All the Poems of Muriel Spark

By Muriel Spark

Book Overview

In the seventy-three poems collected here Muriel Spark works in open forms as well as villanelles, rondels, epigrams, and even the tour de force of a twenty-one page ballad. She also shows herself a master of unforgettable short poems. Before attaining fame as a novelist (Memento Mori, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie), Muriel Spark was already an acclaimed poet. The "power and control" of her poetry, as Publishers Weekly remarked, "is almost startling." With the vitality and wit typical of all her work, Dame Muriel has never stopped writing poems, which frequently appear in The New Yorker. As with all her creations, the poems show Spark to be "astonishingly talented and truly inimitable" (The San Francisco Chronicle).

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0811215768
• ISBN13: 9780811215763
• Release Date: April 2004
• Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
• Length: 130 Pages
• Weight: 3.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.1" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Muriel Spark: A Poet Beyond Competence

Really enjoyed All the Poems of Muriel Spark. Her work is intelligent, witty and not at all concerned with what reviewers on either side of the Atlantic might think. And evidently, Ms. Spark felt that way for over sixty years. Compared to the gobbledygook verse being shoveled our way by legions trained poets, these poems, which come from all periods of Ms. Spark's writing career, truly delight, perturp, shock, amuse, and provoke thought--provoke one to think. I believe I felt something, too. I checked 22 of these poems as outstanding in the table of contents (one check beside the title) and five of them as beyond-outstanding (two checks beside the title). Those beyond-outstanding I believe are "While Flickering Over the Pages" ( a kind of lament for a "wasp-like" reviewer), "That Lonely Shoe Lying on the Road" (a personal favorite for a personal reason), "Conversation Piece" (an insight into how talking about something sometimes obscures that something), "Bluebell Among the Sables" (pushes through to transcendence) and "Three Kings" (clear in its metaphor and timeless in its message). This book was a real find, for me, full of well crafted work in both formal and free mode. All the Poems of Muriel Spark should be read as a lifetime of stand-alone poems, since the poems were written over a very long period of time. Don't look for a developed, single theme the poet is striving to present, but the keen eye and verbal prowess of a genuine poet.