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The Burning of the Books and Other Poems Paperback – 10 Sep 2009

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George Szirtes (Author)
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George Szirtes (Author)
5.0 out of 5 stars 2 customer reviews
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Product details

  • Paperback: 96 pages
  • Publisher: Bloodaxe Books Ltd (10 Sept. 2009)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1852248424
  • ISBN-13: 978-1852248420
  • Product Dimensions: 22.9 x 15.5 x 1 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 949,455 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Review

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

About the Author

George Szirtes was born in Budapest in 1948, and came to England with his family after the 1956 Hungarian uprising. He was educated in England, training as a painter, and has always written in English. In recent years he has worked as a translator of Hungarian literature, producing editions of such writers as Otto Orban, Zsuzsa Rakovszky and gnes Nemes Nagy. He co-edited Bloodaxe's Hungarian anthology The Colonnade of Teeth. His Bloodaxe poetry books are The Budapest File (2000); An English Apocalypse (2001); Reel (2004), winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize; New & Collected Poems (2008) and The Burning of the Books and other poems (2009). Bloodaxe has also published John Sears' critical study Reading George Szirtes (2008). Szirtes lives in Norfolk and teaches at the University of East Anglia.

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5.0 out of 5 starsThe Heat of Poetry
By Graham Mummery TOP 1000 REVIEWER on 30 Sept. 2009
Format: Paperback 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.Read more ›
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5.0 out of 5 starsBrilliant
By Angel House VINE VOICE on 2 Jan. 2011
Format: Paperback
I love George Szirtes' poems even though I don't understand some of them. They touch me at a deep level. Highly recommended.
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Amazon.com: 5.0 out of 5 stars 1 review
5.0 out of 5 stars Written by a student of Hungarian literature and witness to the unstable Hungarian state 14 Dec. 2009
By Midwest Book Review - Published on Amazon.com
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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