Product Description

Celebrated for his lyrical intensity, his metaphysical wit, his thematic and formal range, Michael Longley is widely regarded as one of the finest poets in these islands. His life in Northern Ireland has contributed to the complexity of a poetic universe in which love, friendship and aesthetics contend with war, death and violence. There are no hard boundaries between Longley's love poetry, his nature poetry, his war poetry and his elegies. Longley looks to the poets of Greece and Rome, particularly Homer and Ovid, and to the poets of the two world wars. His great ability, perhaps, has been to distill the large and difficult themes into highly concentrated forms. This is Michael Longley's own selection from thirty years of writing; it reveals the strength and coherence of an extraordinary body of work.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #560319 in Books
• Published on: 1998-10-15
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 144 pages

Customer Reviews

The finest contemporary Irish poet
Michael Longley is unusual not only because he has the courage, in these ironic, post-modern days, to write with an intense lyricism. What is more unusual still is that this lyricism, this music, springs less from the play of sound than from the power and clarity of his thoughts. For example, the first four lines of this poem about the sectarian conflicts in Northern Ireland: Some people tried to stop other people wearing poppies/ And ripped them from lapels as though uprooting poppies/ From Flanders fields, but the others hid inside their poppies/ Razor blades and added to their poppies more red poppies.

MacNeice for me
I am ashamed to say this poet was unknown to me and would have remained so until I saw a programme on TV and purchased at Amazon. There is so much I want to say but nothing will be a substitute for reading the Selected Poems of Louis MacNeice for yourself, better still, go to an isolated place and read them out loud.

You will find much comfort and demanding challenge for having met up with this wonderful man - may joy go with you (and him).