Late Poems - Softcover

Thomas Kinsella

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1847772439 ISBN 13: 9781847772435

Publisher: Carcanet Press Ltd, 2013

Synopsis

This book collects the poems of Thomas Kinsella from his five most recent Peppercanister pamphlets. As he has throughout his writing, here Kinsella sets himself, clear-eyed, to face hard truths: 'the waste and the excess' of the living process; ageing and emptiness; the cancer of war. But against these are the creatively redeeming impulses - of the search for understanding: 'an imagination arguing with itself / until the ache is eased'; above all, of 'Grace as desire - Joy of the flesh / Saying all it can of love.'

About this title

Review:

With unique memorability and force these poems, in the words of 'Belief and Unbelief', coax us to follow their author in search of understanding 'back to the dark / and the depths that I came from'. No one who cares about poetry should hesitate to embark on the journey. --The Guardian

The most complex and multi-layered of the Peppercanister poems... taken with the 1968 and 1973 volumes and some of the earlier poems may comprise the most challenging, most achieved, and therefore most rewarding body of poetry from the British Isles over the past half-century. --The Cambridge History of Irish Literature

About the Author:

Thomas Kinsella was born in Dublin in 1928. He attended University College, Dublin, entering the Civil Service, before becoming a full-time writer and teacher in the United States. He is the author of over thirty collections of poetry, and has translated extensively from the Irish, notably the great epic The Tain. He was a director of the Dolmen Press and Cuala Press, Dublin, and in 1972 founded Peppercanister Press for the publication of sequences and long occasional poems. The editor of The New Oxford Book of Irish Verse and of Austin Clarke's Selected Poems and Collected Poems, Thomas Kinsella is also the author of The Dual Tradition (Carcanet), a critical essay on poetry and politics in Ireland. His awards and honours include Guggenheim Fellowships, the Denis Devlin Memorial Award, the Irish Arts Council Triennial Book Award and honorary doctorates from the University of Turin and the National University of Ireland. In 2007 Thomas Kinsella was awarded the Freedom of the City of Dublin.

About this edition

• Publisher: Carcanet Press Ltd
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1847772439
• ISBN 13: 9781847772435
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 144