Talking to the Dead by Elaine Feinstein
Opening with a death in winter, this is a tender work of mourning which is wonderfully moving but never dispiriting.Elaine Feinstein uses the remembered words of a much-loved husband - sometimes affectionate, sometimes querulous - to invoke his solid presence; it is the man rather than her grief which is the centre of the book.Many lyrics recall the closeness of their last months together; others confess the ambivalence of a long marriage.Theirs was never an easy relationship, and she is not afraid to register the differences between them. With wry humour, she questions her own life before their meeting, and looks steadily at a future without him. As she imagines that future, she confronts the myths of an afterlife, a belief in God, her debts to other poets and her dependence on friends and children. Always in complete control of rhythm and tone, these beautiful lyrics explore the most intimate thoughts with a clarity and tenacity Ted Hughes once described as 'unique'. It is Elaine Feinstein's most passionate book of poetry.
'She is an extremely fine poetShe has a sinewy, tenacious way of penetrating and exploring the core of her subject that seems to me unique. Her simple, clean language follows the track of the nerves. There is nothing hit or miss, nothing for effect, nothing false. Reading her poems one feels cleansed and sharpened.' - Ted Hughes.
Elaine Feinstein was a poet, novelist, and biographer. She received many prizes, including a Cholmondeley Award for Poetry, Society of Authors', Wingate and Arts Council Awards, and an Honorary D.Litt from the University of Leicester. She travelled across the world to read her poems, and her books have been translated into most European languages; also Chinese, Japanese and Korean. Her versions of the poems of Marina Tsvetaeva, a New York Times Book of the Year, have remained in print since 1971. She was given a major grant from the Arts Council to write her novel, The Russian Jerusalem, a phantasmagoric mix of prose and poetry (Carcanet, 2008). Her collection Cities came out in 2010, Portraits in 2015 and her new and selected poems, The Clinic, Memory, in 2017. She served on the Council of the Royal Society of Literature, of which she was a Fellow, as a judge for many literary awards, and as a Chair of the Judges for the T.S.Eliot Award. She received a Civil List Pension in 2010. She died in September 2019. Elaine Feinstein has a page on the Poetry Archive website, where you can listen to recordings of her reading from her work, and access other useful resources. Click here.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781857549027 |
| ISBN 10 | 1857549023 |
| Title | Talking to the Dead |
| Author | Elaine Feinstein |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Carcanet Press Ltd |
| Year published | 2007-03-29 |
| Number of pages | 64 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |