A Smell Of Fish

Fiction & Literature, Literary Theory & Criticism, Poetry History & Criticism
Cover of the book A Smell Of Fish by Matthew Sweeney, Random House
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Author: Matthew Sweeney ISBN: 9781446444948
Publisher: Random House Publication: March 15, 2011
Imprint: Vintage Digital Language: English
Author: Matthew Sweeney
ISBN: 9781446444948
Publisher: Random House
Publication: March 15, 2011
Imprint: Vintage Digital
Language: English

The poems in A Smell of Fish connect and radiate like the spokes of a wheel: haiku, sestinas, poems beginning with a line by somebody else or sparked off by foreign travel, a version of Dante, a sea sequence set on the Suffolk coast, and - long overdue - Matthew Sweeney's own version of the old Irish poem where his namesake is turned into a bird.

In this, his seventh collection, we are back in a world where all explanations are withheld. 'If Beckett and Kafka come to mind', as Sean O'Brien wrote in his essay on Sweeney in The Deregulated Muse, 'they are not simply influences but kindred imaginations'. So we encounter a valley mysteriously filling with the smell of fish, second-world-war planes reappearing over London, a secret attic mural of a naked ex-lover, a cosmonaut abandoned on the moon, and a subterranean tunnel that runs the length of Ireland.

Whatever the subject, we are in the confident hands of one of the most imaginatively gifted poets now writing.

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

The poems in A Smell of Fish connect and radiate like the spokes of a wheel: haiku, sestinas, poems beginning with a line by somebody else or sparked off by foreign travel, a version of Dante, a sea sequence set on the Suffolk coast, and - long overdue - Matthew Sweeney's own version of the old Irish poem where his namesake is turned into a bird.

In this, his seventh collection, we are back in a world where all explanations are withheld. 'If Beckett and Kafka come to mind', as Sean O'Brien wrote in his essay on Sweeney in The Deregulated Muse, 'they are not simply influences but kindred imaginations'. So we encounter a valley mysteriously filling with the smell of fish, second-world-war planes reappearing over London, a secret attic mural of a naked ex-lover, a cosmonaut abandoned on the moon, and a subterranean tunnel that runs the length of Ireland.

Whatever the subject, we are in the confident hands of one of the most imaginatively gifted poets now writing.

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