Winner of the Whitbread Book of the Year in 1985, these poems were written after the death of Douglas Dunn's first wife in March 1981.
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From the Publisher
We are pleased to announce the publication of eleven more titles into the new typographic look. The specifications for the books are high -beautifully produced, they all have flaps and are sewn and printed in Italy. The latest batch represents some of the core titles of the backlist (Philip Larkin's Collected Poems, Ted Hughes's New Selected Poems, James Joyce's Poems and Shorter Writings) along with key, single volumes that should be part of any poetry lover's library (and whose reissue, in the form in which they were first published, will give a whole new generation the pleasure of coming to the books as original readers).
About the Author
Douglas Dunn was born in Inchinnan, Renfrewshire, in 1942 and lived there until he married at the age of twenty-two. After working as a librarian in Scotland and Akron, Ohio, he studied English at Hull University, graduating in 1969. He then worked for eighteen months in the university library after which, in 1971, he became a freelance writer. In 1991 he was appointed Professor in the School of English at the University of St Andrews. As well as ten collections of poetry, including Elegies (1985), The Year's Afternoon, The Donkey's Ears (both 2000), and New Selected Poems 1964-2000 (2003), Douglas Dunn has written several radio and television plays, including Ploughman's Share and Scotsman by Moonlight. He has also edited various anthologies, including Twentieth-Century Scottish Poetry (2006). Douglas Dunn has won a Somerset Maugham Award, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, and has twice been awarded prizes by the Scottish Arts Council. In 1981 he was awarded the Hawthornden Prize for St Kilda's Parliament. In January 1986 he was overall winner of the 1985 Whitbread Book of the Year Award for his collection Elegies.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
33 of 35 people found the following review helpful
By Greencoat
Format:Paperback
This is a heartbreaking book. In a series of 39 short, emotionally-charged poems, Douglas Dunn tells the story of the death of his young wife, Lesley, from cancer. A dog-eared cookery book, a dress bought a French market stall, a trip to a ruined castle; these are the modest devices the poet uses to evoke what he had, and what he has so agonisingly lost.
Everywhere are scattered illuminating sketches of the living, vanished Lesley. We learn about her in small, prismatic glances; a lively, artistic person who loved to travel, who was kind to people and animals, who took pride in her cooking. The simple happiness of her marriage to Dunn, distilled here on the printed page, heightens the sense of loss almost unbearably.
These poems are about the pain and the 'wrongness' of untimely death. Inevitably the tender memories are sometimes tinged with anger. But out of despair something beautiful has been created. It reminds us what good things life and love are, and why we should celebrate them while we can.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4.0 out of 5 stars
2 reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Moving poems of mourning
28 Nov 2008
By Christopher Culver
- Published on Amazon.com
ELEGIES is a collection of poems which Douglas Dunn wrote after the death of his wife, the photographer Lesley Balfour Dunn, from cancer in 1981 at the age of only 37. The poems cover a number of issues related to the loss, from memories of former married life to the dry legalities of funeral arrangements and the difficulties of staying in the same house after the death.
The poems are written in a variety of traditional forms and metres--no modernist free verse here. I find the sonnets to be especially moving. Nonetheless, Dunn's language wasn't especially memorable to this reader, and I'd be hard-pressed to directly quote from the collection without looking at my copy. Rather, what one takes away from ELEGIES is its imagery and themes, and these are often quite haunting. In "Listening", the grieving man alone among the joyous crowd writes, "When laughter from a firelit barbecue / Travelled with woodsmoke across the gardens, / I saw an apple hold its skin against an apple -- / Two blushing faces kissing in the dark." In "The Stories", one of the longest poems in the collection, Dunn mockingly longs for a colonial outpost where he can exile himself, like aristocratic widowers in the old British Empire.
The collection isn't entirely flawless. I was especially unhappy with the clunky couplet "It was September blue / When I walked with you first, my love" in the poem "Anniversaries". Nonetheless, these are mainly very successful poems. I only read the collection because it caught my eye on the shelves of my university library, but I'm intrigued enough to explore Dunn's work further.
The poems are written in a variety of traditional forms and metres--no modernist free verse here. I find the sonnets to be especially moving. Nonetheless, Dunn's language wasn't especially memorable to this reader, and I'd be hard-pressed to directly quote from the collection without looking at my copy. Rather, what one takes away from ELEGIES is its imagery and themes, and these are often quite haunting. In "Listening", the grieving man alone among the joyous crowd writes, "When laughter from a firelit barbecue / Travelled with woodsmoke across the gardens, / I saw an apple hold its skin against an apple -- / Two blushing faces kissing in the dark." In "The Stories", one of the longest poems in the collection, Dunn mockingly longs for a colonial outpost where he can exile himself, like aristocratic widowers in the old British Empire.
The collection isn't entirely flawless. I was especially unhappy with the clunky couplet "It was September blue / When I walked with you first, my love" in the poem "Anniversaries". Nonetheless, these are mainly very successful poems. I only read the collection because it caught my eye on the shelves of my university library, but I'm intrigued enough to explore Dunn's work further.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Moving poems of mourning
28 Nov 2008
By Christopher Culver
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
ELEGIES is a collection of poems which Douglas Dunn wrote after the death of his wife, the photographer Lesley Balfour Dunn, from cancer in 1981 at the age of only 37. The poems cover a number of issues related to the loss, from memories of former married life to the dry legalities of funeral arrangements and the difficulties of staying in the same house after the death.
The poems are written in a variety of traditional forms and metres--no modernist free verse here. I find the sonnets to be especially moving. Nonetheless, Dunn's language wasn't especially memorable to this reader, and I'd be hard-pressed to directly quote from the collection without looking at my copy. Rather, what one takes away from ELEGIES is its imagery and themes, and these are often quite haunting. In "Listening", the grieving man alone among the joyous crowd writes, "When laughter from a firelit barbecue / Travelled with woodsmoke across the gardens, / I saw an apple hold its skin against an apple -- / Two blushing faces kissing in the dark." In "The Stories", one of the longest poems in the collection, Dunn mockingly longs for a colonial outpost where he can exile himself, like aristocratic widowers in the old British Empire.
The collection isn't entirely flawless. I was especially unhappy with the clunky couplet "It was September blue / When I walked with you first, my love" in the poem "Anniversaries". Nonetheless, these are mainly very successful poems. I only read the collection because it caught my eye on the shelves of my university library, but I'm intrigued enough to explore Dunn's work further.
The poems are written in a variety of traditional forms and metres--no modernist free verse here. I find the sonnets to be especially moving. Nonetheless, Dunn's language wasn't especially memorable to this reader, and I'd be hard-pressed to directly quote from the collection without looking at my copy. Rather, what one takes away from ELEGIES is its imagery and themes, and these are often quite haunting. In "Listening", the grieving man alone among the joyous crowd writes, "When laughter from a firelit barbecue / Travelled with woodsmoke across the gardens, / I saw an apple hold its skin against an apple -- / Two blushing faces kissing in the dark." In "The Stories", one of the longest poems in the collection, Dunn mockingly longs for a colonial outpost where he can exile himself, like aristocratic widowers in the old British Empire.
The collection isn't entirely flawless. I was especially unhappy with the clunky couplet "It was September blue / When I walked with you first, my love" in the poem "Anniversaries". Nonetheless, these are mainly very successful poems. I only read the collection because it caught my eye on the shelves of my university library, but I'm intrigued enough to explore Dunn's work further.
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