Selected Poems - by James Fenton (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Listen to what they did.
Don't listen to what they said.
What was written in blood
Has been set up in lead.
--from "Blood and Lead"

The leading poet of his generation, James Fenton has over the course of his career built a body of work breathtaking in its range and sensibility. From the passionate political poems that launched him into fame to the intimate illuminations of love--and loss of love--in his later work, Fenton's poetry has always been marked by formal daring, wit, and an abiding empathy for the victims of war and political oppression. With selections from all of his published work since The Memory of War, the entire text of his libretto The Love Bomb, and new, previously uncollected poems, Selected Poems is an imaginative and formal tour de force.

Review Quotes

"[Fenton] writes as no one else dares to--with clarity, wit, and the simplest of rhymes . . . Like Auden, Fenton displays enormous range." --Village Voice Literary Supplement on Out of Danger

"What love of words . . . could fail to be delighted by these heart-wrenching . . . lines?" --Geoffrey Stokes, The Boston Sunday Globe on Out of Danger

About the Author

James Fenton was born in Lincoln, England, in 1949. His volumes of poetry include Terminal Moraine, The Memory of War, Children in Exile, and Out of Danger. He was Oxford Professor of Poetry from 1994 to 1999.