Woods etc. is Alice Oswald's third book of poems, and follows on from the success of her widely acclaimed river-poem, Dart, which won the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2002. The poems in her new book compress this uniquely ruminative voice into a dazzlingly various sequence of lyrics about the natural order and the individual life within. Written over a period of several years, these poems combine abrupt honesty with an exuberant rhetorical confidence, at times recalling the oral and anonymous tradition with which they share such affinity.
Woods etc.
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"'Alice Oswald is making a new kind of poetry... she is in the front rank of writers, in poetry and prose, who are not content to work only with what exists already.' Jeanette Winterson; 'Oswald has soul in riverfuls' David Wheatley"
Book Description
The wonderful follow-up collection to Alice Oswald's T. S. Eliot Prize-winning 'river poem' Dart.
--This text refers to the
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful
By Jeremy Bevan
TOP 500 REVIEWER
Format:Paperback
It took me a while to get into, but once I did, I was knocked sideways by this dazzlingly inventive and original collection of poems. I can't recall reading anything quite like this, ever. It may be an odd comparison, but reading Oswald's poems is a bit like exploring a place you know well, but in the hands of an expert guide who helps you see it (or more accurately, sense it) for the first time. Right from the first `Seabird's blessing', which somehow manages to resonate perfectly with a centuries-old Celtic spirituality, you're treated to an almost `from the inside' perspective on the natural world and wider universe, its wonders opened up and explored, the power behind it sung (`Leaf', `Excursion to the Planet Mercury') and celebrated until it awes us to silence (`Woods etc'). At times the writing seems so `elemental' that it seems to burst the bonds of language, and you sense Oswald searching for the words to construct something new, perhaps especially with lines like `a looked at thing' (`Ideogram for Green'), trying to express the almost inexpressible, hammering the insubstantial into the shape of language.
Even where the focus shifts to the human, that sense of the wonder of it beyond words, remains, especially in the poems about Oswald's children: `Poem for Carrying a Baby out of Hospital' is a remarkable description of how it feels to be responsible for a new, fragile and vulnerable life, something I don't think could be captured more perfectly. There's a variety of tone, too, with an almost elegiac mourning of how wild nature passes us by as we are absorbed in the mundane (`Another Westminster Bridge', `For Many Hours there's been an Old Couple Standing at that Window' and `Sisyphus'). Don't let this collection pass you by - superb.
Even where the focus shifts to the human, that sense of the wonder of it beyond words, remains, especially in the poems about Oswald's children: `Poem for Carrying a Baby out of Hospital' is a remarkable description of how it feels to be responsible for a new, fragile and vulnerable life, something I don't think could be captured more perfectly. There's a variety of tone, too, with an almost elegiac mourning of how wild nature passes us by as we are absorbed in the mundane (`Another Westminster Bridge', `For Many Hours there's been an Old Couple Standing at that Window' and `Sisyphus'). Don't let this collection pass you by - superb.
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Oswald's simply titled 3rd collection is a slim volume of luminous poetry.
The collection itself draws on Oswald's strong connections to nature, and includes many poems that echo the songs of the woods, of owls, of the moon, of stones and rainbows. There are other poems too, slightly more philosophical in content, such as the rich and sweeping "Various Portents"; a Christmas poem filled with ancient wonder and modern light:
Many visions, many digitally enhanced heavens,
All kinds of glistenings being gathered into telescopes:
Fireworks, gasworks, white-streaked works of Dusk,
Works of wonder and or water, snowflakes, stars of frost ...
Elsewhere, her poetry juxtaposes the natural and the synthetic to glorious effect, words that you hear rather than read (from Owl):
an owl elsewhere swelled and questioned
twice, like you might lean and strike
two matches in the wind.
Sometimes I think I can hear Ted Hughes in the distance, not borrowed from, but almost pre-supposed. In his well-known poem, The Horses, the world appears to the light of the sun as: "Slowly detail leafed from the darkness." It seems Oswald's "Woods Not Yet Out" are behind it all:
the rain, thinking I've gone, crackles the air
and calls by name the leaves that aren't yet there
Oswald's poetry is intelligent and fresh. If there is any hope in this world for poetry, then surely here is one of the poets who carries it. Oswald is a poet of such sensitive intensity and quiet skill, that every subject she touches upon is made finer by her words.
