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'True stars in poetry like Gwyneth Lewis always match brilliance with warmth. She is the one to bet on.' --Les Murray
'Felicitous, urbane, heartbreaking, the poems of Gwyneth Lewis form a universe whose planets use language for oxygen and thus are inhabitable.' --Joseph Brodsky
'Gwyneth Lewis has so many of the gifts required for good poetry: command of form, with improvisation enlivening tradition; supple rhythm; originality of subject-matter and the right eye to pin down detail; humour, both sardonic and direct; and, above all, commitment to human feeling.' --Peter Porter
'Felicitous, urbane, heartbreaking, the poems of Gwyneth Lewis form a universe whose planets use language for oxygen and thus are inhabitable.' --Joseph Brodsky
'Gwyneth Lewis has so many of the gifts required for good poetry: command of form, with improvisation enlivening tradition; supple rhythm; originality of subject-matter and the right eye to pin down detail; humour, both sardonic and direct; and, above all, commitment to human feeling.' --Peter Porter
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"A Hospital Odyssey" is an outrageously imaginative voyage through illness and healing. Drawing on the most recent biomedical research into stem cells and cancer, the poem is a journey through the body's inner space and the strange habitats created by disease, including the chimeras people see when they're unwell. Maris, whose husband, Hardy, has been diagnosed with cancer, is separated from him. Her mythical journey leads though a surreal landscape, peopled by true and false physicians, god-celebrities, rabid statues, diseases hunting healthy bodies and a microbes holding their annual ball. The Otherworld is located in the hospital's basement. In her desperate search Maris meets and converses with Aneurin Bevan, founder of the NHS. Immensely readable, "A Hospital Odyssey" is a modern epic: "Dr Who" meets "Paradise Lost". The poem asks: what is health? And what does it mean to care for someone who's ill?
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I must say that the idea of a book-length poem about hospitalisation was not immediately appealing. Yet, somehow Gwyneth Lewis manages to make this both engaging and fun. By turns witty -- yet scientific, bawdy -- yet soulful, she evokes deep emotion with heartfelt passages and imaginative characters.
This work is so rich, I found it difficult to read more than a few pages at a time, wanting to savour every word, every twist of plot, every feeling that surfaced through the pages.
Consider: "sometimes the only grace we have is to comfort those who hurt less than we do" (p. 37). Or, Cancer pleading, "Does anyone ever thank me for the way I wake up people to the lies they've been living? How I let fall the scales from their eyes before they die? For the deathbed reconciliations? How I remind you of the simple joys like clouds and daffodils?" (p. 103)
Brilliantly conceived, expertly constructed and heartfully written, this ode to health and illness is a delicious and delectable treat.
This work is so rich, I found it difficult to read more than a few pages at a time, wanting to savour every word, every twist of plot, every feeling that surfaced through the pages.
Consider: "sometimes the only grace we have is to comfort those who hurt less than we do" (p. 37). Or, Cancer pleading, "Does anyone ever thank me for the way I wake up people to the lies they've been living? How I let fall the scales from their eyes before they die? For the deathbed reconciliations? How I remind you of the simple joys like clouds and daffodils?" (p. 103)
Brilliantly conceived, expertly constructed and heartfully written, this ode to health and illness is a delicious and delectable treat.
5 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
WELSH WOMAN TAKES ON DEATH AND WINS (ALMOST)
I am honoured to be the first to notice this book on-line. It's an extraordinary cry of rage against death, an argument with death even, and by extension a seething, pullulating paean to life (in all its forms) composed along Virgilian/Dantesque lines, with more than a hint (to me) in its manic intensity of Frank Kuppner - not that I'm suggesting the Welshwoman has necessarily ever read the canny Glaswegian! Apart from being a surprisingly rollicking read, given its subject-matter, it is also densely argued. 'Humans! Always..so..anthropocentric', 'A hive is an endless conversation/of life with itself', 'We're born to catastrophe' - but 'compared to the body, the soul is cold'. Neither my best friend nor my worst enemy would ever accuse me of being a dog-lover, but I found the passage devoted to dogs heart-rending. Do I hear an echo of Villon? Perhaps Lewis might consider putting him into Welsh... The Japanese(?) spider is also captivating (it is after all the spider's métier); it all adds up to a kind of grotesque mock-epic, a philosophical burlesque, a medieval graphic-novel-sans-pix which conveys, I feel, better than any more sober account the horror of disease, while being utterly life-affirming.
