Selected Poems

by Christopher Logue

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• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0571177611
• ISBN13: 9780571177615
• Release Date: January 1996
• Publisher: Faber and Faber Ltd
• Length: 128 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 7.8" x 0.5" x 5.0"

Customer Reviews

Logue's Selected Poems: Contains Exclusive Installment of War Music

This book, published in 1996, features a selection of Christopher Logue's poetry spanning from his early work in the 1950s up to the 1990s. It includes such legendary poems as his "I Shall Vote Labour" as well as the "poem poster" material he fashioned. But what's most important is that this book culminates in an exclusive installment of Logue's decades-in-the-making War Music. I've read countless books and Logue's War Music is my favorite of them all. An "account" of Homer's Iliad, it's basically a rewriting of the epic in contemporary poetry, and to tell the truth I prefer it to the original (though admittedly I can't read Attic Greek). Currently War Music lives in 3 volumes: the self-titled release, All Day Permanent Red, and Cold Calls. I've read that Logue is now working on the final installment; he's been working on it since Cold Calls was published in 2005. But sadly none of the above books includes the War Music installment featured here in Selected Poems; to read it, you'll need to buy this book. An eight-page rewrite of Iliad Book 21, this is an epic in miniature, with Achilles battling the river-god Scamander. First off we see that this installment takes place later chronologically than anything in War Music Logue has yet published; the self-titled volume was heretofore the latest in the Iliad sequence, and it ended with Achilles taking up his divine armor, preparing to slaughter the Trojans. Here we meet him after he's well into a murderous frenzy; he's killed so many that Scamander complains of the corpses mucking up his waters. All as in Homer, but Logue rewrites as he sees fit. Indeed, he relates most of the story with a prefacing "Prelude," then moves straight into Achilles boasting over his many dead. But this is a quick-moving tale, with Scamander nearly drowning Achilles, Athena and Poseidon offering the Greek moral support, and Hera sending her son Hephaestus to burn Scamander until he relents. And it's a tale filled with those Logue touches which make War Music such a marvel: Achilles graphically denigrating the recently-killed Asteropeus's inception, Hera lovingly calling Hephaestus "Little Cripple" as she instructs him to burn Scamander until she says to stop, the surrendering Scamander screaming of the Trojans "Let `em burn." One happy day the final installment of War Music will be published, and on an even happier day the entire completed epic will be collected into one volume. When that day comes I hope Logue's publishers remember to include this forgotten installment.