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The Asylum Dance (Paperback)

by John Burnside (Author)

4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)

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Product details

Paperback: 80 pages
Publisher: Jonathan Cape Ltd (3 Sep 2009)
Language English
ISBN-10: 0224090054
ISBN-13: 978-0224090056
Product Dimensions: 19.2 x 12.4 x 1.4 cm

Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)

Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 109,952 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Amazon.co.uk Review

The poet and novelist John Burnside opens his seventh collection of verse The Asylum Dance with epigrams from Heidegger and Marianne Moore: Heidegger's meditation on the nature of "dwelling" being answered by Moore's absolute faith in the truth of art. At the outset, then, a dialogue between philosophy and poetry is located as the lodestar of Burnside's work, an insistent and careful scrutiny of familiar, taken-for-granted ideas pursued through the contingently truthful medium of the poem, all of which exemplifies a desire to find "The angel bound / and stilled / in Euclid or Fibonacci." His skilfully modulated verbal art thus balances the tension between abstract speculation and sensuous, closely observed detail: "When we think of home / we come to this / the handful of birds and plants we know by name / rain on the fishmonger's window."

Burnside's themes are ones that are common to us all--the sure sanctuary of home, the human in relation to the natural world, the tensions between the domestic, familiar world and the strange invitations of travel and immersion in unfamiliar surroundings and the spaces we find or create for love and the imagination. The opening long poem "Ports" starts with the words "Our dwelling place"-and Burnside returns again and again to the idea of home and dwelling throughout this book, widening out the circle of his meditations on what these might mean to us. If the poet's "body is wired / to the flavours / of childhood," he nonetheless realises that "what we think of as home / is a hazard to others." But even our securities are tentative: a shift of perspective and home becomes "a different country," our bodies "half-inhabited"-behind the safety of the known environment lies the possibility of other ways of being and perceiving.

It is this acceptance of the contradictory impulses of the "known world" and "the pull of the withheld / the foreign joy" that animates and drives Burnside's work, and which is expressed through a flexible open verse form perfectly adapted both to the registering of image and to fleeting turns of thought. What results is a poetry that is striking in its immediate pleasures and which stays long in the memory: something we can indeed "use to make a dwelling in the world." --Burhan Tufail --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Description

Lucid, tender, and strangely troubling, the poems in "The Asylum Dance" - which won the Whitbread Prize for Poetry in 2000 - are hymns to the tension between the sanctuary of home and the lure of escape. This is territory that Burnside has made his own: a domestic world threaded through with myth and longing, beyond which lies a no man's land - the 'somewhere in between' - of dusk or dawn, of mists or sudden light, where the epiphanies are. Using the framework of four long poems, "Ports", "Settlements", "Fields" and "Roads", the poet balances presence with absence; we are shown the homing instinct - felt in the blood and marrow - as a pull to refuge, simplicity, and a safe haven, while at the same time hearing the siren call from the world beyond: the thrilling expectancy of fairground or dancehall, the possibilities of the open road. With a confident open line and complete command of the language, John Burnside writes with grace, agility and profound philosophical purpose, confirming his position in the front rank of contemporary poetry.

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Customer Reviews

3 Reviews

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4 star:		(2)
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4.3 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)

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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good!, 19 Feb 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Asylum Dance (Cape Poetry) (Paperback)

This book was a challenging read, but I enjoyed it. Some of the poetry was hard to understand and I had to read it a few times over, but it soon became clearer. I especially like the language that Burnside uses. I would recommend this book to any poetry reader.

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4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Astonishing book!, 24 Sep 2002

By	DMG (Swindon UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Asylum Dance (Cape Poetry) (Paperback)

I happenned to browse through this book in a shop a few months ago, and was struck by the first page, so I went and borrowed a copy from the local library. This book lived up to the expectation that that first page created in me. These poems are about home, how we define where we live, what it is home? they are about the tension between wanting to belong, to settle and the urge of the open road, fairgrounds, dance halls. They are profound, moving, thoughtful, beautiful, and they strike a chord within that is very real. The Asylum Dance won huge critical acclaim, and, reading it, I can see why.

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4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mental Reveille, 11 April 2001

By	Stuart Delves (Edinburgh) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Asylum Dance (Cape Poetry) (Paperback)

The good reader from Oldham gives 'Asylum Dance' 4 stars, I'll give it 5, with pleasure. This is beautifully crafted poetry designed to keep the reader's intellect on the boil. And as with Eliot's poetry, it is not vital to understand it all on first or second reading as the imagery and the lyricism enthrall and delight.Burnside's tensions are deliciously balanced.

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