Product Description

Michael Longley has been called 'one of the finest lyric poets of our time'. In assembling the work of forty years, his "Collected Poems" displays a brilliantly sustained achievement whose depth, beauty and wit can now be fully appreciated. Longley's poetry combines intense concentration with remarkable variety. The formal and thematic range laid down in "No Continuing City" (1969) has undergone a series of rich metamorphoses up to "Snow Water" (2004), and the two poems included here as an epilogue. Longley's genres span love poetry, war poetry, nature poetry, elegies, satires, verse epistles, poems that reflect on art and the art of poetry. He has extended the capacity of the lyric to absorb dark matter: the Great War, the Holocaust, the Northern Irish 'Troubles'. His poetic landscape intermingles Belfast (where he lives), western Ireland, Italy, Japan and Homeric Greece. Longley's superb translations from classical poets (such as 'Ceasefire', which greets the IRA ceasefire in terms of the Iliad) speak to contemporary issues while activating the deepest sources of European poetry.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #25559 in Books
• Published on: 2007-10-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

Irish Times
"Michael Longley is an elegant voice in Irish poetry, whose stature is now beyond challenge."

The Times
"a master in an old, great tradition"

Sunday Telegraph
"exquisite"

Customer Reviews

straight to the heart
My eight-year-old daughter made me realise that Michael Longley's poems go straight to the heart. Her schoolteacher had completely ignored Halloween, and she was hungry for words when I read Longley's poem Hallowe'en to her on October 31:
"It is Hallowe'en. Turnip Head / Will soon be given his face, / A slit, two triangles, a hole. / His brains litter the table top. / A candle stub will be his soul."
My daughter's laughter was one of agreement and surprise. The poem not only gave her a description of her own experience, but also illuminated it. Michael Longley's poems don't explain. They just focus and describe, evoking memories and insights. Excellent edition, with indexes of titles and first lines.