Product Description

"The Universal Home Doctor" is Simon Armitage's most personal collection of poems yet. The poems journey across the globe but are ultimately set against the most intimate of landscapes - the human body.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #493794 in Books
• Published on: 2004-03-18
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 80 pages

Customer Reviews

Clever and complex poetry with a very human heart
To be honest giving marks out of five for poetry is fairly pointless; poetry's the most subjective thing there is.

There are thirty-five poems in this volume, on a variety of themes, some of which have eluded me. The ones I can make out involve travel to the rainforest (and all the attendant inoculations required), an attack on the patrons of the arts, and an awful lot of decorating. I have no idea what Simon Armitage has against Pampas Grass, but I wouldn’t like to be around to find out.

Of the ones I particularly like, “The Straight and Narrow” is a nice short poem about careers advisors, while my favourite in the book is probably “Butterflies” about the urge to drive as fast as possible over humpbacked-bridge type hill tops. Close to that is “The Wood for the Trees” a rain-forest poem with some lovely words evocating childhood night-terrors. While most of the poems are personal in scope, “The Twang” put into words things I’ve long felt about March the 17th.

I read the whole book through to my wife, and we never felt like skipping a poem, and even had the urge to repeat a couple straight away.