Selected Poems (Bloodaxe English poets) - Softcover

Oldham, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0906427126 ISBN 13: 9780906427125

Publisher: Bloodaxe Books Ltd, 1980

Synopsis

Dryden's famous elegy on John Oldham (1653-83) was one of many tributes to the 'Marcellus of our tongue': Farewel, too little and too lately known, Whom I began to think and call my own; For sure our souls were nearly ally'd; and thine Cast in the sam Poetick mould with mine. Many other critics and poets have found Oldham's work worthy of their attention, including Ezra Pound, who praised the 'cantabile' quality of Oldham's own elegy on his friend John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester. However, that attention has until now been denied the general reader by the lack of a readily available selction. The Penguin Companion to Literature notes that 'there is no good modern edition or critical essay': Ken Robinson has supplied both, offering not only the first selection of Oldham's poetry, but also an authoritative text based on a collation of early editions and Oldham's autograph manuscript. Ken Robinson's introduction isolates the characteristics of Oldham's poetry and places the selection in the context of both his works as a whole and the Restoration period in general.

About this title

Review:

'He outstrips the categories we keep invoking for him, such as 'doyen of Ulster poets' or 'conscience of the planter tradition'. He becomes, instead, the universal poet, servant of the medium, renewer of the forms, discoverer of the nugget of harmony in the language of ourselves.' --Seamus Heaney

'He brings to Irish poetry an invaluable chronicle of mixed allegiances and lost worlds of the ambiguities of the colony and the defeats of victory. No one else has quite had his themes; no one else has quite ventured on his enquiries.' --Eavan Boland

About the Author:

Michael Longley is a distinguished and critically acclaimed poet. His collections include The Weather in Japan (2000) which won the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Hawthornden Prize and the Irish Times Prize for Poetry. His Collected Poems was published in 2006. Longley received the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 2001, the Wilfred Owen Award in 2003 and the Librex Montale Prize in 2005. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a member of Aosdana. Frank Ormsby was editor of The Honest Ulsterman from 1969 to 1989 and has also edited a number of anthologies, including Poets from the North of Ireland,The Hip Flask: Short Poems from Ireland and The Blackbird's Nest: An Anthology of Poetry from Queen's University Belfast. He has published three collections of poetry, including The Ghost Train in 1995. He is Head of English at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloodaxe Books Ltd
• Publication date: 1980
• ISBN 10: 0906427126
• ISBN 13: 9780906427125
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 88
• Editor: Robinson Ph.D. Ken