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Falling Awake
Alice Oswald’s poems are always vivid and distinct, alert and deeply, physically, engaged in the natural world. Mutability – a sense that all matter is unstable in the face of mortality – is at the heart of this new collection and each poem is involved in that drama: the held tension that is embodied life, and life’s losing struggle with the gravity of nature.
Working as before with an ear to the oral tradition, these poems attend to the organic shapes and sounds and momentum of the language as it’s spoken as well as how it’s thought: fresh, fluid and propulsive, but also fragmentary, repetitive. These are poems that are written to be read aloud.
Orpheus and Tithonus appear at the beginning and end of this book, alive in an English landscape, stuck in the clockwork of their own speech, and the Hours – goddesses of the seasons and the natural apportioning of Time – are the presiding figures. The persistent conditions are flux and falling, and the lines are in constant motion: approaching, from daring new angles, our experience of being human, and coalescing into poems of simple, stunning beauty.
Working as before with an ear to the oral tradition, these poems attend to the organic shapes and sounds and momentum of the language as it’s spoken as well as how it’s thought: fresh, fluid and propulsive, but also fragmentary, repetitive. These are poems that are written to be read aloud.
Orpheus and Tithonus appear at the beginning and end of this book, alive in an English landscape, stuck in the clockwork of their own speech, and the Hours – goddesses of the seasons and the natural apportioning of Time – are the presiding figures. The persistent conditions are flux and falling, and the lines are in constant motion: approaching, from daring new angles, our experience of being human, and coalescing into poems of simple, stunning beauty.
83 pages, Paperback
First published July 7, 2016
65 people are currently reading
1472 people want to read
About the author
Alice Oswald
35 books229 followersAlice Oswald (born 1966) is a British poet who won the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2002.
Oswald read Classics at New College, Oxford, has worked as a gardener at Chelsea Physic Garden, and today lives with her husband, the playwright Peter Oswald (also a trained classicist), and her three children in Devon, in the South-West of England.
Alice Oswald is the sister of actor Will Keen and writer Laura Beatty.
In 1994, she was the recipient of an Eric Gregory Award. Her first collection of poetry, The Thing in the Gap-Stone Stile (1996), won a Forward Poetry Prize (Best First Collection) in 1996, and was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize in 1997.
Her second collection, Dart (2002), combined verse and prose, which tells the story of the River Dart in Devon from a variety of perspectives. Jeanette Winterson called it a "... moving, changing poem, as fast-flowing as the river and as deep... a celebration of difference... " . Dart won the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2002.
In 2004, Oswald was named as one of the Poetry Book Society's Next Generation poets. Her collection Woods etc., published in 2005, was shortlisted for the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Poetry Collection of the Year).
In 2009 she published both A Sleepwalk on the Severn and Weeds and Wildflowers, which won the inaugural Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry, and was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize.
In October 2011, Oswald published her 6th collection, Memorial.
Oswald read Classics at New College, Oxford, has worked as a gardener at Chelsea Physic Garden, and today lives with her husband, the playwright Peter Oswald (also a trained classicist), and her three children in Devon, in the South-West of England.
Alice Oswald is the sister of actor Will Keen and writer Laura Beatty.
In 1994, she was the recipient of an Eric Gregory Award. Her first collection of poetry, The Thing in the Gap-Stone Stile (1996), won a Forward Poetry Prize (Best First Collection) in 1996, and was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize in 1997.
Her second collection, Dart (2002), combined verse and prose, which tells the story of the River Dart in Devon from a variety of perspectives. Jeanette Winterson called it a "... moving, changing poem, as fast-flowing as the river and as deep... a celebration of difference... " . Dart won the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2002.
In 2004, Oswald was named as one of the Poetry Book Society's Next Generation poets. Her collection Woods etc., published in 2005, was shortlisted for the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Poetry Collection of the Year).
In 2009 she published both A Sleepwalk on the Severn and Weeds and Wildflowers, which won the inaugural Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry, and was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize.
In October 2011, Oswald published her 6th collection, Memorial.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 153 reviews
February 1, 2023
Unfortunately not my kind of poetry, so I didn’t really enjoy this
January 8, 2018
I have a new favorite poet and and I can’t stop thinking about her work. But you have to hear her speak the work to get the full impact so therefore on my blog I have attached a video of Oswald reading the first poem in this 2016 collection, called "A Short Story on Falling."
I have learned that this appears to be Oswald's ninth book of poetry, and that her second book, Dart, won the T.S. Eliot Prize in 2002. According to her wiki, Oswald "is a British poet from Reading, Berkshire. Her work won the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2002 and the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2017. In September 2017, she was named as BBC Radio 4's second Poet-in-Residence." It is absurd to fall in love with language again, but here I am, helpless in her hands.
Her visualizations are unforgettable. In "You Must Never Sleep Under a Magnolia," we learn of "shriek-mouthed blooms" and the first flowering like a glimpse of flesh. And what of
As it happens, just when I discovered this unbeatable voice, I learn that she and another newly discovered favorite author, Kei Miller, will be speaking together, in a month, at the same venue in England, as part of the Bath Spa Poetry Series:
It is enough to bring the dead to life. ♬♪ If I were a rich man ♬♫
I have learned that this appears to be Oswald's ninth book of poetry, and that her second book, Dart, won the T.S. Eliot Prize in 2002. According to her wiki, Oswald "is a British poet from Reading, Berkshire. Her work won the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2002 and the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2017. In September 2017, she was named as BBC Radio 4's second Poet-in-Residence." It is absurd to fall in love with language again, but here I am, helpless in her hands.
Her visualizations are unforgettable. In "You Must Never Sleep Under a Magnolia," we learn of "shriek-mouthed blooms" and the first flowering like a glimpse of flesh. And what of
Old scrap-iron foxglovesOr what about "Tithonus: 46 Minutes in the Life of the Dawn" whose characterization of Tithonus reminds us of another babbling old man:
rusty rods of the broken woods
what a faded knocked-out stiffness
as if you'd sprung from the horse-hair
of a whole Victorian sofa buried in the mud down there...
--from Evening Poem
It is said the dawn fell in love with Tithonus
and asked Zeus to make him immortal, but forgot
to ask that he should not grow old. Unable to die,
he grew older and older until at last the dawn
locked him in a room where he still sits babbling
to himself and waiting night after night for her appearance.
As it happens, just when I discovered this unbeatable voice, I learn that she and another newly discovered favorite author, Kei Miller, will be speaking together, in a month, at the same venue in England, as part of the Bath Spa Poetry Series:
It is enough to bring the dead to life. ♬♪ If I were a rich man ♬♫
October 7, 2016
Flies
Alice Oswald
This is the day the flies fall awake mid-sentence
and lie stunned on the windowsill shaking with speeches
only it isn’t speech it is trembling sections of puzzlement which
break off suddenly as if the questioner had been shot
this is one of those wordy days
when they drop from their winter quarters in the curtains and sizzle as they fall
feeling like old cigarette butts called back to life
blown from the surface of some charred world
and somehow their wings which are little more than flakes of dead skin
have carried them to this blackened disembodied question
what dirt shall we visit today?
what dirt shall we re-visit?
they lift their faces to the past and walk about a bit
trying out their broken thought-machines
coming back with their used-up words
there is such a horrible trapped buzzing wherever we fly
it’s going to be impossible to think clearly now until next winter
what should we
what dirt should we
This book is about nature and observation and language. Accessible, oral-based. My friend Jenn showed me these two lines from the very beginning of the very first poem, “ A Short Story of Falling:”
It is the story of the falling rain
To turn into a leaf and fall again.
and I was hooked. Oswald is a classicist and likes music, too. There’s one long poem, “Tithonus: 46 Minutes in the Life of the Dawn”. A performance piece, with music. Sad. But I like best the pieces about dew, foxes, falling night. I needed it because I just read Bill McKibben's sad book Eaarth about our fast-declining natural world. This is my first experience with her poetry. I’ll read more.
Alice Oswald
This is the day the flies fall awake mid-sentence
and lie stunned on the windowsill shaking with speeches
only it isn’t speech it is trembling sections of puzzlement which
break off suddenly as if the questioner had been shot
this is one of those wordy days
when they drop from their winter quarters in the curtains and sizzle as they fall
feeling like old cigarette butts called back to life
blown from the surface of some charred world
and somehow their wings which are little more than flakes of dead skin
have carried them to this blackened disembodied question
what dirt shall we visit today?
what dirt shall we re-visit?
they lift their faces to the past and walk about a bit
trying out their broken thought-machines
coming back with their used-up words
there is such a horrible trapped buzzing wherever we fly
it’s going to be impossible to think clearly now until next winter
what should we
what dirt should we
This book is about nature and observation and language. Accessible, oral-based. My friend Jenn showed me these two lines from the very beginning of the very first poem, “ A Short Story of Falling:”
It is the story of the falling rain
To turn into a leaf and fall again.
and I was hooked. Oswald is a classicist and likes music, too. There’s one long poem, “Tithonus: 46 Minutes in the Life of the Dawn”. A performance piece, with music. Sad. But I like best the pieces about dew, foxes, falling night. I needed it because I just read Bill McKibben's sad book Eaarth about our fast-declining natural world. This is my first experience with her poetry. I’ll read more.
January 1, 2017
I received this in exchange for an honest review from NetGalley. Thank you to the author, Alice Oswald, and the publisher, Vintage Digital, for this opportunity.
This collection of 24 poems are deeply rooted to the natural world and linked by the subject of mutability – a sense that all matter is unstable in the face of mortality.
Whilst I did enjoy this collection, I don't think I engaged with it in the correct way. I read through each poem and, whilst appreciating them, they didn't exactly move me. I found certain stanzas or sections particularly beautiful but, overall, I was left feeling a little blase about the collection.
Orality has always been a part of the lyric poetry tradition, going back to pre-literate times, and this collection was expressly created in keeping with the oral tradition of the classical world. Perhaps my enjoyment of this waned in my not doing so, in which case, I only have myself to blame. Reading this to myself I could decipher the lilting quality of tone and pace that would lend itself extraordinarily well to being read aloud. I don't really think, however, having done so would have vastly improved my experience of this.
This collection of 24 poems are deeply rooted to the natural world and linked by the subject of mutability – a sense that all matter is unstable in the face of mortality.
Whilst I did enjoy this collection, I don't think I engaged with it in the correct way. I read through each poem and, whilst appreciating them, they didn't exactly move me. I found certain stanzas or sections particularly beautiful but, overall, I was left feeling a little blase about the collection.
Orality has always been a part of the lyric poetry tradition, going back to pre-literate times, and this collection was expressly created in keeping with the oral tradition of the classical world. Perhaps my enjoyment of this waned in my not doing so, in which case, I only have myself to blame. Reading this to myself I could decipher the lilting quality of tone and pace that would lend itself extraordinarily well to being read aloud. I don't really think, however, having done so would have vastly improved my experience of this.
January 27, 2021
A questioner called Light appeared,
with probe and beam
began to search the room
where two lay twined in bed.
whose intellect surpassing theirs
with no regard
for things half-dressed
accused them of old age
as weak as eggs they woke.
they thought their bodies
gleaming in the window-square
felt less like age than air
oh no not quite
in blue pedantic Light
two doors away two trees
made less of leaves than sound
as if to prove them wrong
described the wind
and as they dressed the dust
flew white and silent through the house
February 25, 2018
Favorites: "A Short Story of Falling," "Flies," "Looking Down." Oswald hits my sweet spot in that she has an affinity for nature poems. Here's an example:
Flies (Alice Oswald)
This is the day the flies fall awake mid-sentence
and lie stunned on the windowsill shaking with speeches
only it isn’t speech it is trembling sections of puzzlement which
break off suddenly as if the questioner had been shot
this is one of those wordy days
when they drop from their winter quarters in the curtains and sizzle as they fall
feeling like old cigarette butts called back to life
blown from the surface of some charred world
and somehow their wings which are little more than flakes of dead skin
have carried them to this blackened disembodied question
what dirt shall we visit today?
what dirt shall we re-visit?
they lift their faces to the past and walk about a bit
trying out their broken thought-machines
coming back with their used-up words
there is such a horrible trapped buzzing wherever we fly
it’s going to be impossible to think clearly now until next winter
what should we
what dirt should we
Very cool, especially that cigarette butt-like sizzle being called back to life. We've all seen those mysterious flies do the Lazarus thing by the window.
The downside is that I didn't enjoy as much Oswald's longer poems, especially one that took up half of this book, "Tithonus." It's never a good thing when your least favorite poem in a collection takes up half the book. But still. When there's some you really like, you just go back and reread those. That's how poetry collections give of themselves. Unlike with fiction, multiple readings (right after you read it) hold up like Billy the Kid.
Flies (Alice Oswald)
This is the day the flies fall awake mid-sentence
and lie stunned on the windowsill shaking with speeches
only it isn’t speech it is trembling sections of puzzlement which
break off suddenly as if the questioner had been shot
this is one of those wordy days
when they drop from their winter quarters in the curtains and sizzle as they fall
feeling like old cigarette butts called back to life
blown from the surface of some charred world
and somehow their wings which are little more than flakes of dead skin
have carried them to this blackened disembodied question
what dirt shall we visit today?
what dirt shall we re-visit?
they lift their faces to the past and walk about a bit
trying out their broken thought-machines
coming back with their used-up words
there is such a horrible trapped buzzing wherever we fly
it’s going to be impossible to think clearly now until next winter
what should we
what dirt should we
Very cool, especially that cigarette butt-like sizzle being called back to life. We've all seen those mysterious flies do the Lazarus thing by the window.
The downside is that I didn't enjoy as much Oswald's longer poems, especially one that took up half of this book, "Tithonus." It's never a good thing when your least favorite poem in a collection takes up half the book. But still. When there's some you really like, you just go back and reread those. That's how poetry collections give of themselves. Unlike with fiction, multiple readings (right after you read it) hold up like Billy the Kid.
January 11, 2017
Oswald is back on fine form again!
Falling Awake, Alice Oswald's latest poetry collection is simply beautiful. She is an incredibly rare sort and has an ear for the musical in the everyday. I don't think I can really compare her with anyone else because she has a unique style of writing, of fitting different sounds together, of creating some of the most incredible imagery I have ever imagined, she is truly one of a kind.
Having said that however, Falling Awake isn't my favourite poetry collection by her; my favourite is either Woods, etc. or The Thing in the Gap Stone-Stile. Here, she literally sets my mind ablaze with her poetic word play.
If you want to delve in to a different sort of poetry where there is magic, wonder and musicality in nature and the everyday, then look no further than Alice Oswald. She will take you by the hand and introduce you to new wonders of the world.
Falling Awake, Alice Oswald's latest poetry collection is simply beautiful. She is an incredibly rare sort and has an ear for the musical in the everyday. I don't think I can really compare her with anyone else because she has a unique style of writing, of fitting different sounds together, of creating some of the most incredible imagery I have ever imagined, she is truly one of a kind.
Having said that however, Falling Awake isn't my favourite poetry collection by her; my favourite is either Woods, etc. or The Thing in the Gap Stone-Stile. Here, she literally sets my mind ablaze with her poetic word play.
If you want to delve in to a different sort of poetry where there is magic, wonder and musicality in nature and the everyday, then look no further than Alice Oswald. She will take you by the hand and introduce you to new wonders of the world.
December 5, 2021
My favourite poem: Shadow
2016 Forward Prize for Best Single Poem: Dunt
Video Review (audio subpar, sorry!)
Oswald's poems definitely have a presence and imminence, but I find it lacking colour, personality, and preference. Nature poetry does not come easily to me in it's description but it normally comes through with universal wholesome truths, which I don't find here. Oswald's poems feel hollow, scaffolds of energy, beautiful cadences and aesthetics that do not build some narrative or position. I liked Shadow most as it sticks closest to its theme, and explores it from multiple points of view, whereas many other poems here seem to jump more than I'd like them to.
It may be cruel to suggest Oswald's style in this collection is captured by some of the lines in Tithonus ('the long poem' in this collection) which captures the slow moments 46 minutes before dawn breaks on the day as seen by an immortal, weary man:
"
and then another thing and then another
and then a chaffinch starts and then another
and starts and starts
"
There is energy, but no movement. It reminds me of poets I prefer only in what it lacks... It has none of the fire of Anne Sexton, or the grace of Carson. That said, I might read Oswald again, because I find 'fast energy' like this is a hard thing to find in poetry.
(This was the first book I read from my new library, picking it on a whim due to wanting poetry, here's to many more. I'll probably make a video review at some point, who knows with my chaotic life right now.)
2016 Forward Prize for Best Single Poem: Dunt
Video Review (audio subpar, sorry!)
Oswald's poems definitely have a presence and imminence, but I find it lacking colour, personality, and preference. Nature poetry does not come easily to me in it's description but it normally comes through with universal wholesome truths, which I don't find here. Oswald's poems feel hollow, scaffolds of energy, beautiful cadences and aesthetics that do not build some narrative or position. I liked Shadow most as it sticks closest to its theme, and explores it from multiple points of view, whereas many other poems here seem to jump more than I'd like them to.
It may be cruel to suggest Oswald's style in this collection is captured by some of the lines in Tithonus ('the long poem' in this collection) which captures the slow moments 46 minutes before dawn breaks on the day as seen by an immortal, weary man:
"
and then another thing and then another
and then a chaffinch starts and then another
and starts and starts
"
There is energy, but no movement. It reminds me of poets I prefer only in what it lacks... It has none of the fire of Anne Sexton, or the grace of Carson. That said, I might read Oswald again, because I find 'fast energy' like this is a hard thing to find in poetry.
(This was the first book I read from my new library, picking it on a whim due to wanting poetry, here's to many more. I'll probably make a video review at some point, who knows with my chaotic life right now.)
February 7, 2017
Two great ones: “A Short Story of Falling” and “A Rushed Account of the Dew” (“I want to work out what it’s like to descend / out of the dawn’s mind // and find a leaf and fasten the known to the unknown / with a liquid cufflink”). One more good one: “Two Voices.” The rest? Opaque, forgettable, repetitive. And oh the pretentiousness of “Tithonus” (envisioned as a 46-minute performance)!
Read
May 24, 20187.0/10
It may be I was distracted when I read this but I found the collection ... unexciting... overall. (But, if so easily distracted, then, it could be argued the poet wasn't speaking to me in the first place.)
Still, she has some strong imagery in Swan, which is probably the best poem in here.
A rotted swan
is hurrying away from the plane-crash mess of her wings
one here
one there
getting panicky up out of her clothes and mid-splash
looking down again at what a horrible plastic
mould of herself split-second
climbing out of her own cockpit ...
(Excerpt only)
Her poems on nature, and her shorter poems generally, have a certain lift and bite to them that give me an insight into a vital, vibrant spirit, but I found her faltering as she wrote her way through the myth of Tithonus. After a very promising start:
It is said the dawn fell in love with Tithonus
and asked Zeus to make him immortal, but forgot
to ask that he should not grow old. Unable to die,
he grew older and older until at last the dawn
locked him in a room where he still sits babbling
to himself and waiting night after night for her appearance.
the poem dwindles rather pointlessly until it just fades completely.
Not enough blood on the apple for me.
It may be I was distracted when I read this but I found the collection ... unexciting... overall. (But, if so easily distracted, then, it could be argued the poet wasn't speaking to me in the first place.)
Still, she has some strong imagery in Swan, which is probably the best poem in here.
A rotted swan
is hurrying away from the plane-crash mess of her wings
one here
one there
getting panicky up out of her clothes and mid-splash
looking down again at what a horrible plastic
mould of herself split-second
climbing out of her own cockpit ...
(Excerpt only)
Her poems on nature, and her shorter poems generally, have a certain lift and bite to them that give me an insight into a vital, vibrant spirit, but I found her faltering as she wrote her way through the myth of Tithonus. After a very promising start:
It is said the dawn fell in love with Tithonus
and asked Zeus to make him immortal, but forgot
to ask that he should not grow old. Unable to die,
he grew older and older until at last the dawn
locked him in a room where he still sits babbling
to himself and waiting night after night for her appearance.
the poem dwindles rather pointlessly until it just fades completely.
Not enough blood on the apple for me.
February 1, 2017
very time I read a book of poetry I wonder why I don’t read more poetry. I was prompted to read this collection after it won the poetry category of the Costa Book Awards and I’m so glad I picked it up. The title “Falling Awake” feels apt as Alice Oswald has a dizzying way of turning the world upside down, making it fresh and inverting expectation with her stunningly beautiful acrobatic language. Many of the poems in this collection focus on nature whether that includes animals, insects, the weather, the setting/rising sun or the transformation of the seasons. A few draw in references to figures from Greek mythology such as Orpheus and Tithonus. Their inclusion melds with the tone of the other poems giving a striking perspective on time’s movement and how we perceive the world as it flows around us.
Read my full review of Falling Awake by Alice Oswald on LonesomeReader
Read my full review of Falling Awake by Alice Oswald on LonesomeReader
February 15, 2017
Falling Awake by Alice Oswald. So this is modern poetry, I thought, while reading it. This is what it is, now. I liked the book, enjoyed reading it. Though fresh, new, it did at times remind me of poems I had read before, mainly Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot, Wodwo by Ted Hughes. Every poet is influenced by those who have gone before, right back to the works of Homer, The Iliad and The Odyssey. Alice Oswald has found her voice, her own style, which is good. She lives in Devon, her biographical note tells us. That did not surprise me, as her poems are rooted in life in the English countryside, the village, hedges, lanes, fields, woods, ponds and rivers. Her roots are rural not urban. I liked the eerie feel of her poem, Village, which reminds us that life in a country village is not entirely wholesome and pleasant, the deeper you go the darker it can become.
I was curious, I wanted to know why her book and her previous books had won literary awards, and had won praise from literary critics, and what a living poet writes like, now. I was glad that I bought the book. That it was Shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize and the Costa Poetry Award 2016 impressed me. I wanted to know why it had received such praise and prizes. Learn from the masters. That is my motto. Alice Oswald has mastered her art, I think. None of the masters, old and new, learned the craft of writing poetry from academic tutors, but only from each other, from reading those works that took to their liking. Falling Awake by Alice Oswald is a good book to read by anyone interested in finely written poetry.
I was curious, I wanted to know why her book and her previous books had won literary awards, and had won praise from literary critics, and what a living poet writes like, now. I was glad that I bought the book. That it was Shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize and the Costa Poetry Award 2016 impressed me. I wanted to know why it had received such praise and prizes. Learn from the masters. That is my motto. Alice Oswald has mastered her art, I think. None of the masters, old and new, learned the craft of writing poetry from academic tutors, but only from each other, from reading those works that took to their liking. Falling Awake by Alice Oswald is a good book to read by anyone interested in finely written poetry.
December 1, 2017
although not unable to
turn a decent phrase someone
should tell alice oswald that
there
is
more
to
writing
good
poetry
than pissing about with the space
bar and refusing
to use punctuation or the
caps
key
turn a decent phrase someone
should tell alice oswald that
there
is
more
to
writing
good
poetry
than pissing about with the space
bar and refusing
to use punctuation or the
caps
key
March 11, 2017
i tend to be a little dense when it comes to modern poetry, having only studied ancient poetry and a little bit of french poetry.
but this collection made me think that modern poetry might just be the thing for me.
i was already charmed after the first poem, and it only got better from there. it read like greek lyrical poetry, and reminded me of my favourite poets.
not only will i be rereading this one, but i'm going to be reading as much oswald as i can.
but this collection made me think that modern poetry might just be the thing for me.
i was already charmed after the first poem, and it only got better from there. it read like greek lyrical poetry, and reminded me of my favourite poets.
not only will i be rereading this one, but i'm going to be reading as much oswald as i can.
March 2, 2017
Raved about in England, one of the finest contemporary poets etc. So I picked up this collection whilst on my Brit travels last summer. Left me a bit cold to be honest. Plenty to admire in the craft, but nothing really clicked with me. I kept re-reading poems again and again, before admitting this was obviously just not my bag.
December 30, 2021
Beautiful, but does not speak to me.
December 30, 2016
This is a collection to read and read and read. Put it in your pocket and take it with you. Read it end to end. Read a poem here and there. Just grab a phrase for the morning and tattoo it on your brain, sew it into your soul, color it onto your heart, inside and outside the lines:
begins the poem “You Must Never Sleep Under a Magnolia.” It continues, perhaps with the voice of a parent’s reprimand, to its end:
The first half of the book is forest stream of poems where the theme of falling as a physical act, a metaphoric act, and a metaphysical act is explored. The first poem is “A Short Story of Falling,” a poem with rhymed couplets, tracing the journey of a raindrop from sky to flower—‘then I might know like water how to balance / the weight of hope against the light of patience.” Sometimes it is the perspective that falls (“Vertigo” and “Looking Down”). Sometimes (“Two Voices”) it is light and shadow.
Nature is present, vibrant, in all these poems, even as a vehicle for myth, as in the story of Orpheus’s journey down a river.
It is not exactly Orpheus who makes this journey, only his head, following his death at the hands of the Maenads. Mortality and immortality are linked to this theme of falling: raindrops that run their course but are reabsorbed into sunlight, mammals that feed the soil, and therefore life, at their journey’s end.
Oswald’s talent and her rigorously, beautifully applied skill makes poems of observation, narrative poems, and poems of life and death small miracles of unexpected joy. They do this even when they are acknowledging our mortality, our proper place in nature’s fathomless movement from life to death and endlessly on.
They do this even when presenting the mournful world seen by a 5000 year old man, condemned to never die while endlessly aging, in response to a god’s rash wish of love. At the end of his bittersweet cataloging of dawn’s arrival, Tithonous asks, “may I stop please” The poem, fully titled “Tithonus, 46 Minutes in the Life of Dawn”, ends with its own question,
Oswald’s accomplishment (here and with Dart and Memorial and more in her already formidable career) is a wonder because there is so much imagination, so much skill and command, and so little sense of artifice. You read her and feel that this is exactly how to say this, to describe that, to capture this dilemma and voice awe in the moment and its brevity.
“when the tree begins to flower
like a glimpse of
flesh
when the flower begins to smell
as if its roots have reached
the layer of
Thirst upon the
unsealed jar of
Joy”
begins the poem “You Must Never Sleep Under a Magnolia.” It continues, perhaps with the voice of a parent’s reprimand, to its end:
“Alice, you should
never sleep under
so much pure pale
so many shriek-mouthed blooms
as if Patience
had run out of
Patience.”
