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A brilliantly virtuosic collection of deeply felt poems concerned with the personal impact of the dislocations and betrayals of history. The judges were impressed by the unusual degree of formal pressure exerted by Szirtes on his themes of memory and the impossibility of forgetting. --Douglas Dunn on REEL, winner of the TS Eliot Prize
A major contribution to post-war literature... Using a painter-like collage of images to retrieve lost times, lives, cities and betrayed hopes, Szirtes weaves his personal and historical themes into work of profound psychological complexity. --Anne Stevenson, Poetry Review
Szirtes is increasingly revealed as a major English poet - one of those in whom insight and technique combine to focus more and more productively as the years go by. --Hugh Macpherson, Poetry Review
A major contribution to post-war literature... Using a painter-like collage of images to retrieve lost times, lives, cities and betrayed hopes, Szirtes weaves his personal and historical themes into work of profound psychological complexity. --Anne Stevenson, Poetry Review
Szirtes is increasingly revealed as a major English poet - one of those in whom insight and technique combine to focus more and more productively as the years go by. --Hugh Macpherson, Poetry Review
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The title-poem of George Szirtes' "The Burning of the Books and Other Poems" is the core of this collection of narrative sequences by a writer who came to Britain as a child refugee after the Hungarian Uprising. Book burning is associated with the Nazis' burning of what they considered to be subversive books in 1933, but the practice has a long history, right down to our own day. In this particular case the burning refers to the library of Kien, the scholar, in Elias Canetti's novel "Auto Da Fae". The poems follow and expand from the events of Canetti's book in a variety of forms not previously used by Szirtes. Two further sequences are concerned with history and documentary, one about the discovery of small snippets of film recording the liberation of Penig concentration camp where Szirtes' mother was imprisoned, and another of songs concerning war and documentary photography. There are also prose poems, monologues, a series of canzoni, a group of poems exploring the origins of love in childhood, and another based on the mythical travels of Sir John Mandeville about the Hungarian Uprising of 1956. The book, as a whole, constitutes an exploration of the range and flexibility of a voice attuned to the patterns of history and the way such patterns transform our sense of the present.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Those of us who follow the contemporary poetry scene have known for some time that George Szirtes is something special. His winning the TS Eliot prize in 2004 for Reel hopefully won him the wider audience he deserves. "The Burning of the Books", his first new collection since New & Collected Poemsand shows he is not resting on laurels.
Szirtes has an interesting background having left Hungary at the time of the uprising and adopted British nationality. He writes in English with subtle mastery of the language, often using forms and rhyme with considerable dexterity. The poems are informed by a modernity that displays a lyric quality.
It may be inevitable that his background would affect what he writes about. But he never over does this. Szirtes is often referred to as "a poet of memory and loss", and this is done subtlety, looking at how we remember and the images memory generates. The sequence The Penig Film is an example of this, where the poem looks at film of the concentration camp where Szirtes' mother was imprisoned. In another, entitled Northern Air, he explores mythically the theme of finding a home.
Most outstanding in this collection is the title sequence. Using a character from Elias Canetti's book Auto da Fe, he looks and the act of book burning as practiced by the Nazi's giving it a universal, tragic edge observing the madness and how it destroys ideas and people. Though giving voice to history, Szirtes also looks at the individual caught up in its events.
There are also poems about family. Others such as the sequences on the painter Howard Hodgkin, and one dedicated to Peter Porter have a playful, lighter edge that revels in the beauty of the language. With critical concentration on the historic aspects in Szirtes' work, sometimes it is forgotten that he is also a considerable imaginative poet. It's hard to think of another poet currently writing who has similar range, vision and imagination. "The Burning of the Books" is a collection to read, enjoy and savour.
Szirtes has an interesting background having left Hungary at the time of the uprising and adopted British nationality. He writes in English with subtle mastery of the language, often using forms and rhyme with considerable dexterity. The poems are informed by a modernity that displays a lyric quality.
It may be inevitable that his background would affect what he writes about. But he never over does this. Szirtes is often referred to as "a poet of memory and loss", and this is done subtlety, looking at how we remember and the images memory generates. The sequence The Penig Film is an example of this, where the poem looks at film of the concentration camp where Szirtes' mother was imprisoned. In another, entitled Northern Air, he explores mythically the theme of finding a home.
Most outstanding in this collection is the title sequence. Using a character from Elias Canetti's book Auto da Fe, he looks and the act of book burning as practiced by the Nazi's giving it a universal, tragic edge observing the madness and how it destroys ideas and people. Though giving voice to history, Szirtes also looks at the individual caught up in its events.
There are also poems about family. Others such as the sequences on the painter Howard Hodgkin, and one dedicated to Peter Porter have a playful, lighter edge that revels in the beauty of the language. With critical concentration on the historic aspects in Szirtes' work, sometimes it is forgotten that he is also a considerable imaginative poet. It's hard to think of another poet currently writing who has similar range, vision and imagination. "The Burning of the Books" is a collection to read, enjoy and savour.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
1 review
Written by a student of Hungarian literature and witness to the unstable Hungarian state
14 Dec 2009
Format:Paperback
Written by a student of Hungarian literature and witness to the unstable Hungarian state, "The Burning of the Books" is a collection of poetry from George Szirtes offering much insight to the Hungarian people through his work. "The Burning of the Books" is a solid pick to world poetry collections. "Howard Hodgkin Considers a Small Thing But His Own": Darkness frames small things, so I rejoice/in spluttering some colour into life./Do I stay in bed and mope, lament my choice//of partner or pigment? Not my style./See, If I cup this hand the light shines through it/and no amount of moping will undo it.//Or so I say to myself last thing at night/when it is dark, as the blackest dog despair/can find, sheds her silky hair//pretty well everywhere.
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