Collected Poems
 by Michael Longley
"A keeper of the artistic estate, a custodian of griefs and wonders..." Seamus Heaney
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 new 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.
“...a contemporary who should endure over the life of our language.” Donald Hall
“War--what it does to combatants and to their children--becomes a preoccupation throughout Longley’s work. ... Yet marital love and tenderness, domestic calm and pastoral counterpoise also stand among Longley's signature subjects. ... Longley’s genius is pastoral and commemorative. ...” Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“I can't think of a living poet who writes such incredible sonnets. ... He travels with ease from the Iliad to his local fields. ... It's hard to tell if he's a poet of regular life who is good at stumbling upon depth, or a deep poet who knows that the quotidian is precious. And it's not clear that it matters.” Laurel Maury, The Los Angeles Times
“...a wonderfully capacious book, at once stringent and delicate.” Andrew Motion, English Poet Laureate, The Guardian (London)
“Michael Longley's Collected Poems is a volume of rare quality in many ways, not least in its unity. It makes visible for the first time the profound continuities in Longley's work. ... [A]n essential book for anyone interested in poetry: it bears witness to a rare sensibility, one which seldom falters in its patient fidelity to the highest artistic and ethical standards.” Caitriona O'Reilly, Times Literary Supplement
“This wise, tender, beautifully cadenced work embraces man and nature, war and peace. A book to slow down with.” Niall MacMonagle, The Irish Times
“Longley comes from an Ulster Protestant tradition but sees beyond tribe to the shared tragedy of conflict. I carry his work with me to the war zones of the world.” Fergal Keane, The London Times
March 2007 368 pages
Paperback $18.95 ISBN 978-1-930630-31-4
Limited clothbound edition, numbered and signed $50 ISBN 978-1-930630-32-1
cloth has plain vellum wrapper; no images |
