The Mower : New & Selected Poems
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Description
This selection, chosen by Andrew Motion himself from three decades of work, is an outstanding representation of the British poet's varied body of work-elegies, sonnets, poems of social and political observation, and unsentimental poems about childhood, post-war England, the natural world.
About his poetry, Motion has observed: "I want my writing to be as clear as water. No ornate language; very few obvious tricks. I want readers to be able to see all the way down through its surfaces into the swamp. I want them to feel they're in a world they thought they knew, but which turns out to be stranger, more charged, more disturbed than they realized. In truth, creating this world is a more theatrical operation than the writing admits, and it's this discretion about strong feeling, and strong feeling itself, which keeps drawing me back to the writers I most admire: Wordsworth, Edward Thomas, Philip Larkin."
A significant and consistent feature of Motion's work, throughout his shifts in style and changes in imaginative topographies, is his signature clarity of observation, his unwillingness to sacrifice intelligibility or embrace opacity. "The best poems," Motion has said, "are those which speak to us about the important things in our lives in a way that we never forget."
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About his poetry, Motion has observed: "I want my writing to be as clear as water. No ornate language; very few obvious tricks. I want readers to be able to see all the way down through its surfaces into the swamp. I want them to feel they're in a world they thought they knew, but which turns out to be stranger, more charged, more disturbed than they realized. In truth, creating this world is a more theatrical operation than the writing admits, and it's this discretion about strong feeling, and strong feeling itself, which keeps drawing me back to the writers I most admire: Wordsworth, Edward Thomas, Philip Larkin."
A significant and consistent feature of Motion's work, throughout his shifts in style and changes in imaginative topographies, is his signature clarity of observation, his unwillingness to sacrifice intelligibility or embrace opacity. "The best poems," Motion has said, "are those which speak to us about the important things in our lives in a way that we never forget."
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Product details
- Paperback | 123 pages
- 140 x 216 x 10mm | 181.44g
- 30 Jan 2010
- David R. Godine Publisher Inc
- Lincoln, United States
- English
- 1567923895
- 9781567923896
- 1,984,636
Flap copy
About his poetry, Motion has observed: "I want my writing to be as clear as water. No ornate language; very few obvious tricks. I want readers to be able to see all the way down through its surfaces into the swamp. I want them to feel they're in a world they thought they knew, but which turns out to be stranger, more charged, more disturbed than they realised. In truth, creating this world is a more theatrical operation than the writing admits, and it's this discretion about strong feeling, and strong feeling itself, which keeps drawing me back to the writers I most admire: Wordsworth, Edward Thomas, Philip Larkin."
Indeed, a significant and consistent feature of Motion's work, throughout his shifts in style and changes in imaginative topographies, is his signature clarity of observation, his unwillingness to sacrifice intelligibility or embrace opacity. Instead, Motion employs the full power of the English language to do his bidding, and, in love with words as he is, the words cooperate, communicate--transforming the intangible, the abstract into intelligible images, associations, and ultimately, knowledge.
In his role as poet laureate for the past ten years, Motion has worked to make poetry more widely available to the general public free of charge (through his online archiving of poets reading their work at The Poetry Archive) and has tried to demystify verse, saying simply, "The best poems are those which speak to us about the important things in our lives in a way that we never forget. Any heavier definition than that begins to collapse under its own weight and exclude many forms of poetry." Motion's own lyrical poems, many written in formal meter and rhyme, speak to usclearly and memorably, meeting his own challenge with flying colors.
show more
Indeed, a significant and consistent feature of Motion's work, throughout his shifts in style and changes in imaginative topographies, is his signature clarity of observation, his unwillingness to sacrifice intelligibility or embrace opacity. Instead, Motion employs the full power of the English language to do his bidding, and, in love with words as he is, the words cooperate, communicate--transforming the intangible, the abstract into intelligible images, associations, and ultimately, knowledge.
In his role as poet laureate for the past ten years, Motion has worked to make poetry more widely available to the general public free of charge (through his online archiving of poets reading their work at The Poetry Archive) and has tried to demystify verse, saying simply, "The best poems are those which speak to us about the important things in our lives in a way that we never forget. Any heavier definition than that begins to collapse under its own weight and exclude many forms of poetry." Motion's own lyrical poems, many written in formal meter and rhyme, speak to usclearly and memorably, meeting his own challenge with flying colors.
show more
Review quote
"Motion is a beautiful lyricist, unpretentiously and precisely describing those things worth having even as he casts unsettling shadows across them."-Guardian
"Motion's greatest and most distinctive gift . . . is to look squarely at the world and describe it with a plain and unsentimental eloquence that makes worldly value seem all the more questionable."-Independent
"The Mower vividly demonstrates Andrew Motion's illuminating discovery of his own voice and his gift of voice to both his father's generation and today's, a gift that renders this collection worthy of perusal."-World Literature Today
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"Motion's greatest and most distinctive gift . . . is to look squarely at the world and describe it with a plain and unsentimental eloquence that makes worldly value seem all the more questionable."-Independent
"The Mower vividly demonstrates Andrew Motion's illuminating discovery of his own voice and his gift of voice to both his father's generation and today's, a gift that renders this collection worthy of perusal."-World Literature Today
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About Andrew Motion
Andrew Motion was a British Poet Laureate whose poetry and prose has received numerous honors, including the Arvon/Observer Prize, the John Llewelyn Rhys Prize, and the Dylan Thomas Prize.
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