The Gifts of Fortune

£11.99

Peter McDonald

This seventh collection from Peter McDonald is a book of poems where fortune itself, which sets the terms for a life, becomes a lyrical music.

SKU: 9781784109431 Categories: , Tags: ,

Description

The poems in The Gifts of Fortune, Peter McDonald’s seventh book of poems, cover a spectrum of personal history. They go to Belfast, Oxford, and further afield; in time they visit the poet’s pasts, his now, his possible futures. Autobiographical detail abounds: McDonald’s experiences (as a workingclass boy in Belfast, who dreams of leaving, and a middleaged Oxford don, who dreams of going back) are filtered through a deep instinct for poetic tradition. At the heart of the book are two sequences: one, ‘Mud’, in which family, professional, and literary histories are combined in strictly formal, but personally unguarded, reflections on poetry, class, and privilege; and another, ‘Blindness’, where a series of tenline units test poetic form to (and beyond) breaking-point, in a meditation on family and suffering, disappointment and hope. Other poems return to themes of wealth and poverty, love and loss, and the alienation and puzzlement of age. Throughout the book, form is ghosted by the formless, hovering just beyond the frame; and Fortune vies with Fate, quite another force.

Additional information

ISBN

ISBN10

1784109436

Binding Type

Paperback

Book Condition

New