Readers looking for poetry with delicacy, confidence and individual flair; poetry that echoes nature, and poetry that is distinctly contemporary in craft, will find this book a treasure.
[FYI: This book was awarded the 2006 Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize.]
The collection itself draws on Oswald's strong connections to nature, and includes many poems that echo the songs of the woods, of owls, of the moon, of stones and rainbows. There are other poems too, slightly more philosophical in content, such as the rich and sweeping "Various Portents"; a Christmas poem filled with ancient wonder and modern light:
Many visions, many digitally enhanced heavens,
All kinds of glistenings being gathered into telescopes:
Fireworks, gasworks, white-streaked works of Dusk,
Works of wonder and or water, snowflakes, stars of frost ...
Elsewhere, her poetry juxtaposes the natural and the synthetic to glorious effect, words that you hear rather than read (from Owl):
an owl elsewhere swelled and questioned
twice, like you might lean and strike
two matches in the wind.
Sometimes I think I can hear Ted Hughes in the distance, not borrowed from, but almost pre-supposed. In his well-known poem, The Horses, the world appears to the light of the sun as: "Slowly detail leafed from the darkness." It seems Oswald's "Woods Not Yet Out" are behind it all:
the rain, thinking I've gone, crackles the air
and calls by name the leaves that aren't yet there
Oswald's poetry is intelligent and fresh. If there is any hope in this world for poetry, then surely here is one of the poets who carries it. Oswald is a poet of such sensitive intensity and quiet skill, that every subject she touches upon is made finer by her words.
Readers looking for poetry with delicacy, confidence and individual flair; poetry that echoes nature, and poetry that is distinctly contemporary in craft, will find this book a treasure.
[FYI: This book was awarded the 2006 Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize.]
By James Ward
Format:Paperback
I wasn't quite sure about this volume when I first received it (from my wife, for my forty-sixth birthday), because it wasn't like any poetry I'd read before, but I quickly warmed to it. One thing that struck me is how much many of the poems are both visual and auditory experiences. "Tree Ghosts", on page 42, for example, includes a run through the alphabet in emboldened font, although you probably couldn't hear it as such at a reading (for example, the letter "a" occurs in "ballad", written "bAllad", with the "A" in bold). The same poem also contains FOOTNOTES, a reduced-font continuation of the poem itself. In "A Star Here And a Star There", the next poem in the book, Oswald makes effective use of font-reduction to mimic the wonder involved in gazing at the universe. Here you CAN imagine an aural equivalent, a kind of awed whisper. Elsewhere, the author plays with putting lower case letters where we might expect upper case, and eccentric spacing between sentences and parts of sentences. If this makes the whole thing sound gimmicky, have no fear. It isn't gimmicky at all: it works to produce an worthwhile effect.
What is that effect, I hear you ask? Oswald is a nature poet and the net consequence of her style is to restore a sense of strangeness to the world around us. There is something very traditional and very modern about this. In fact, Oswald's poetry feels a bit like what the Victorians imagined pre-Christian paganism to be like. I don't mean to disparage the Victorians or the poet herself here. Think of Hardy; think of Manley-Hopkins; think of the pre-Raphaelites. Now think of them as just a little bit less conventional, just a little bit more attuned to the Green Man.
Behold, you have Alice Oswald.
What is that effect, I hear you ask? Oswald is a nature poet and the net consequence of her style is to restore a sense of strangeness to the world around us. There is something very traditional and very modern about this. In fact, Oswald's poetry feels a bit like what the Victorians imagined pre-Christian paganism to be like. I don't mean to disparage the Victorians or the poet herself here. Think of Hardy; think of Manley-Hopkins; think of the pre-Raphaelites. Now think of them as just a little bit less conventional, just a little bit more attuned to the Green Man.
Behold, you have Alice Oswald.
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