Sarments: New and Selected Poems by John James
"This collection is an essential delight; a `book resonant of a life / neither following nor in pursuit', gathering old and new work all equally fresh. As the epigraph to the first poem attests, `one does not work out of a reaction against but rather out of affection for something.' Like Mayakovsky, John James has produced a body of work perfectly able to marry lyricism and coarseness, rage and tenderness - and, like the Futurist, to weld the aesthetic to the social. Here is that rarest poet: able to adequately respond to pleasure, and equally able to create it. The selection spans 50 years of work in all its subtlety of tone and address - a hybrid of a Welsh `praise' tradition, playfully mannered English reserve, and New York School exuberance. This is a poetry deftly attuned to various musics, overtly engaged with the visual arts, yet just as happy out in the streets at home and abroad - and more than partial to a walk in the countryside. The poems of the last decade are singular in their `reach toward the poetry of kindred / where we speak in our work as we seldom do otherwise.' Embrace this New and Selected James: here is an effervescent poetry that can leave nobody indifferent." -Simon Perril "James is decidedly un-English in his love of French and German poetry, in his unembarrassed (and unembarrassing) celebration of the pleasures of the flesh, and in his Marxist and republican politics - which seem to legitimate a taste for the finer things on the grounds of international solidarity against a British suppression of the capacity for joy ... John James is one of the great sensualists of twentieth-century lyric poetry." -John Wilkinson
John James was born in Cardiff & educated by the De La Salle Brothers at Saint Illtyd's College there. He left to read Philosophy & English Literature at The University of Bristol. He remained in that city for some years where, with Nick Wayte, he produced the magazine The Resuscitator with the guidance of Charles Tomlinson. Subsequently he moved to Cambridge where he became associated with the group around The English Intelligencer. He undertook postgraduate studies in American Literature at The University of Keele. A Collected Poems appeared in 2002. He received a Cholmondeley Award from The Society of Authors for his body of work & services to poetry in 2014. His most recent previous book, in collaboration with Bruce McLean, is the livre d'artiste, On Reading J.H. Prynne's `Sub Songs'. Currently he resides in Cambridge & in Puisserguier, Occitanie.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781848615786 |
| ISBN 10 | 1848615787 |
| Title | Sarments: New and Selected Poems |
| Author | John James |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Shearsman Books |
| Year published | 2018-04-10 |
| Number of pages | 182 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |