The Portraits & the Poses: Poetry

by Edwin Brock

The publication in 1972 of  Invisibility Is the Art of Survival , the author’s own selection of poems from earlier books brought out in England, introduced Edwin Brock to American readers. This new collection,  The Portraits & The Poses , will further the acquaintance with a fresh and forceful voice, one which David Ignatow has called “the best in English contemporary poetry.” These are highly personal the “poses,” the postures and bafflements of everyday life as Brock sees it; the “portraits,” pithy vignettes of everyday people and their relationships as he knows them. Yet what is personal to the poet is made highly accessible by his art, and by his particular qualities of profound earthiness, honesty, humor, and concern.

64 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 1996

About the author

Edwin Brock was a British poet. Brock wrote two of the best-known poems of the last century, Five Ways to Kill a Man and Song of the Battery Hen.

Brock's poems amply demonstrate the virtues of his "intensely felt, supple, direct and memorable work." Five Ways to Kill a Man is chilling in its deliberately emotionless tone as it uses the language of a practical manual to explore humanity's cruelty. Progress is reduced to the way in which mankind has "improved" its methods of killing. Inspired by a performance of Benjamin Britten's War Requiem and written quickly, the poem has an air of authority which Brock's reading emphasises. Song of the Battery Hen is similarly suited to being spoken aloud. Though written as a dramatic monologue, in his introduction Brock makes it clear the poem has autobiographical resonance. As such it is a good example of his belief that "most activity is an attempt to define oneself in one way or another: for me poetry, and only poetry, has provided this self-defining act."

Reviews

[Tyler · Rating 5 out of 5]

"truth is a matter / of making stones / move like curtains"