, an observatory with 84 windows, a place where falcons moult or where the magician with sexual laughter puts off his accustomed forms, or a place where a person uses his plume or pen. His prose-poems here are about Cornwall, where he lives, 'and where it is not easy to tell whether one is in a dungeon or a paradise, as it depends on the way the wind is blowing'.

Redgrove has been called a great poet of the transforming eye, and so he is.. he steps into the realm of the visionary. * London Review of Books *
There is no poet writing in English capable of such sustained imaginative flights as Redgrove. -- Anne Stevenson * Poetry Review *
Redgrove's language can light up the page. -- Angela Carter * Evening Standard *

Peter Redgrove was one of the more prolific writers of mid-20th-century English letters. A poet, novelist, and playwright, Redgrove drew on his training as a scientist and science journalist to write collections of poetry marked by an attendance to the mystical roots of the natural world. Early collections such as The Collector (1959), At the White Monument (1963), and The Force (1966) can seem cut from an immense, rich fabric of imagination, Alan Brownjohn noted in his obituary of Redgrove, turning sometimes into chains of wild and wonderful conceits which desert the reality they set out to represent. Brownjohn placed Redgrove in an English visionary tradition that includes Henry Vaughan, Thomas Traherne, and William Blake. Redgrove's interests in modern psychology, particularly the work of post-Jungians such as John Layard, also influenced his writings, which knit together, in his words, dreamwork, sexual counselling, hypnotic induction, etc. With his second wife, the poet Penelope Shuttle, he authored a series of books that attempted to correct what he saw as contemporary misunderstandings of the human fertility cycle: The Wise Wound (1978), The Black Goddess and the Sixth Sense (1987), and Alchemy for Women (1995). Though Redgrove's preoccupations, which included magic, sex, nature, the landscape of Cornwall, religion and mysticism, struck some readers as bizarre, the Telegraph's memorial to Redgrove maintained they were sincerely held interests which combined some of the priorities of Ted Hughes or Norman MacCaig with a precision which sprang from Redgrove's scientific background. Redgrove was born in Kingston upon Thames, Surrey, and educated at Queen's College Cambridge, where he first met Ted Hughes, who became a lifelong friend. Redgrove was associated with Philip Hobsbaum and the Group, a loose collection of poets pioneering a workshop-style salon in 1960s England. Redgrove himself held various university appointments throughout his career, teaching at SUNY Buffalo, Leeds University, Colgate University, and Falmouth College of Art. Neil Roberts edited Redgrove's Collected Poems and wrote his biography, A Lucid Dreamer: The Life of Peter Redgrove, both published in 2012.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781852242077
ISBN 10	1852242078
Title	The Cyclopean Mistress
Author	Peter Redgrove
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Year published	1993-05-27
Number of pages	160
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable