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While famous for his celebrated novel, Under the Volcano, Malcolm Lowry always considered himself a poet. First published in 1962 and long out of print, Selected Poems of Malcolm Lowry is the only comprehensive selection of his poetry to be published, and it remains the perfect introduction to his extensive poetic canon. Edited by Lowry's good friend, renowned Canadian poet Earle Birney, with the assistance of his widow, Margerie Lowry, the selection includes extraordinary poems written during Lowry's stay in Mexico, many of which are closely related to his novel. This new edition includes a "Publisher's Note" from Lawrence Ferlinghetti. "These poems would be worth keeping in print, if for no other reason, for their illuminations of Under the Volcano: 'See mind's petal / torn from a good tree, but where shall it settle / But in the last darkness and at the end?' Sometimes, as the images of "For Under the Volcano," they become 'palm-of-the-hand' versions of that masterpiece. Lowry is a poet of struggle--with life, and with the creative process.
Here are his struggle's fruits: guilt, alcoholism, hopeless, self-deriding quest for salvation, which seems to be love, and, above all, self-destruction--but always accomplished with self-knowledge, enriched (in order to further torment itself) with compassion for all the beings that the poet, and us with him, are failing. His words are always sad and often beautiful."-William T. Vollman
Contents
Contents
Introduction 7
THE ROAR OF THE SEA AND THE DARKNESS
No Kraken shall be found till sought by name 11
Look out! The bloody bosun! 12
Byzantium 13
Old freighter in an old port 14
Iron cities 15
The flowering past 16
The ship is turning homeward 17
The lighthouse invites the storm 18
Tashtego believed Red 19 Vigil Forget 20
The days like smitten cymbals of brass 21
THUNDER BEYOND POPOCATEPETL
Thunder beyond Popocatepetl 22
For Under the Volcano 23
Xochitepec 25
The Volcano is Dark 26
Grim vinegarroon 27
In the Oaxaca Jail 28
For the love of dying 29
Death of a Oaxaqueñan 30
In a Mexican church 31
Delirium in Vera Cruz 32
Sunrise 33
THE CANTINAS
Prayer for drunks 34
Thirty-five mescals in Cuautla 35
Eye-opener 36
No company but fear 37
No time to stop and think 38
Comfort 38
Without the nighted wyvern 39
The drunkards 40
At the bar 40
Sestina in a Cantina 41
VENUS
Venus 45
Fragment 46
A New Ship 47
A poem of God's mercy 47
A quarrel 49
No still path 50
Nocturne 51
Saint Malcolm among the birds 52
Happiness 53
Be patient for the wolf 54
THE COMEDIAN
The Comedian 56
Men with coats thrashing 57
Thoughts while drowning 58
Queer poem 59
Poem 59
Midtown pyromaniac 60
Injured stones 61
Epitaph 62
SONGS FROM THE BEACH : ERIDANUS
Kingfishers in British Columbia 63
Christ walks in this infernal district too 64
Whirlpool 65
Hostage 65 T
he glaucous-winged gull 66
The ship sails on: for Nordahl Grieg 67
The wounded bat 68
The past 69
The pilgrim 70
The wild cherry 71
THE LANGUAGE OF MAN'S WOE
Rilke and Yeats 72
Thoughts to be erased from my destiny 73
Joseph Conrad 74
Trinity 74
The doomed in their sinking 75
Eels 76
The plagiarist 76
He liked the dead 77
After publication of Under the Volcano78
The search 78
Strange type 79
