News That Stays News: The 20th Century in Poems: The Twentieth Century in Poems (Faber Penguin audiobooks)
SIMON RAE's highly original anthology presents the most economical and resonant appraisal of the twentieth century. Never before have we witnessed such momentous changes: from the collapse of empires and the devastation of total war, to the liberation of women and the radical revision of sexual mores. Poets have responded to this relentless upheaval with unceasing alertness and sensitivity. With a contemporary poem chosen for each year from 1900 to 1999, Simon Rae's anthology gives a provocative and surprising report on the often violent impact of modern life.
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Review:
In News That Stays News the anthologist Simon Rae has chosen 100 poems to reflect the changing face of this century, selecting a poem for each year and allowing each poet only one entry. The collection is overwhelmingly but not exclusively British. At one end of the century, Thomas Hardy leans gloomily upon his coppice gate; at the other John Heath-Stubbs, in a fit of millenarian melancholia, sees the whole world ending. In between we read of a changing Britain and an unfolding social fabric in which, it has to be said, Rae's poets find more bitterness than joy. This is, of course, an artificial concept for an anthology, for some years of this century naturally inspired several poets to write--but only one can be chosen--while many poems here relate as much to a period as to any specific year.
About the Author:
The volume provides not only an excuse to meet again old friends such as John Masefield's Cargoes, James Elroy Flecker's Ballad of Canning Town and Henry Reed's Naming of Parts, but a chance to find some of the less familiar work of very familiar poets. It would be nice to think that those of us who were brought up with Wilfred Owen's poems of the First World War will read Alan Ross's Survivors, from the Second World War, to discover how little changed. Simon Rae acknowledges that he pencilled in different names for many of his dates. A number of readers may be sure that he rubbed out the wrong ones and will go to their other anthologies to prove it. --Kim Fletcher
SIMON RAE is author of the widely acclaimed W.G. GRACE: A Life and is the editor of THE FABER BOOK OF DRINK, DRINKERS AND DRINKING amongst others. For five years he was presenter of the BBC Radio 4 programme POETRY PLEASE! and he has also written and presented numerous other radio programmes. He has also contributed topical poems to the GUARDIAN for the last ten years.
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