Year in the New Life (eBook)

JACK UNDERWOOD (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2021 | 1. Auflage
64 Seiten
Faber & Faber (Verlag)
978-0-571-36726-9 (ISBN)

Infos

POETRY BOOK SOCIETY RECOMMENDATION 'Jack Underwood has developed an utterly clear lyric that rebukes moral obviousness, drives against false certainty. It's as refreshing as it is instructive . . . Underwood has become one of my favorite poets.' Kaveh Akbar Jack Underwood's poetry debut, Happiness (2015), was celebrated for its unconventional and daring tone: 'conversational, arresting . . . weird, singular' (Guardian). Such qualities are on accomplished display in this anticipated new collection, as the poems mature and move on to a wide range of preoccupations, including imminent societal collapse and public unrest; the limits, myths and complexities of masculinity and fatherhood; and uncanny, often amusing scenarios, such as serving drinks to a gathering of fifteen babies or group kissing in Empathy Class. Throughout, incongruous and domestic subjects realign in skewed lyrics and thought experiments, intimately expressed in 'a new language / of the familiar' ('The Landing'). All is presented with a generosity and tenderness that makes the poet so unmistakable - and indispensable for the strange times in which we live. 'I was done in by these poems, but I really lived as I read them; each one holding life and time in a balletics of stress and flow.' Holly Pester

Jack Underwood is an award-winning poet, writer and critic. First published as part of the Faber New Poets seriesin 2009, he is author of two collections of poetry, Happiness (Faber, 2015) and A Year in the New Life (Faber, 2021) and his debut book of non-fiction, Not Even This was published in 2021 by Corsair. He is senior lecturer in creative writing at Goldsmiths College.

Rezensionen

Objects are taken apart and their emotional significances examined. Moral philosophies, ethical complications, nothing is dictated or decided upon; Jack Underwood's writing is into a necessary ambivalence, the descendent of many moral poet-philosophers before him, but with an aesthetic twist. The glorious abundance of Jack's wayward absurdism and imagism creates intellectual plot-points felt like dreams, a way to think about logic in a different way, a way to think about things and people and life in a different way, which is the intention of poetry.

I was done in by these poems, but I really lived as I read them; each one holding life and time in a balletics of stress and flow. Technically beyond much else around, Underwood's measured life-matter, humour and Creelyish syntax capture what's hardest to capture: love, new love, its growth and fret. A simple day at its most cruel and hilarious is clearest when witnessed like this.

Jack Underwood's poems are exceptional in how they surrender to their own music, each one a kind of expertly controlled free-fall. In this tough and tender time, we need these poems of tenderness, of toughness, and of time.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 3.8.2021
• Verlagsort: London
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Lyrik / Dramatik ► Lyrik / Gedichte
• Schlagworte: Goldsmiths • Hannah Bagshawe • Happiness • Not Even This • Sam Riviere • Somerset Maugham Award • Stop Sharpening Your Knives
• ISBN-10: 0-571-36726-7 / 0571367267
• ISBN-13: 978-0-571-36726-9 / 9780571367269