Collected Poems

by Anthony Burgess, Jonathan Mann (Editor)

John Anthony Burgess Wilson (1917–93) was an industrious writer. He published over fifty books, thousands of essays, and numerous drafts and fragments survive. He predicted many of the struggles and challenges of his own and the following century. His most famous book is A Clockwork Orange (1962), later adapted into a controversial film by Stanley Kubrick. The linguistic innovations of that novel, the strict formal devices used to contain them, and its range of themes are all to be found too in Burgess’s poetry, an area of his work where he was at once most free and most experimental. It is his least exposed and most complex and eloquent area of achievement, now revealed at last in all its richness. His flair for words, formal discipline, experimentalism, and fondness for variousness mark every page.

Genres: Poetry

512 pages, Paperback

Published February 25, 2021

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Seriocomic novels of noted British writer and critic Anthony Burgess, pen name of John Burgess Wilson, include the futuristic classic A Clockwork Orange (1962).

He composed also a librettos, poems, plays, screens, and essays and traveled, broadcast, translated, linguist and educationalist. He lived for long periods in southeastern Asia, the United States of America, and Europe along Mediterranean Sea as well as England. His fiction embraces the Malayan trilogy ( The Long Day Wanes ) on the dying days of empire in the east. The Enderby quartet concerns a poet and his muse. Nothing like the Sun re-creates love life of William Shakespeare. He explores the nature of evil with Earthly Powers , a panoramic saga of the 20th century. He published studies of James Joyce, Ernest Miller Hemingway, Shakespeare, and David Herbert Lawrence. He produced the treatises Language Made Plain and A Mouthful of Air . His journalism proliferated in several languages. He translated and adapted Cyrano de Bergerac , Oedipus the King , and Carmen for the stage. He scripted Jesus of Nazareth and Moses the Lawgiver for the screen. He invented the prehistoric language, spoken in Quest for Fire . He composed the Sinfoni Melayu , the Symphony (No. 3) in C , and the opera Blooms of Dublin .

Reviews

[Thomas Goddard · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've always had a soft spot for a well crafted poem. Especially ones that lend themselves to occasions. Raising a toast, ending a tiresome discussion nobally, or just as a means of impressing someone of your liking.

Short of learning to juggle, there are few things more easily learned and instantly impressive than quoting a stanza or two at just the right moment. A lull in the conversation. The exploitable moment of a glass at their lips preventing them from filling the air with any more information about their pet/child/job.

The first half of this collection are skillfully crafted (occasionally irreverent) poems that tackle topics like the Bible. One retelling that is mirthful. But it's the second half that I particularly appreciated. 'Personal Verse, Vignettes, and Other Short Work' is how it's described in the index.

Personal verse that could very well be imagined as poems scribbled on the backs of envelopes, bottom of till receipts or napkins. The word choices are sublime. The metre is exquisite.

I think I've decided on a new recipient for that rare honour of a place at the table of my constantly evolving imaginary dinner party. I totally recommend you read some of his work if you have enjoyed Hughes, Larkin or Les Murray.