Sign-In
Cart
Peter Redgrove: Here Comes the Flood: A Study of His Poetry
Paperback
Series: British Poets
Biographies GeneralPoetry CriticismGeneral Poetry
ISBN13: 9781861712943
Publisher: Crescent Moon Pub
Published: Feb 1 2011
Pages: 232
Weight: 0.73
Height: 0.49 Width: 6.14 Depth: 9.21
Language: English
Poems of honey, wasps and bees; orchards and apples; rivers, seas and tides; storms, rain, weather and clouds; waterworks; labyrinths; amazing perfumes; wet shirts and 'wonder-awakening dresses'; the Cornish landscape (Penzance, Perranporth, Falmouth, Boscastle, the Lizard and Scilly Isles); the sixth sense and 'extra-sensuous perception'; witchcraft; alchemical vessels and laboratories; yoga; menstruation; mines, minerals and stones; sand dunes; mud-baths; mythology; dreaming; vulvas; and lots of sex magic.
This book looks at poetry (and prose) from every stage of Peter Redgrove's career, and every book. It includes pieces that have only appeared in small presses and magazines, and in uncollected form.
This new edition has been rewritten completely and includes a new introduction and bibliography.
Illustrated. British Poets Series.
EXTRACT FROM CHAPTER ONE, ON POETRY AND LIFE
...this 'strangeness' is 'strange' because reality is so fucking extraordinary, and strange too because most of us try to live without strangeness, and construct something called the 'ordinary' which never existed. Actually, the strangeness is so ordinary as to be quite natural. The strangeness is wonder and what is wondered at is so wonderful that it is strange we do not wonder more.
Peter Redgrove, letter to the author (March 5, 1993)
Peter Redgrove's poetic code is to create poems which describe or actualize this strangeness of living. The strangeness is here, all around us, he says, but we become immune to it. The poet's task is therefore to refresh body and soul, so that the incredible beauty and strangeness of life is once again experienced. The emphasis is on direct experience, not on abstraction or distance. Redgrove hates the synthetic and artificial. Redgrove's poetic ethic is one of direct touches - the Blakean (and Coleridgean) direct contact stemming from the cleansing of the senses.
Peter Redgrove wrote to Jeremy Robinson about this book:
Your essay has an infectious enthusiasm, which I'm grateful for, and I especially like the places where you actually grapple with the language of my poems, which is like writing them again. It is a very good piece, which carries the reader with it... Your own approach is irreplaceable because it seems to me founded on your own individuality and personal experience of my poems - which is vastly gratifying... in the majority it is vastly stimulating and insightful. Always, I am grateful to you for your trouble, and your deep response to what I have written.
Also in
Biographies General
Bluesland: Portraits of Thirteen Major American Blues Masters
Toby Byron (ED.)
Pete Welding (ED.)
Hardcover
Karl Popper - The Formative Years, 1902 1945: Politics and Philosophy in Interwar Vienna
Hacohen, Malachi Haim
Hardcover
The Children of Athena: Greek Intellectuals in the Age of Rome: 150 Bc0-400 AD
Freeman, Charles
Hardcover
Make It a Double: From Wretched to Wondrous: Tales of One Woman's Lifelong Discovery of Whisky
Sackier, Shelley
Hardcover
The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race
Isaacson, Walter
Hardcover
An Enemy Such as This: Larry Casuse and the Fight for Native Liberation in One Family on Two Continents Over Three Centuries
Correia, David
Hardcover
Agents of Chaos: Thomas King Forçade, High Times, and the Paranoid End of the 1970s
Howe, Sean
Hardcover
The Secret Life of the Savoy: Glamour and Intrigue at the World's Most Famous Hotel
Williams, Olivia
Paperback
The Badger: The Life of Bernard Hinault and the Legacy of French Cycling
Fotheringham, William
Paperback
The Devil's Diary: Alfred Rosenberg and the Stolen Secrets of the Third Reich
Wittman, Robert K.
Kinney, David
Paperback
Florence Kelley and the Nation's Work: The Rise of Womens Political Culture, 1830-1900
Sklar, Kathryn Kish
Paperback
The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn: Family Politics at the Court of Henry VIII
Warnicke, Retha M.
Paperback
A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II
Purnell, Sonia
Hardcover
Living with a Wild God: A Nonbeliever's Search for the Truth about Everything
Ehrenreich, Barbara
Paperback
Seafaring Women: Adventures of Pirate Queens, Female Stowaways, and Sailors' Wives
Cordingly, David
Paperback
The Butcher, the Embezzler, and the Fall Guy: A Family Memoir of Scandal and Greed in the Meat Industry
Cherington, Gretchen
Paperback
Gift of Power: The Life and Teachings of a Lakota Medicine Man
Erdoes, Richard
Lame Deer, Chief Archie Fire
Paperback
My Own Devices: True Stories from the Road on Music, Science, and Senseless Love
Dessa Wander
Hardcover
Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice
Giuffre, Virginia Roberts
Hardcover
How to Be Okay When Nothing Is Okay: Tips and Tricks That Kept Me Alive, Happy, and Creative in Spite of Myself
Lawson, Jenny
Hardcover
Family of Spies: A World War II Story of Nazi Espionage, Betrayal, and the Secret History Behind Pearl Harbor
Kuehn, Christine
Hardcover
Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young: A Fugitive Family in the Revolutionary Underground
Dohrn, Zayd Ayers
Hardcover
A Walk in the Park: The True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon
Fedarko, Kevin
Paperback
Catch the Devil: A True Story of Murder, Deception, and Injustice on the Gulf Coast
Colloff, Pamela
Hardcover
Through Mom's Eyes: Simple Wisdom from Mothers Who Raised Extraordinary Humans
Jones, Sheinelle
Hardcover