The Ascent of Monte Grappa - Softcover

Barker, Howard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0714542024 ISBN 13: 9780714542027

Publisher: Calder Publications Ltd, 1991

Synopsis

Howard Barker's 'Ascent of Monte Grappa' is a meditation on
three moments in the human history of a mountain, an engagement with the
political, religious and sexual associations of the place. In its concern
for meaning in random events, and its concern for the uncelebrated figures
of the past, it reveals new aspects of a poetic imagination already
announced and applauded in the European theatre. Here, the frictions and
ecstasies of desire are examined in the context of the ironies of passing
time. If Barker's 'Don't Exaggerate' vibrated with the unbearable lucidity
of a protagonist unjustly killed, and his 'Gary the Thief' articulated the
rejection of social platitudes by a criminal mind, 'The Ascent', speaking
in a more private voice, confronts the calculations that are a necessary
element of love. Also included here are poems culled from the European
revolutions of 1989, including the simultaneously apprehensive and
celebratory '1989', a cacophony on the European identity, which like all
Barker's theatre and poetry, insists on the presence of the past in moments
of apparent rupture. Along with the urban poems 'Mates of Wrath', this is a
collection whose varied tones of contemplation, assertion and renunciation
mark a distinctive voice in English culture.

About this title

Review

"There is no such thing as a minor Howard Barker play. He packs
more into the slenderest dramas than most playwrights manage in an epic."
-- Lyn Gardner, The Guardian

Edition details

• Publisher: Calder Publications Ltd
• Publication date: 1991
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0714542024
• ISBN 13: 9780714542027
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 80