The World's Two Smallest Humans

Copus, Julia

ISBN 10: 0571284574 / ISBN 13: 9780571284573

Editore: Faber & Faber, Limited, 2012

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Ships from the UK. Former library book; may include library markings. Used book that is in excellent condition. May show signs of wear or have minor defects. Codice articolo GRP72654943

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Titolo: The World's Two Smallest Humans

Casa editrice: Faber & Faber, Limited

Data di pubblicazione: 2012

Legatura: Brossura

Condizione: Very Good

Descrizione articolo

Riassunto:

Julia Copus's poems bring humanity and light to some of our most intimate and solitary moments, repeatedly breathing life into loss. In two previous collections, she has been feted as among the most compelling poets to have emerged in recent years; now, in The World's Two Smallest Humans, she is writing at her most captivating yet. These finely tuned poems are the fruit of her upbringing in a musical family, an affinity with the Classics, a fascination with the arc of time, and an unflinching scrutiny of love and personal relationships. Born out of a powerful sense of place, the poems navigate through a beguiling sequence of interior and exterior landscapes, whether revisiting Ovid, negotiating the perils of one composer's attempt to step into the shoes of another or describing, from shifting perspectives, a young girl's escape from suburban ennui. The book concludes with a moving arrangement of pieces that explore the author's experience of IVF: poems written with wry humour and with grace, which celebrate the mysteries of conception alongside the sometimes surreal business of medical intervention. The World's Two Smallest Humans is an unforgettable read.

Recensione:

'This is a beautiful, arresting, sympathetic collection... There is something about the control, the high resolution, that gives this book its special, contradictory emotional mixture: it is elegiac and buoyant... The wonder of these poems is that although they could hardly be more personal childhood; the end of an affair; a sequence on IVF treatment there is no self-indulgence and no sense, for the reader, of being an intruder.' --Kate Kellaway, Observer

'Copus's ample stanzas give us a world as intensely realised as a novel, in which life itself seems to be taking place... What her poems of time and change propose runs counter to contemporary habits: hope, they say, is worth the candle, and this quietly powerful, deeply felt book ends with an affirmative for the future: 'I give myself over, shell and shelter, / child, my own.'' --Sean O'Brien, Sunday Times

'A master poet at work. With a characterful blend of the heart-felt and the experimental, delivered in language that is never less than pin-sharp, it is one of the most striking volumes of the year.' --Matthew Richardson, The Spectator