Product Description

The collection of poems that marked Andrew Motion's first publication for over ten years.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #23600 in Books
• Published on: 2002-03-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 151 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
A child asks if people drown in the Thames. A favourite flower-print dress disappears. Loved ones die. Empties are dragged to the curb. Though rooted in the ordinary, Motion's poems are anything but.

In the masterful "Look" the poet forges connections among events that seem, at least on the surface, quite unrelated. First, his unborn twins swim "in mooning blue, / their dawdlers' legs / kicking through silence / enormously slowly, / while blotches beneath them / revolve like the earth/ which will bring them down to grief / or into their own." Next, his ageing mother lies in bed "as though any day now / she might lift into space / and never return / to breathe our air." Finally, the speaker awakens from a dream "that time / will last long enough / to let me die happy, / not yearning for more / like a man lost in space / might howl for the earth, / or a dog for the moon / with no reason at all." Here, four tentative futures powerfully converge in nothing less than a visceral tour de force.

Unpredictable, unsentimentally elegant, Motion has inherited all the rhythmic and narrative genius of Robert Frost. "I stamp both feet and disappear in a cloud," he announces in "Fresh Water." Lucky for us, he's speaking metaphorically. --Martha Silano

Customer Reviews

Unforced and readable collection
I simply had to counter the poor review left for this book previously. Motion is clearly a sensitive poet, with the ability to hide a really quite visionary feeling behind unforced, unflowery verse. Much as I love the verbally obscurity in poetry, Motion is rarely that sort of poet, no more so than Larkin. I always sense that he is communicating with the full knowledge that modern poetry is struggling to compete with other forms of expression (such as singer songwriters), and yet has never tried to be trendy - in other words, whatever you think of his work, it always has integrity. The fact that he was made Poet Laureate after this collection appeared perhaps backs this up, and his subsequent visibility can surely be considered a good thing. I often return to 'Fresh Water', the sequence which closes this book.

Not very good.
Really not very good: a poet with worthwhile technical ability, but unable to show any further insight, beyond that of "the greats", into the human condition. Larkin, his revered mentor, was simply better.