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Review
`Robertson's view of human nature is unremittingly bleak and startling in its honesty . . . It comes as little surprise that Robertson is drawn to classical works, particularly Ovid, whose bloodthirsty episodes he updates with flinty contemporary imagery. It's this shifting of pace and form throughout that makes this collection so compelling.'
--The List
'Whether in his extraordinarily fresh renderings of Ovid or his own imaginings, Robertson's lives have the luminosity of myth. The Wrecking Light is a work of extraordinary visionary power, its music bleak and beautiful, spare and unsparing. If there were justice in the world, it would win every prize going.' --Guardian
`The plaintive tone of The Wrecking Light is wholly convincing and the poems are written with a cold, exacting and imaginative awe . . . It's still early in the year, but this surely will be one of the outstanding collections of 2010'
--Irish Times
`There is an acuity of loss in Robin Robertson's work, both in the clarity in which it is expressed and in the sharp relief it throws on other things.'
--Financial Times
`Uncompromising concentration distinguishes all the poems in this fourth collection. Do not look to them for comfort, but for an austere, vigorous beauty; the language is both lyrical and taut as a bow string.' --Intelligent Life
`Robertson doesn't give ground to the illusory comfort of the ordinary, and he has a sardonic humour of his own . . . poetry matters a good deal, though it has little obvious comfort to offer, just the compelling evidence of its own serious attention and its shaping impulse, which ought to be enough.'
--Sunday Times
'Robin Robertson continues to explore the bleak, beautiful territory that he has made his own. His stripped-bare lyricism, haunted by echoes of folksong, is as unforgiving as the weather and poems such as At Roane Head show him writing at the height of his considerable powers' --The Times --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
--The List
'Whether in his extraordinarily fresh renderings of Ovid or his own imaginings, Robertson's lives have the luminosity of myth. The Wrecking Light is a work of extraordinary visionary power, its music bleak and beautiful, spare and unsparing. If there were justice in the world, it would win every prize going.' --Guardian
`The plaintive tone of The Wrecking Light is wholly convincing and the poems are written with a cold, exacting and imaginative awe . . . It's still early in the year, but this surely will be one of the outstanding collections of 2010'
--Irish Times
`There is an acuity of loss in Robin Robertson's work, both in the clarity in which it is expressed and in the sharp relief it throws on other things.'
--Financial Times
`Uncompromising concentration distinguishes all the poems in this fourth collection. Do not look to them for comfort, but for an austere, vigorous beauty; the language is both lyrical and taut as a bow string.' --Intelligent Life
`Robertson doesn't give ground to the illusory comfort of the ordinary, and he has a sardonic humour of his own . . . poetry matters a good deal, though it has little obvious comfort to offer, just the compelling evidence of its own serious attention and its shaping impulse, which ought to be enough.'
--Sunday Times
'Robin Robertson continues to explore the bleak, beautiful territory that he has made his own. His stripped-bare lyricism, haunted by echoes of folksong, is as unforgiving as the weather and poems such as At Roane Head show him writing at the height of his considerable powers' --The Times --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
Product Description
Shortlisted for the 2010 T. S. Eliot Prize and the Costa Poetry Award
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I am a poetry junkie, and this is the real deal. Every poem comes from a place of pain and beauty; capturing both the joy and the pathetic irony of human life. A sense of knowing too much about oneself (or about humanity) suffuses the lines. It is as if Robertson has gone to the edge of something, and stepped over; his poems come from beyond the cliff. The individual human weakness that he explores is somehow not depressing: in a way, Robertson's poems are showing us how much we need each other - the strength in THIS.
The poems are beautifully crafted, being both simple and mythically powerful. I have tried to pick a favourite but really can not choose. Whether he is showing us ducks' feet caught in the ice - bodies torn off by foxes - or a woman's hair on the pillow beside a vase of tulips, Robertson seems to be always on top form in every poem. The imagery is stunning. 'He put all his doubt / to the mouth of her long body, / let her draw the night / out of him like a thorn.'
The poems are beautifully crafted, being both simple and mythically powerful. I have tried to pick a favourite but really can not choose. Whether he is showing us ducks' feet caught in the ice - bodies torn off by foxes - or a woman's hair on the pillow beside a vase of tulips, Robertson seems to be always on top form in every poem. The imagery is stunning. 'He put all his doubt / to the mouth of her long body, / let her draw the night / out of him like a thorn.'
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Why is Robin Robertson not as well-known as Seamus Heaney, or Carol Ann Duffy? His language is powerful, his poems are beautiful and heart-wrenching, his imagery lives on when the words have gone. A truly extraordinary poet.