The Christian world perversely reveled in the Dance of Death for nigh on two millenia; we embattled post-Christians choose to celebrate that fragile miracle (miraculous in a way no mere god could conceive), life; for Lewis, what in the past would have been an impassioned plea to her impassive - because, as is now evident, inexistent - creator narrowly on behalf of self or loved one (because, with eternity in mind, Christians were predisposed to keep self uppermost) becomes the author's desperate negociation with disease itself - the very struggle by which life OF ALL KINDS extends and perpetuates itself; for disease too is a form of life, though parasitical (as if we weren't!!). Lewis's grief thus extends, if I read her right, to all creation.
Apart from the naff Thornton Wilder epigraph fronting Book 10 there is no hint of the spiritual (a word I always view with grave suspicion when not applied to a specific faith/dogma; being 'spiritual' is not a dogma, it is a woozy state between dogmas); in fact on the whole I feel the poem could usefully lose all the epigraphs, with their faintly new-agey, multicultural feel (there are not multicultures, there is Culture) which seems at odds with the earthy, almost ribald flavour of the piece. In fact I may have misrepresented it - think of it not as philosophy or epic but more as a trip to a fairground (rickety ghost train, fun house, big dipper) and enjoy the thrills and (inevitable) spills. Like such a place the poet tells us that while life has no meaning (or its meaning is in its meaninglessness) it is nonetheless important (or it is important that we think it so). Of course, work of this calibre both DOES have meaning and demonstrates man's (relative) importance (unlike a microbe, man sometimes progresses) but then what are we made up of but microorganisms, so I guess all creation should take the credit! Thanks anyway, Gwyneth - and why isn't this a PBS selection?
Postscript 11 months on: wot, still no more British reviews? Maybe it's the subject-matter. Come on, we all gotta die - get used to it! Ans while we're on the subject (death I can handle - it's the NHS-as-underworld that spooks me!) read the diary column in the LRB of 4/11/10; it's flagged on the cover 'Hilary Mantel meets the Devil'. I have absolutely no desire to read anything else she's written (why read novels when there's Proust?) - but read this, I urge you. And please review Gwyneth. And take care crossing roads.
I am honoured to be the first to notice this book on-line. It's an extraordinary cry of rage against death, an argument with death even, and by extension a seething, pullulating paean to life (in all its forms) composed along Virgilian/Dantesque lines, with more than a hint (to me) in its manic intensity of Frank Kuppner - not that I'm suggesting the Welshwoman has necessarily ever read the canny Glaswegian! Apart from being a surprisingly rollicking read, given its subject-matter, it is also densely argued. 'Humans! Always..so..anthropocentric', 'A hive is an endless conversation/of life with itself', 'We're born to catastrophe' - but 'compared to the body, the soul is cold'. Neither my best friend nor my worst enemy would ever accuse me of being a dog-lover, but I found the passage devoted to dogs heart-rending. Do I hear an echo of Villon? Perhaps Lewis might consider putting him into Welsh... The Japanese(?) spider is also captivating (it is after all the spider's métier); it all adds up to a kind of grotesque mock-epic, a philosophical burlesque, a medieval graphic-novel-sans-pix which conveys, I feel, better than any more sober account the horror of disease, while being utterly life-affirming.
The Christian world perversely reveled in the Dance of Death for nigh on two millenia; we embattled post-Christians choose to celebrate that fragile miracle (miraculous in a way no mere god could conceive), life; for Lewis, what in the past would have been an impassioned plea to her impassive - because, as is now evident, inexistent - creator narrowly on behalf of self or loved one (because, with eternity in mind, Christians were predisposed to keep self uppermost) becomes the author's desperate negociation with disease itself - the very struggle by which life OF ALL KINDS extends and perpetuates itself; for disease too is a form of life, though parasitical (as if we weren't!!). Lewis's grief thus extends, if I read her right, to all creation.
