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In Defence of Adultery
 
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In Defence of Adultery (Paperback)

by Julia Copus (Author)
4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
RRP: £7.95
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Product details

  • Paperback: 64 pages
  • Publisher: Bloodaxe Books Ltd (27 Feb 2003)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1852246073
  • ISBN-13: 978-1852246075
  • Product Dimensions: 21 x 13.2 x 0.6 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 461,796 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Review
"The poems of Copus's first collection are already accomplished enough to have won her a number of major prizes.... Highly recommended."

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4 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.2 out of 5 stars (4 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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7 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Intelligent, tender and haunting, 19 Aug 2003
By Lina Lambert (Edinburgh) - See all my reviews
These are intelligent, tender and haunting poems about the way in which we write our own stories and the broken, human ways we find for coping with the choices we make. Julia Copus is a poet of careful enquiry with an almost metaphysical presence of mind. It's true that she uses scientific metaphor (often to brilliant effect) but human concerns remain firmly at the centre of these poems. In 'Lamb's Electronic Antibiotic', for instance, an inventor creates a machine for healing surface infections but the machine becomes also a way of healing his relations with his wife, of clearing the "bad air" between them. These are poems that attempt to make sense of the complexity of life - and in so doing they display an edgy uncertainty. "If the world were black and white entirely," runs the Louis Macneice epigraph that begins this book, "we might be surer where we wished to go/... but in brute reality there is no/ road that is right entirely". Indeed, if the world *were* black and white entirely, there might be little need for poetry like this - little need for art of any kind, in fact. Thank God, then, that it's not and that there is.
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7 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars Not that good, 24 Jun 2003
Yes, Julia Copus is very deft and careful with language, but really - what has she got to say? Her poems are like finely worked tapestries that create a boring picture. Read more than half the book and you realise she has a certain set of templates, a certain set of habits, that she uses continually - which takes all the surprise out of her poems - we always know what's coming next. And I can't help feeling that her use of all that scientific imagery (and that cheesy 'provocative' title) is something rather tacked on to make what are essentially dull poems appear more interesting.
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3 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Dignified, sharp writing, 26 Mar 2003
By A Customer
Too much is made by some critics of the use of new form in Copus's work, as any back-glance at the many pattern poems, including mirror-poems, written since the 13th century. What's new and interesting in this work isn't so much formal technique as it is the precision of language, which is very deft, very finished. It is also intriguing to see this author escaping the overarching influence of Plath (a good influence, obviously, but too heavily worked by too many), and finding genuinely fresh and interesting ways of observing both the exterior world and the emotional world.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Copus is not dead
Despite the fact that this book is attributed to two Julias, it is in fact the work of only one of them - Julia Copus. Read more
Published on 9 April 2003

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