November - Softcover

O'Brien, Sean

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0330535005 ISBN 13: 9780330535007

Publisher: Picador, 2011

Synopsis

November is Sean O’Brien’s first collection since his widely celebrated The Drowned Book, the only book of poetry to have won both the Forward and T. S. Eliot prizes. November is haunted by the missing, the missed, the vanished, the uncounted, and the uncountable lost: lost sleep, connections, muses, books, the ghosts and gardens of childhood. Ultimately, these lead the poet to contemplate the most troubling absences: O’Brien’s elegies for his parents and friends form the heart of this book, and are the source of its pervasive note of départ. Elsewhere – as if a French window stood open to an English room – the islands, canals, railway stations and undergrounds of O’Brien’s landscape are swept by a strikingly Gallic air. This new note lends O’Brien’s recent poems a reinvigorated sense of the imaginative possible: November shows O’Brien at the height of his powers, with his intellect and imagination as gratifyingly restless as ever.

About this title

Review

'O'Brien is pitch-perfect, never swanks and is amazingly versatile . . . The collection is a mix of gravity and levity but it leans, as a collection with this title should, towards the elegiac . . . O'Brien's voice is authoritatively his own. Yet there are echoes here of Shakespeare, Larkin and, occasionally, T S Eliot. . .' --Observer

`A witty and entertaining collection, flawless in its social observation, sometimes very moving, and in places rising to eloquence and grandeur of an almost Dantean kind. He can be very funny . . . The humour in November can be enjoyed at once, but every deeply serious poem in this magnificent collection (and there are many) is worth the longer effort.' --Sunday Times

`Sean O'Brien's November (Picador, £8.99) also personalises, and deepens, his richly thoughtful take on life in contemporary Britain. The volume includes an extraordinarily moving elegy to his mother and a series of - technically astonishing - homages to poet-friends, as well as a thoughtful, ambivalent poem about his father. O'Brien makes a deep music out of human and political engagement.'
--Independent

`November will be a joy for anyone who cares about the word-perfect use of language, and savours piercing emotions uttered with rueful delicacy rather than a mad screech. The wintry sadness of O'Brien's poetry is oddly uplifting, because his imagery is so quick, nimble and dashing.' --Richard Davenport Hines, Sunday Telegraph

`His richly thoughtful take on life in contemporary Britain . . . O'Brien makes a deep music out of human and political engagement.' --Independent

`Sean O'Brien made a fine, no-nonsense companion on a journey through a world where there's little to be happy about. If serious poetry readers enjoy the challenges as well as the pleasures of the art, there's plenty for them in his intricate takes on a modern England of dereliction and social breakdown. O'Brien is nevertheless no gloom-peddler but also a regularly funny and entertaining writer.' --Sunday Times

`This is a softer sadder volume than the last; less truculent, more vulnerable. The poem "Elegy", written for O'Brien's mother, is one of the best I've read all year, in any collection.' --Guardian

`An elegiac note that deepened and enlarged an already profound body of work.'
--Fiona Sampson, TLS Books of the Year

`Perhaps the most moving poems that he has yet written.' --Helen Dunmore, Guardian

Book Description

A brilliant new collection from the T.S. Eliot and Forward Prize winning poet

About this edition

• Publisher: Picador
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0330535005
• ISBN 13: 9780330535007
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 96