Apart from the naff Thornton Wilder epigraph fronting Book 10 there is no hint of the spiritual (a word I always view with grave suspicion when not applied to a specific faith/dogma; being 'spiritual' is not a dogma, it is a woozy state between dogmas); in fact on the whole I feel the poem could usefully lose all the epigraphs, with their faintly new-agey, multicultural feel (there are not multicultures, there is Culture) which seems at odds with the earthy, almost ribald flavour of the piece. In fact I may have misrepresented it - think of it not as philosophy or epic but more as a trip to a fairground (rickety ghost train, fun house, big dipper) and enjoy the thrills and (inevitable) spills. Like such a place the poet tells us that while life has no meaning (or its meaning is in its meaninglessness) it is nonetheless important (or it is important that we think it so). Of course, work of this calibre both DOES have meaning and demonstrates man's (relative) importance (unlike a microbe, man sometimes progresses) but then what are we made up of but microorganisms, so I guess all creation should take the credit! Thanks anyway, Gwyneth - and why isn't this a PBS selection?
Postscript 11 months on: wot, still no more British reviews? Maybe it's the subject-matter. Come on, we all gotta die - get used to it! Ans while we're on the subject (death I can handle - it's the NHS-as-underworld that spooks me!) read the diary column in the LRB of 4/11/10; it's flagged on the cover 'Hilary Mantel meets the Devil'. I have absolutely no desire to read anything else she's written (why read novels when there's Proust?) - but read this, I urge you. And please review Gwyneth. And take care crossing roads.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
3 reviews
Rollercoaster
26 Sep 2011
Format:Paperback
This is a rattling good read - think Dante in the fairground - and I dare you to try it. No, I'm not interested in death and disease either (well, in *mortality* yes) and certainly not in hospitals, but this is about life - seething, pullulating life. Hang on - we're off!
Savoury
29 Jan 2011
Format:Paperback
I must say that the idea of a book-length poem about hospitalisation was not immediately appealing. Yet, somehow Gwyneth Lewis manages to make this both engaging and fun. By turns witty -- yet scientific, bawdy -- yet soulful, she evokes deep emotion with heartfelt passages and imaginative characters.
This work is so rich, I found it difficult to read more than a few pages at a time, wanting to savour every word, every twist of plot, every feeling that surfaced through the pages.
Consider: "sometimes the only grace we have is to comfort those who hurt less than we do" (p. 37). Or, Cancer pleading, "Does anyone ever thank me for the way I wake up people to the lies they've been living? How I let fall the scales from their eyes before they die? For the deathbed reconciliations? How I remind you of the simple joys like clouds and daffodils?" (p. 103)
Brilliantly conceived, expertly constructed and heartfully written, this ode to health and illness is a delicious and delectable treat.
This work is so rich, I found it difficult to read more than a few pages at a time, wanting to savour every word, every twist of plot, every feeling that surfaced through the pages.
Consider: "sometimes the only grace we have is to comfort those who hurt less than we do" (p. 37). Or, Cancer pleading, "Does anyone ever thank me for the way I wake up people to the lies they've been living? How I let fall the scales from their eyes before they die? For the deathbed reconciliations? How I remind you of the simple joys like clouds and daffodils?" (p. 103)
Brilliantly conceived, expertly constructed and heartfully written, this ode to health and illness is a delicious and delectable treat.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful
An Epic Verse Narrative
3 Dec 2010
Format:Paperback
Gwyneth Lewis has undertaken an epic task with her narrative poem, A Hospital Odyssey. Maris's husband, Hardy, is diagnosed with cancer and taken to a hospital. Maris follows, intent to stay with him, but she can't keep up, and is forced to wander the hospital, where she encounters surreal allegories. Each vignette explores some aspect of love, disease, and the health care system. The work is infused with the spirit of the Divine Comedyand Piers Ploughman. Maris encounters a Knight Templar who is resigned to wait eternally in heavy armor, the only gesture of solidarity and love for a terminally ill partner he sees possible; a woodpecker of a nurse who flits about and pecks, but is more concerned with paperwork than caring; a trolley handing out sympathy illnesses. Lewis's creativity is unbound in her use of surreal imagery.