The Wrecking Light contains a range of styles and lengths, from brief observation to epic narrative: contast "Signs on a White Field" with "Tweed"! But beware, they can beguile and inhabit the reader long after the book is closed. I have read, and re-read "At Roane Head" - heard first on BBC's Poetry Please. It won the 2009 Forward prize for a single poem. But I have only read "Cat, Failing" once because it takes me to a place I don't want to go again. The collection was shortlisted for both the 2010 T.S. Eliot Prize, and the Costa Poetry Award: it would have been a worthy winner. It would be a worthy winner of any award. I now buy this book for all my friends' birthdays. It is amazing.
The Wrecking Light contains a range of styles and lengths, from brief observation to epic narrative: contast "Signs on a White Field" with "Tweed"! But beware, they can beguile and inhabit the reader long after the book is closed. I have read, and re-read "At Roane Head" - heard first on BBC's Poetry Please. It won the 2009 Forward prize for a single poem. But I have only read "Cat, Failing" once because it takes me to a place I don't want to go again. The collection was shortlisted for both the 2010 T.S. Eliot Prize, and the Costa Poetry Award: it would have been a worthy winner. It would be a worthy winner of any award. I now buy this book for all my friends' birthdays. It is amazing.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
When Robin Robertson's poem `At Roane Head' won the 2010 Forward Prize for Best Single Poem he joined a select band of writers who have won the coveted prize three times. His latest collection, The Wrecking Light, is a substantial gathering of new work, which at first glance bears a marked resemblance to its highly acclaimed predecessor, Swithering. Both collections are characterised by Robertson's austere meditations on isolation, loss and mortality, but they both also give central prominence to his reworkings of Ovid's Metamorphoses and include fine versions of Montale and Neruda. His latest collection even contains a magnificent new poem on Strindberg, a writer whose life as much as his work clearly fascinates him. The Wrecking Light, however, is a bleaker, more unrelentingly desperate work than anything he has produced before.
Robertson has always written movingly about his relationship with his daughters and in `Album', the poem that opens the new collection, we see how paternal love is clouded by guilt:''I am always never there, in these / old photographs: a hand /or shoulder, out of focus; a figure /in the background,/stepping from the frame.'
It is this combination of shame and culpability, perhaps, which intensifies Robertson's awareness of the passage of time, which is highlighted in the quirkily memorable `Middle Watch, Hammersmith' where he imagines an estranged husband who has decamped from the marital home.
The Wrecking Light, is an impressive addition to one of the most powerful bodies of work on the contemporary scene. However, it is not without its flaws. `Leaving St. Kilda', a long list dragged out over four and a half pages, is a surprisingly laborious piece for so fine a writer. `Law of the Island' and `The Great Midwinter Sacrifice, Uppsala', along with `Pentheus and Dionysus', an adaptation from Ovid, are obsessed with ritual violence to a degree which seems gratuitous. Nevertheless, the intensity and seriousness with which Robertson pursues his poetic vocation bear comparison with the magisterial figure of Robert Lowell.
Robertson has always written movingly about his relationship with his daughters and in `Album', the poem that opens the new collection, we see how paternal love is clouded by guilt:''I am always never there, in these / old photographs: a hand /or shoulder, out of focus; a figure /in the background,/stepping from the frame.'
It is this combination of shame and culpability, perhaps, which intensifies Robertson's awareness of the passage of time, which is highlighted in the quirkily memorable `Middle Watch, Hammersmith' where he imagines an estranged husband who has decamped from the marital home.
The Wrecking Light, is an impressive addition to one of the most powerful bodies of work on the contemporary scene. However, it is not without its flaws. `Leaving St. Kilda', a long list dragged out over four and a half pages, is a surprisingly laborious piece for so fine a writer. `Law of the Island' and `The Great Midwinter Sacrifice, Uppsala', along with `Pentheus and Dionysus', an adaptation from Ovid, are obsessed with ritual violence to a degree which seems gratuitous. Nevertheless, the intensity and seriousness with which Robertson pursues his poetic vocation bear comparison with the magisterial figure of Robert Lowell.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Intense and darkly hypnotic
Not for the faint-hearted, this mythical and sometimes gory collection by Scottish poet Robin Robertson is haunting poetry of the clinging and unsettling type. Read more
Published 1 month ago by LittleMoon
Robin Robertson - The Wrecking Light
Some truly moving, and at times dark, poetry which intrigued and haunted one for a while. Well written and great value for money. Highly recommended
Published 14 months ago by Simsy
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