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Poems without irony
Paperback
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- Book Synopsis
- Shortlisted for The Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry First Collection Prize 2017 Shortlisted for The Roehampton Poetry Prize 2017 Poems without Irony is Alex Wong's first collection. In subject, tone and form it ranges widely. The book as a whole does not address any one paticular theme, but much of it is concerned with the experience of particularity, with the bounds of moral calculation, and with the need for precision - of thought and of speech - as an aim or obligation. Tensions between the 'natural' and the artificial, intention and expression, good faith and bad, are recurrently felt as the poems negotiate their various kinds of ambivalence. The style is governed by a desire for simplicity almost equal to the lure of extravagance, and by the tendency of its subtly differentiated voices towards an elusive playfulness in the face of serious matters. The poems are designed to be read aloud, or at least 'using the mouth'. Wong's patient and sympathetic listening to the sounds of English poetry in all periods has enriched the patterns of his own. The poems, therefore, enfold many memories of earlier styles - revived, or still vital, but also gaining new tonal energy in a functional strangeness.
- About The Author
- Alex Wong was born in 1988 in London, where for the most part he was schooled, though he spent much of his childhood in O'ahu, Hawai'i. He studied and now teaches English literature at the University of Cambridge. Poems Without Irony, his first collection of poetry, was published by Carcanet in 2016, and his original and translated verse has appeared in PN Review, New Poetries VI, The Forward Book of Poetry 2018, and elsewhere. He also edits and introduces the Selected Verse of Algernon Charles Swinburne and the Selected Essays of Walter Pater for Carcanet Classics. He is the author of a critical book, The Poetry of Kissing in Early Modern Europe (2017), and his studies of English literature have appeared in various periodicals. Shadow and Refrain is his second collection of poems.
- Product Details
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- ISBN
- 9781784103040
- Format
- Paperback
- Publisher
- Carcanet Poetry, (26 January 2017)
- Number of Pages
- 130
- Weight
- 188 grams
- Language
- English
- Dimensions
- 216 x 135 x 11 mm
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