The Malarkey
Helen Dunmore
The Malarkey
The malarkey is over in the back of the car… As soon as you turn your back, time slips. The humdrum present has become the precious, irrecoverable past. The ways in which the present longs for the past, questions it, tries to get in touch with it and stretches the power of memory to its limits, are central to this new collection by Helen Dunmore. Joseph Severn recalls Keats hurling a bad dinner out onto the steps of the Piazza di Spagna; the glamour of John Donne's portrait 'taken in shadows' seduces a new generation; the dead assert their right to walk through the imaginations of the living… These are poems and stories of loss and extraordinary rediscovery. The Malarkey is Helen Dunmore's first poetry book since Glad of These Times (2007) and Out of the Blue: Poems 1975-2001 (2001), a comprehensive selection drawing on seven previous collections.
4.8 out of 5 based on 3 reviews
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Omniscore:
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| Classification |
Fiction |
| Genre |
Poetry |
| Format |
Paperback |
| Pages |
72 |
| RRP |
|
| Date of Publication |
July 2012 |
| ISBN |
978-1852249403 |
| Publisher |
Bloodaxe Books |
| |
The malarkey is over in the back of the car… As soon as you turn your back, time slips. The humdrum present has become the precious, irrecoverable past. The ways in which the present longs for the past, questions it, tries to get in touch with it and stretches the power of memory to its limits, are central to this new collection by Helen Dunmore. Joseph Severn recalls Keats hurling a bad dinner out onto the steps of the Piazza di Spagna; the glamour of John Donne's portrait 'taken in shadows' seduces a new generation; the dead assert their right to walk through the imaginations of the living… These are poems and stories of loss and extraordinary rediscovery. The Malarkey is Helen Dunmore's first poetry book since Glad of These Times (2007) and Out of the Blue: Poems 1975-2001 (2001), a comprehensive selection drawing on seven previous collections.
The Malarkey on the Guardian website
Reviews
The Observer
Kate Kellaway
“The personal poems are superb and anything but self-indulgent. Yet some of the most remarkable pieces here could be described as her Lives of the Poets. She has written affecting prose pieces about Donne's portrait and Keats's last days and a beautiful poem looking in on Hardy writing after the death of his wife. And in all these pieces, she is more than a literary spectator, she is a sensitive but not in the least vainglorious participant. ”
08/07/2012
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The Guardian
Sean O'Brien
“In its uninsistent but authoritative way, The Malarkey is a condition-of-England book, driven by a concern for those who have little purchase on their own lives ... In its quietly artful frankness The Malarkey is Helen Dunmore's best collection, the work of a grown-up for grown-ups who will remember what in the nature of things they've had to lose and what nevertheless they seek to celebrate.”
20/07/2012
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The Independent on Sunday
Suzi Feay
“… Her latest collection is a clear-eyed, sometimes funny, sometimes sad, meditation on time past and people lost … This is a superbly structured collection in which poems echo and answer each other. Later poems deal directly with a death and its aftermath. The poet recalls "my father at The Tin Drum / on his last weekend / smiling, with coffee in front of him." "The Last Heartbeat" is a wonderful poem of sadness and solace: "The last heartbeat washes the body clean of pain / in a tide of endorphins," it begins hopefully, concluding that: "the firework show of synapses … slowly dies down / to a last, exquisite connection." These poems are mostly brief and intense.”
08/07/2012
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