Selected Poems of Mervyn Peake

by Mervyn Peake

Libro usado en buenas condiciones, por su antiguedad podria contener señales normales de uso

Genres: Poetry

1 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1972

About the author

Mervyn Laurence Peake was an English modernist writer, artist, poet and illustrator. He is best known for what are usually referred to as the Gormenghast books, though the Titus books would be more accurate: the three works that exist were the beginning of what Peake conceived as a lengthy cycle, following his protagonist Titus Groan from cradle to grave, but Peake's untimely death prevented completion of the cycle, which is now commonly but erroneously referred to as a trilogy. They are sometimes compared to the work of his older contemporary J.R.R. Tolkien, but his surreal fiction was influenced by his early love for Charles Dickens and Robert Louis Stevenson rather than Tolkien's studies of mythology and philology.

Peake also wrote poetry and literary nonsense in verse form, short stories for adults and children ("Letters from a Lost Uncle"), stage and radio plays, and Mr Pye, a relatively tightly-structured novel in which God implicitly mocks the evangelical pretensions and cosy world-view of the eponymous hero.

Peake first made his reputation as a painter and illustrator during the 1930s and 1940s, when he lived in London, and he was commissioned to produce portraits of well-known people. A collection of these drawings is still in the possession of his family. Although he gained little popular success in his lifetime, his work was highly respected by his peers, and his friends included Dylan Thomas and Graham Greene. His works are now included in the collections of the National Portrait Gallery and the Imperial War Museum.

Reviews

[Dante · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clay and tree-blood and the sky.

[Millstone · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think the writing in his novels makes it fairly obvious he wrote poetry and it was a pleasure to discover some had been published. There are some gems in this quite slim collection.

[Robin Helweg-Larsen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Comments in 2018: "A collection of competent but not awesome poems, including the rambling 38 six-line stanzas (iambic pentameters, rhyming abcabc) of 'A Reverie of Bone'.

Honestly, his nonsense poetry, collected in 'A Book of Nonsense', is far superior, much of it word-for-word memorable. Very little of the 'Selected Poems' attains that standard. Not, in other words, the Peake of perfection."

Comments in 2019: "Definitely a rereadable collection, deeper than on first reading, with his impressions of the Second World War resonating more strongly as you sink into them. Improved the rating from 3 stars to 4."

[Gareth Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

I cannot claim to have understood everything but I enjoyed the struggle. Peake has a unique way with words. He puts sentences and verses together in surprising and evocative ways. Many of his poems are almost haiku-like in their brevity. His work during the Second World War is poignant and unflinching. But his longer poem - A Reverie of Bone - is a sustained outpouring of his poetic imagination and something I will have to return to again and again to tease out all his meaning.
A glorious selection that deserves to be read and read again.

[Octavia Cade · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are some wonderful poems in here - I particularly liked "Swallow the Sky" and "We are the Haunted People". Some others do tend to be overwritten though, I think. The over-the-top writing that works so well for Peake in prose (his Gormenghast novels are some of my favourites) is, I feel, less successful in poems like "A Reverie of Bone".

[Kevin Jimenez · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's not much to be said.. it's Mervyn Peake.