All the Poems of Muriel Spark

by Muriel Spark

Overview

Available at last are all the poems by one of the twentieth century's greatest British writers, Dame Muriel Spark: "a true literary artist, acerbic and exhilarating" (London Evening Standard).

In the seventy-three poems collected here Muriel Spark works in open forms as well as villanelles, rondels, epigrams, and even the tour de force of a twenty-one page ballad. She also shows herself a master of unforgettable short poems. Before attaining fame as a novelist (Memento Mori, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie), Muriel Spark was already an acclaimed poet. The "power and control" of her poetry, as Publishers Weekly remarked, "is almost startling." With the vitality and wit typical of all her work, Dame Muriel has never stopped writing poems, which frequently appear in The New Yorker. As with all her creations, the poems show Spark to be "astonishingly talented and truly inimitable" (The San Francisco Chronicle).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780811221573
Publisher:	New Directions Publishing Corporation
Publication date:	02/20/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	144
File size:	834 KB

About the Author

Muriel Spark (1918–2006) was the author of dozens of novels, including The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Memento Mori, A Far Cry from Kensington, The Girls of Slender Means, The Ballad of Peckham Rye, The Driver’s Seat, and many more. She became Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1993.

Table of Contents

Contents

Foreword by the Author.................................................xi
A Tour of London (c. 1950-51).........................................1
The Dark Music of the Rue du Cherche-Midi (2000)......................4
The Yellow Book (c. 1951).............................................7
What? (2002)..........................................................8
Verlaine Villanelle (c. 1950).........................................9
Edinburgh Villanelle (c. 1950)........................................10
Holy Water Rondel (c. 1951)...........................................11
The Creative Writing Class (2003).....................................12
Authors' Ghosts (2003)................................................13
That Bad Cold (2003)..................................................14
Leaning Over an Old Wall (c. 1947)....................................15
Flower into Animal (1949/1950)........................................17
Abroad (1984).........................................................18
Going Up to Sotheby's (1982)..........................................19
On the Lack of Sleep (c. 1963)........................................21
The Grave that Time Dug (c. 1951).....................................22
The Pearl-Miners (c. 1952)............................................23
Omen (c. 1949)........................................................26
My Kingdom for a Horse (c. 1956)......................................27
Intermittence (c. 1956)...............................................28
Letters (2003)........................................................29
Holidays (2002).......................................................30
Facts (2003)..........................................................31
Complaint in a Wash-out Season (c. 1959)..............................32
Litany of Time Past (c. 1959).........................................33
The Fall (c. 1943)....................................................34
Faith and Works (c. 1957).............................................35
Conundrum (c. 1952)...................................................36
The Messengers (c. 1967)..............................................37
Fruitless Fable (c. 1948).............................................38
Note by the Wayside (c. 1965).........................................40
Mungo Bays the Moon (1996)............................................41
Panickings (2003).....................................................42
The Hospital (2003)...................................................43
The Empty Space (2002)................................................44
Hats (2003)...........................................................45
Anger in the Works (1995).............................................47
Dimmed-Up (2002)......................................................48
While Flicking Over the Pages (1995)..................................49
Standing in the Field (1994)..........................................50
To the Gods of My Right Hand (c. 1954)................................51
That Lonely Shoe Lying on the Road (1993).............................52
The Victoria Falls (c. 1948)..........................................53
Conversation Piece (c. 1954)..........................................54
Elementary (c. 1951)..................................................56
Against the Transcendentalists (c. 1952)..............................57
Shipton-under-Wychwood (c. 1950)......................................59
Conversations (c. 1965)...............................................60
The Card Party (c. 1951-52)..........................................62
Chrysalis (c. 1951)...................................................64
Elegy in a Kensington Churchyard (c. 1949)............................65
Evelyn Cavallo (c. 1952)..............................................66
The Rout (c. 1951)....................................................67
Four People in a Neglected Garden (c. 1951)...........................70
Like Africa (c. 1948).................................................71
We Were Not Expecting the Prince To-day (c. 1947).....................72
Communication (c. 1955)..............................................73
Created and Abandoned (c. 1979).......................................74
The Goose (c. 1960)...................................................75
A Visit (c. 1950).....................................................76
Bluebell Among the Sables (c. 1958)...................................78
Industriad (c. 1951)..................................................80
Canaan (c. 1952)......................................................81
The Nativity (c. 1950)................................................84
The Three Kings (c. 1953).............................................90
Sisera (c. 1953)......................................................91
The Ballad of the Fanfarlo (c. 1951)..................................92
From the Latin
Persicos Odi (c. 1949)................................................115
To Lucius Sestius in the Spring (c. 1949).............................117
Winter Poem (c. 1949).................................................121
Prologue and Epilogue (c. 1949).......................................123
Index of Titles and First Lines........................................126

Editorial Reviews

Renowned for decades for her sparely ironic novels, Muriel Spark (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie; A Far Cry from Kensington) began as a poet, and has lately returned to the writing of verse. All the Poems of Muriel Spark mixes her older rhyming poems (most from the 1950s) with the more informal work of the last 10 years. The Scottish-born Spark covers European cities from Edinburgh to Rome, along with the act of writing and the literary world: "I think that authors' ghosts creep back/ Nightly to haunt the sleeping shelves/ And find the books they wrote." Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly