Book description
Surely none of us can have been left quite unaffected by the recent
startling and unfortunate disaster of the disappearance of the Great
Poetic Anthology into the electronic cracks between the major academic
institutions which were preparing it - something which one might have
thought to be impossible in this age of unremitting communication.
Nothing can compensate us for a loss of such magnitude. And yet here
is some slight alleviation. Just over a year and a half ago, a copy of
what seems to be a version of the index of first lines of the vast
confusion of lost poems mysteriously turned up in a Latin American
restaurant in Glasgow. No time has been lost in offering it to a still
disconsolate public. It is not nothing that a portion of what promised
to be the greatest collection of poetical thought of all time has not
been utterly lost. And, as it happens, such is now not the case. No.
Not so. For here indeed are depths, insights, provocations and
astonishments. Or, at least, the beginnings of them.
'Kuppner's poetry invites us to reflect on human knowledge and the
ineffable, trivial nature of existence; it is true philosophy. He makes
us think about what it means to be alive.' The Independent (Darian
Leader's Book of a Lifetime) 'You won't read a more dazzling collection
of aphorisms, elegies and wisecracks than Kuppner's Arioflotga.' Stuart
Kelly, Scotland on Sunday 'Frank Kuppner's Arioflotga ... is that rare
thing: a work of contemporary poetry that makes you laugh out loud.'
Nicholas Lezard, The Guardian Frank Kuppner was born in Glasgow in
1951 and has lived there ever since. He has been Writer in Residence at
various institutions, currently at Strathclyde. Carcanet have published
six books of his poetry: A Bad Day for the Sung Dynasty (Scottish Arts
Council Book Award, 1984), The Intelligent Observation of Naked Women
(1987), Ridiculous! Absurd! Disgusting! (1989), Everything is Strange
(1994), Second Best Moments in Chinese History (1997) and What? Again?
Selected Poems (2000).