The first half of the book is forest stream of poems where the theme of falling as a physical act, a metaphoric act, and a metaphysical act is explored. The first poem is “A Short Story of Falling,” a poem with rhymed couplets, tracing the journey of a raindrop from sky to flower—‘then I might know like water how to balance / the weight of hope against the light of patience.” Sometimes it is the perspective that falls (“Vertigo” and “Looking Down”). Sometimes (“Two Voices”) it is light and shadow.
Nature is present, vibrant, in all these poems, even as a vehicle for myth, as in the story of Orpheus’s journey down a river.
“there comes a tremor and there comes a pause
down there in the underworld
where the tired stones have fallen
and the sand in a trance lifts a little
it is always midnight in those pools.”
It is not exactly Orpheus who makes this journey, only his head, following his death at the hands of the Maenads. Mortality and immortality are linked to this theme of falling: raindrops that run their course but are reabsorbed into sunlight, mammals that feed the soil, and therefore life, at their journey’s end.
Oswald’s talent and her rigorously, beautifully applied skill makes poems of observation, narrative poems, and poems of life and death small miracles of unexpected joy. They do this even when they are acknowledging our mortality, our proper place in nature’s fathomless movement from life to death and endlessly on.
They do this even when presenting the mournful world seen by a 5000 year old man, condemned to never die while endlessly aging, in response to a god’s rash wish of love. At the end of his bittersweet cataloging of dawn’s arrival, Tithonous asks, “may I stop please” The poem, fully titled “Tithonus, 46 Minutes in the Life of Dawn”, ends with its own question,
“what is the word for something
fashioned in the quick of hearing
but never quite
but never quite
appearing.”
Oswald’s accomplishment (here and with Dart and Memorial and more in her already formidable career) is a wonder because there is so much imagination, so much skill and command, and so little sense of artifice. You read her and feel that this is exactly how to say this, to describe that, to capture this dilemma and voice awe in the moment and its brevity.
January 28, 2024
Alice Oswald's Falling Awake has one of the most beautiful blurbs which I have ever read; even had I not been familiar with her poetry or output beforehand, it would definitely have enticed me to pick this particular tome up. I very much enjoyed Dart when I read it a couple of years ago, and have been eager to read more of Oswald's ever since. The imagery which she creates throughout Falling Awake is nothing short of beautiful, and her use of mythology is strong and fitting. The themes of nature and mutability tie the whole together wonderfully. Oswald's repetitions are splendidly handled, and there is not a single poem here which falls short of being meaningful or memorable. Falling Awake is a fluid poetry collection, which I would heartily recommend to any fans of poetry.
July 9, 2018
A masterpiece.
September 3, 2020
Magical. Oswald slows the whole world down and stretches each piece of it like a big drumstick lolly. Such a beautiful and soothing representation of the perpetual motion of nature, always swelling like ambient music, always falling like a wee drop of rain.
June 16, 2022
While this one does have links to Greek Mythology; it primarily revolves around the ephemerality of life when nature inexorably moves life forward and the intense gravitational pull that nature possess as an omnipotent force.
April 9, 2019
A friend recommended this book and I watched Alice Oswald reciting/reading from this book. She is impressive and deeply committed and I fell towards her poetry. It is a big gulp of apprehension that I start reading poetry with, but I went ahead. I admire her feeling with words, her love for the natural world. I will read more of her work.
January 31, 2017
Before I start this review, I want to highlight my absolute lack of poetry knowledge. Since I've never really read any poetry, besides the mandatory poems a English literature student has to read, I had no clue where to start finding poetry to read. And then I discovered that Falling Awake by Alice Oswald has won the poetry section of the Costa Book Awards and figured that was a good enough reason to start with that collection.
Falling Awake isn't an easy poetry collection to read. Its premise is based on Greek mythology, which I actually found a comfort because I am very interested and have learned quite a bit about mythology. The collection consists of two parts and I must say that I found the second part a lot easier to understand than the first one.
The key with Falling Awake, for me at least, was to really take my time to read and re-read and think about what exactly I read. This is probably true for a lot of poetry, which is supposed to pack a lot in a small package, but it wasn't really my thing. The second part of the collection was enjoyable and easy enough to understand that one, very focused, read was enough for me, but the first part was just exhausting.
While I think this is probably due to my inexperience, Falling Awake was only half enjoyable for me. However, I'm excited to pick it back up in a few weeks and see if some thinking and time has changed my mind about the collection and my understanding of it.
