Vikram SETH
Description
Product Description
Vikram Seth's novel in verse,
The Golden Gate, was hailed by Gore Vidal as "the Great California Novel" and by the New Republic a
...
s "a tour de force of the transcendence of the mere tour de force." Now he brings his romance with the English language, his effortless access to the deepest reservoirs of feeling, and his ability to light up the plain surfaces of everyday life to this stunning collection of poems.
In
All You Who Sleep Tonight Seth delves into the varieties of love -- love lost, remembered, and deferred. He evokes the unspeakable ironies of Auschwitz and the light-blasted streets of Hiroshima. He conducts the reader through Lion Grove in Suzhou, China, and across the Golden Gate Bridge on its fiftieth anniversary. Throughout, he displays the lyricism and attentiveness that distinguish the best poets of every era.
From Library Journal
This collection fails because Seth's lockstep meter and corny rhymes keep his poetry stylistically on the level of that awful stuff many of us wrote in junior high school. This would be excusable if he had anything to say. But his poems are utterly devoid of subtext; what little meaning exists is all on the surface. Even this would be excusable if the surface were beautiful. It isn't. The surface meanings, and the forms that express them, are hackneyed and dull. This collection should not have seen the light of day. It certainly should not be seen in your library.
- Steven Hupp, Chicago
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
"Certainly not since Byron has anyone been more elegantly and literally amusing in verse."
--
Philadelphia DailyNews
"Clear as a glacial pool, often as deep, Vikram Seth's new poems shine with unfashionable virtues. Seth gives joy by writing brilliantly well, unafraid to feel and to start us feeling."
-- X. J. Kennedy
From the Inside Flap
Vikram Seth's novel in verse,
The Golden Gate, was hailed by Gore Vidal as "the Great California Novel" and by the New Republic as "a tour de force of the transcendence of the mere tour de force." Now he brings his romance with the English language, his effortless access to the deepest reservoirs of feeling, and his ability to light up the plain surfaces of everyday life to this stunning collection of poems.
In
All You Who Sleep Tonight Seth delves into the varieties of love -- love lost, remembered, and deferred. He evokes the unspeakable ironies of Auschwitz and the light-blasted streets of Hiroshima. He conducts the reader through Lion Grove in Suzhou, China, and across the Golden Gate Bridge on its fiftieth anniversary. Throughout, he displays the lyricism and attentiveness that distinguish the best poets of every era.
From the Back Cover
"Certainly not since Byron has anyone been more elegantly and literally amusing in verse."
--
Philadelphia DailyNews
"Clear as a glacial pool, often as deep, Vikram Seth's new poems shine with unfashionable virtues. Seth gives joy by writing brilliantly well, unafraid to feel and to start us feeling." -- X. J. Kennedy
Read more
Alfred A. Knopf