When I first realized that I was holding a piece of narrative verse, I rejoiced. I haven't read anything like this since Wendy Cope's The River Girl. Poetry has been so divorced from narrative and verse in the past century that a book such as this is almost audacious. A Hospital Odyssey is written in five-line stanzas, which keep up an irregular rhyme.
Through eleven "books", one hundred and thirty-six pages, Maris journeys, with occasional first-person asides from the narrator. The book is interesting, and creative, and I admire it immensely. As a result I felt truly guilty each time I noticed something difficult or jarring, because to have written something this Herculean in scope amongst the tepid sea of so much contemporary poetry is already a victory. I wish to assert that before mentioning two things.
Firstly, I found I liked it better when I stopped treating it like verse. The rhymes are too irregular, or too oblique ("tired" and "stirred", "consultant" and "confident"), and the meter is too loose for either to become an organizing principle. Most lines are enjambed; very few end on the natural end of a phrase. This isn't the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, where the verse is so regular it almost becomes a chant. This allows Lewis a lot of leeway and flexibility, but the effect of the verse was lost. Instead, I thought of it as an epic poem in translation and felt right at home. The story is so soaked in the juice of epics that most of us read in translation anyway, that it feels appropriate.
Secondly, I found it difficult to get into the story because the plot was not so much a plot as a series of stops along a journey intended to illustrate a principle. I know that's like accusing ice cream of not being chocolate cake: Lewis never intended to write a novel. Nevertheless, I found it hard to get excited about talking symbols and clever allegories in the same way I get excited about real people. Of course, I found that difficult reading Dante, too.
In the end, I recommend Gwyneth Lewis's A Hospital Odyssey - may we be graced with more poets brave enough to appropriate and recreate literary tradition in this way.
Zach Hudson
[...]
When I first realized that I was holding a piece of narrative verse, I rejoiced. I haven't read anything like this since Wendy Cope's The River Girl. Poetry has been so divorced from narrative and verse in the past century that a book such as this is almost audacious. A Hospital Odyssey is written in five-line stanzas, which keep up an irregular rhyme.
Through eleven "books", one hundred and thirty-six pages, Maris journeys, with occasional first-person asides from the narrator. The book is interesting, and creative, and I admire it immensely. As a result I felt truly guilty each time I noticed something difficult or jarring, because to have written something this Herculean in scope amongst the tepid sea of so much contemporary poetry is already a victory. I wish to assert that before mentioning two things.
Firstly, I found I liked it better when I stopped treating it like verse. The rhymes are too irregular, or too oblique ("tired" and "stirred", "consultant" and "confident"), and the meter is too loose for either to become an organizing principle. Most lines are enjambed; very few end on the natural end of a phrase. This isn't the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, where the verse is so regular it almost becomes a chant. This allows Lewis a lot of leeway and flexibility, but the effect of the verse was lost. Instead, I thought of it as an epic poem in translation and felt right at home. The story is so soaked in the juice of epics that most of us read in translation anyway, that it feels appropriate.
Secondly, I found it difficult to get into the story because the plot was not so much a plot as a series of stops along a journey intended to illustrate a principle. I know that's like accusing ice cream of not being chocolate cake: Lewis never intended to write a novel. Nevertheless, I found it hard to get excited about talking symbols and clever allegories in the same way I get excited about real people. Of course, I found that difficult reading Dante, too.
In the end, I recommend Gwyneth Lewis's A Hospital Odyssey - may we be graced with more poets brave enough to appropriate and recreate literary tradition in this way.
Zach Hudson
[...]
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