Book description
In his most eloquent and formally satisfying collection to date, Alan
Jenkins plays a series of powerful and haunting variations on love and
loss. The themes that run through our lives are relatively few, for all
that they sound subtly different to each of us, with their own rich
freight of places and faces. In poems that pay homage to what is unique
to his own past experience - a suburban fifties upbringing, a heady
youth of rebellion and exploration - Jenkins reminds us vividly of what
is experienced by us all. The search for love (or failing that, sex),
the passing of time and the inevitability of pain and grief, the
struggle for transcendence against our awareness of limitation: these
are the things that can suddenly seem to compose a life - a life not so
much reduced to essentials as seen in its passionate essence, a
'shorter' life. Though not in any formal sense a sequel, this poignant
book recapitulates some of the motifs of
The Drift
(2000) and earlier volumes, to offer an extended meditation on memory
and recurrence, and a statement - compelling, candid, sorrowful and
subtle - of life's beauty and brevity. Alan Jenkins is Deputy Editor
of the Times Literary Supplement and a prize-winning poet. His 1994
collection, Harm, won the Forward Prize for Best Collection and, in
2000, The Drift was a Poetry Book Society Choice and was short-listed
for the T. S. Eliot Prize. He lives in West London
