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"And then I eat the stick"
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The Light As it Grows Dark: The Last Poems of Clive J
« : 21.07.26 at 02:16 » |
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This October we can look forward to a "new" book by Clive:
https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/clive-james/the-light-as-it-grows-dark/9781037406478
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Light-Grows-Dark-Poems-Clive/dp/1037406478
Publisher's blurb:
Beautiful and deeply meditative poems on illness, ageing, legacy and death from one of Australia’s finest writers.
To be a long time dying is largely a phenomenon of modern medicine. The Light As It Grows Dark is reportage from this new country; hard-won revelations about the journey’s end: ‘This insane last phase/ When everything about you goes downhill.’
A poet long before he was a journalist or broadcaster, Clive James was 70 when his health irretrievably broke down, and his world contracted to a single book-lined room looking out on a small walled garden. Every detail in this restricted orbit seemed to be filled with meaning, and he found that once again poems began, unstoppably, to flow.
Admitting fear and resisting self-pity, he meditated on the nature of life when its end is in view. ‘The light as it grows dark has come for you / to comfort you . . . Your life has turned to look you in the face.’
A capstone to James’s extraordinary career, The Light As It Grows Dark is a wry, tender, unsentimental companion for all those who will find themselves, at some point, towards the end of their lives, which is to say for all of us.
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I don't know how many of the poems in the book are uncollected, but it's good to see a "new" book from Clive, and perhaps this means a book of his uncollected essays might be in the works too...
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