Full Description
Fresh Out of the Sky is a book of songs, dreams, laments, narratives and comedies intertwined with passages about major life changes involving country, identity and belonging. It is about perpetually standing at the edge of change, anticipating it, reflecting on it and dreaming about it. The title sequence of the book returns to the terza rima theme of memory, following sequences in his earlier books, such as those about early Budapest childhood explored in Reel, and about growing to adulthood in England in An English Apocalypse. Here the theme is arrival in England as a child in 1956.
These are wound around poems set in the aftermath of war, upheaval, and life in contemporary England as tracked by a series of dreamlike reports from the Covid bunkers we have been inhabiting. Covid poems run through the collection like a thread holding the book - and indeed the condition of England - together. The thread embraces the second part of The Yellow Room, a continuing poem of impossible questions about residual Jewishness experienced as a dialogue with the poet's late father, as well as a bestiary of transformations woven through Guillaume Apollinaire and Graham Sutherland. The book ends on occasions of consolation, delight and joy in the midst of darkness and uncertainty.
Contents
FRESH OUT OF THE SKY
1 Waking to the Sea
15 Fresh out of the sky
16 Boarding house
17 A cigarette
18 Waking to the sea
19 Meet the parents
2 London Calling
20 Fairy tale
21 A wasp in the ear
22 Dream house
23 Neighbour
24 Christmas scene
3 Tom Brown's Schooldays
25 Russian incident
26 Diesel or steam
27 Early Christian
28 Table manners
29 Matinee
4 An Age of Heroes
30 Tame sparrow
31 The romantic at nine
32 Romance of Munich
33 Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future
34 The cartoon version
5 The Weather Forecast
35 Peasouper
36 English rain
37 Wind of change
38 Cricket on Brighton Beach
39 The big freeze
INSIDE THE YELLOW ROOM
43 The Yellow Room
52 Migrant
56 Variations on Leopold Staff
57 One nation
GOING VIRAL
61 Uncle Zoltán's plague times
61 Virus
Arrival
62 Cruiser
62 Crush
63 Night train
63 Fragment
64 Night patrol
Telling stories
65 Obverse
65 The dream animals return
66 Legend
66 Tradition
67 Growing wild
Creatures
68 Dishes and spoons
68 The pigeons
69 The parrots
69 The penguins
70 The rats
Night Watch
71 River
71 Dusk talk
72 Watchmaker
72 Like clockwork
73 The gates
In the streets of a small town
74 Parchment
74 Ennui
75 The streets of a small town
75 Stopping train
76 Love poem in plague time
Adding up
77 Counting
77 Minutes
78 Trainspotting
78 Figures
79 Where there is sorrow
In wartime
80 Speech bubble
80 Wartime
81 The enemy
81 Disasters of war
82 Ministry
In emergency
83 Emergency guide
83 Dry hands
84 The future
84 Fictions
85 Science fiction
Uncertain terms
86 The angel of uncertainty
86 Addressing the nation
87 Comic turn
87 Ozymandias
88 Anger
After we died
89 Lush
89 Bargain
90 Mouth
90 Blossom
91 After we died
The consolations
92 Gift wrapped
92 Sylph
93 Diaphanous
93 Glory
94 Unscripted
FIVE INTERLUDES
97 In praise of breathing
100 Hen Harrier
102 Morning song
103 Bear
105 Dotage
NINE DREAM SONGS
109 Dream of the future tense
110 Dream of leaving
111 Dream of delay
112 Dream of townscape
114 Dream of screaming
115 Dream of dystopia
116 Dream of television
117 Dream of Moldova
118 Dream of the Danube
BESTIARY
121 Orpheus
122 Ass
123 Lion
124 Stag Beetle
125 Fire Lion
126 Ram skull
127 Toad
128 Chauve souris
129 Owl as anagram
130 Ant
131 Ram
132 Emerging life form
133 Chained beast
134 Tortoise
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- 和書
- 可制御の殺人
