The Weather in Japan

by Michael Longley

Book Overview

The poems in this volume vary widely in length, subject, and setting (from Mayo, to Tuscany, to Japan). With a Zen-like grace, even the briefest poems hurdle logical gaps and sidestep reason to get to truths. The poet s acute vision is directed outward, and we know him only through the light he casts on the world s things as he holds them in loving, elegiac frames. Winner of the Irish Times Irish Literature Prize for Poetry, 2001; Winner of the T. S. Eliot Poetry Prize, 2001; Winner of the Hawthornden Prize, 2000."

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0916390950
• ISBN13: 9780916390952
• Release Date: April 2000
• Publisher: Wake Forest University Press
• Length: 80 Pages
• Weight: 0.26 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.2" x 7.8"

Customer Reviews

Broken Dishes

Michael Longley is a wonderful poet. I've been collecting his books for a while now. I do love Weather in Japan but find that his most touching poems come from a chapbook I found at Abbey Press in Northern Ireland. The chapbook is called "Broken Dishes". It is my most treasured Longley book. I have also found other gems of poetry at this small press out of Newry.

Longley's best yet

Surely this is Michael Longley's best book yet, even more consistently fine than his Whitbread-winning GORSE FIRES. In the past Longley has written frequently about the violence in Northern Ireland, and he does so briefly here ("All of These People," "A Prayer")--but more often these poems address the two world wars and their aftermaths ("The War Graves," "The Bullet Hole"). He also returns to his interest in classics: many poems deal with Homer ("In the Iliad") and the several Latin poets he admires ("Remembering the Poets"). Perhaps what most distinguishes this collection from Longley's earlier books is its half-dozen poems about quilts (the best of which may be "Broken Dishes" and "The Yellow Teapot"). Anyone who enjoys Longley's earlier work should certainly read this, and anyone unfamiliar with him would find this one of the most winning introductions.