NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW
An independent small press poetry review
 RUTH PADEL: REMBRANDT WOULD HAVE LOVED YOU Chatto & Windus Random House 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road London SW1V 2SA UK ISBN 0 7011 6715 7 £7.99 RUTH PADEL: 52 WAYS OF LOOKING AT A POEM Chatto & Windus ISBN 0 701 17318 1 £12.99 visit the website of Random House        Web design by  This page last updated: 1st September 2009. |
RUTH PADEL: REMBRANDT WOULD HAVE LOVED YOU | |
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The back-cover blurb says "..a woman's eye view of a love affair.."which hardly encourages one to read. BUT this poet has a different eye. Eye? — skin, breath, breasts, mouth, flesh, hands, belly, thighs are all subtly threaded in the pattern of her loving. Remembering the most tender moments, yet able to move away mentally and write, when the CD wouldn't play : ..You wanted to lie beside me, bathing in this music, and the bloody thing won't work..I read the book again, wanting to quote lines, but they are so interwoven that a whole poem is needed to get the feel of her loving. The title is taken from the poem quoted from above, possibly the most passionate and tender of them all. Rich and sensual, Ruth Padel's way with words never cloys and it is a roller-coaster of an affair. When they part You wanted it to live for ever this body you wonder atbegins the poem. Then longing to be with him at the end when he's old and show him how your body, down to its blue-varnished toes, still glows from touching his.A book to be wallowed in. | ||
| reviewer: Anne Lewis-Smith. | ||
| RUTH PADEL: 52 WAYS OF LOOKING AT A POEM | ||
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In 1998, Ruth Padel had a brilliant idea writing a newspaper column that would print a modern poem and add my own way of reading it.The idea was put to The Independent On Sunday, and starting in January, 1999 it ran for two and a half years. This book collects 52 of the poems discussed — a whole year of poetry, creating a unique critical anthology. The poems themselves are prefaced by READING POETRY TODAY — a 50-page essay that is both a concise history of 20th century poetry and an examination of poetic form. The book closes with a GLOSSARY OF POETIC TERMS, so the reader is really getting three or four books for the price of a single volume. In among the "usual suspects" I found a few surprises — poems, or poets that were new to me and that I was glad to have brought to my attention; C. K. Williams' BARM, Paul Farley's KEITH CHEGWIN AS FLEANCE, Colette Bryce's BUSTER. There's something for everyone here, and though I regretted some of the omissions, I can only say that this is a superb book that provides a good overview of contemporary poetry and enough food for thought to last for years to come. | ||
| reviewer: John Francis Haines. |