Falling Awake isn't an easy poetry collection to read. Its premise is based on Greek mythology, which I actually found a comfort because I am very interested and have learned quite a bit about mythology. The collection consists of two parts and I must say that I found the second part a lot easier to understand than the first one.
The key with Falling Awake, for me at least, was to really take my time to read and re-read and think about what exactly I read. This is probably true for a lot of poetry, which is supposed to pack a lot in a small package, but it wasn't really my thing. The second part of the collection was enjoyable and easy enough to understand that one, very focused, read was enough for me, but the first part was just exhausting.
While I think this is probably due to my inexperience, Falling Awake was only half enjoyable for me. However, I'm excited to pick it back up in a few weeks and see if some thinking and time has changed my mind about the collection and my understanding of it.
February 22, 2020
The book is one of the finest contemporary contributions to the genre of poetry. It delves into mythology, nature, witnessed and autobiographical scenes. Foremost, I enjoyed very much the encounters with ordinary things that unfold a new way of language such as The Short Story of Falling and The Looking Down. Both surpassed my expectations and imagination of the very perspectives the author took into consideration. All verses are carefully, beautifully, and with high intensity crafted. Everything is precise and filled with an amount of compassion and sympathy to people, animals, objects, situations and contexts, even the struggling houseflies, a dying swan or a Roman water nymph have their firm roles to play.
I highly recommend this book to all poetry lovers and to those who want to see a state of the art of the handcraft. Will browse for the next book of Alice Oswald.
I highly recommend this book to all poetry lovers and to those who want to see a state of the art of the handcraft. Will browse for the next book of Alice Oswald.
March 26, 2017
I honestly wanted to like this collection a lot more than I did. This was my first venture into Oswald's writing and possibly not the best choice. The first half of the book is a collection of poems that all seem to follow a similar vein. Her writing involves a lot of lovely word choices and emphasis is mainly achieved through repetition.
While I liked certain aspects of the writing it never really grabbed me in. My favorite poem was Fox.
The second half of the book was devoted to a single lengthy poem titled Tithonus. The overall concept of this poem was nice but it kind of felt clunky compared to the rest of the collection. I wouldn't recommend this book to someone but I also do not regret reading it.
While I liked certain aspects of the writing it never really grabbed me in. My favorite poem was Fox.
The second half of the book was devoted to a single lengthy poem titled Tithonus. The overall concept of this poem was nice but it kind of felt clunky compared to the rest of the collection. I wouldn't recommend this book to someone but I also do not regret reading it.
July 31, 2022
This is stunning! I did as the inside flap advised and I read the poems out loud and oh yes, do it! Some come to life, they shine so much more, even though they are still beautiful read silently, some sparkle when said aloud. What I love about Alice Oswald's work is that even if I don't fully understand it, I still love it. I can still get something from it. 'Dunt' was far away my favourite, and that is one that takes on another life when said aloud. How many times have I said "aloud"? It doesn't matter so much HOW you read this collection, just read it.....please.
February 3, 2017
How can I possibly write a review of this perfect poetry? I have nothing to give except awe.
September 14, 2017
It's hard reviewing poetry as it's so subjective. I just didn't enjoy it, or feel anything from it. There is no doubt that the author is talented though, and this book speaks to many people.
I went to university next to the river Dart, so I think I was hoping to read words that rekindled a magic nostalgia of that time for me, but it didn't, as I did with her previous book "dart".
This is no reflection of the writer, obviously, just my own expectations.
I always review in the sense of how a book has moved, intrigued or changed me. Or if I've learned a lot from it- more than it being "good" or "bad" literature.
I went to university next to the river Dart, so I think I was hoping to read words that rekindled a magic nostalgia of that time for me, but it didn't, as I did with her previous book "dart".
This is no reflection of the writer, obviously, just my own expectations.
I always review in the sense of how a book has moved, intrigued or changed me. Or if I've learned a lot from it- more than it being "good" or "bad" literature.
June 15, 2017
Falling Awake was shortlisted for the 2016 Forward Prize for Poetry - and I can now see exactly why.
This collection of poetry has everything that you would want from a classic collection of poetry and verse.
Click here to read my full review of this book...
This collection of poetry has everything that you would want from a classic collection of poetry and verse.
Click here to read my full review of this book...
January 7, 2023
Reminded me a bit of Wild Iris by Louise Gluck. I was most struck by Tithonus, which reminds you again that poetry is a full sensory experience--to be experienced through sound, sight, smells, touch. Gustav Holst's "Jupiter" ran through my head while reading Tithonus.
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