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James Fenton (1) (1949–)

Auteur van An Introduction to English Poetry

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Over de Auteur

James Fenton has been a foreign correspondent & a theater critic & has written about the history of gardens. His book of poems, "Out of Danger", was published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. He won the 2015 PEN/Pinter Prize for poetry. The award, established by English PEN in memory of Nobel-Laureate toon meer playwright Harold Pinter, is presented annually for outstanding literary merit by a British writer or writer resident in Britain. (Bowker Author Biography) toon minder
Fotografie: Photo Credit: Gerrit Serné

Werken van James Fenton

An Introduction to English Poetry (2002) 229 exemplaren
Out of Danger: Poems (1664) 94 exemplaren
Selected Poems (2006) 67 exemplaren
The New Faber Book of Love Poems (2006) 59 exemplaren
Yellow Tulips: Poems 1968-2011 (2011) 34 exemplaren
Partingtime Hall: Poems (1987) 14 exemplaren

Gerelateerde werken

Het leven van Benvenuto Cellini (1728) — Introductie, sommige edities2,524 exemplaren
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Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness (1993) — Medewerker — 333 exemplaren
The Faber Book of Modern Verse (1936) — Medewerker, sommige edities284 exemplaren
Bad Trips (1991) — Medewerker — 233 exemplaren
The Art of Fact: A Historical Anthology of Literary Journalism (1997) — Medewerker — 214 exemplaren
British Poetry Since 1945 (1970) — Medewerker, sommige edities167 exemplaren
Granta 24: Inside Intelligence (1988) — Medewerker — 151 exemplaren
The Best American Essays 1996 (1996) — Medewerker — 132 exemplaren
Granta 22: With Your Tongue Down My Throat (1987) — Medewerker — 129 exemplaren
Emergency Kit (1996) — Medewerker, sommige edities108 exemplaren
Granta 15: The Fall of Saigon (1985) — Medewerker — 97 exemplaren
The Granta Book of Reportage (Classics of Reportage) (1993) — Medewerker — 93 exemplaren
Granta 18: The Snap Revolution (1986) — Medewerker — 90 exemplaren
Granta 10: Travel Writing (1984) — Medewerker — 88 exemplaren
The Spoken Word Revolution Redux (2007) — Medewerker — 84 exemplaren
Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Poems. Selected by James Fenton (2006) — Redacteur — 56 exemplaren
Granta 147: 40th Birthday Special (2019) — Medewerker — 56 exemplaren
Granta 13: After the Revolution (1984) — Medewerker — 54 exemplaren
Selected Poems (Penguin Classics) (2008) — Redacteur — 46 exemplaren
English National Opera Guide : Verdi : Rigoletto (1982) — Vertaler — 34 exemplaren
William Blake (James Fenton ed.) (2010) — Redacteur — 25 exemplaren
English National Opera Guide : Verdi : Simon Boccanegra (1984) — Vertaler — 23 exemplaren

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I fell in love with Fenton's voice and attention to detail way back when I was in high school and stumbled across a volume of his poetry (which is, incidentally, still one of my favorite poetry collections of all time), so this has been on my reading list for quite some time--I'm glad I finally got around to it.

Each of the essays here details Fenton's wanderings and adventures through revolutions, giving detailed pictures into rarely seen moments along the Pacific Rim--back and forth across enemy lines in Korea, Saigon just after its official fall, etc. Some of the moments are heartbreaking, and more of them than you'd expect are humorous, but Fenton's wry care with people and with expectations makes each piece a striking commentary on not just unfolding events, but humanity, politics, and journalism.

I'd absolutely recommend this to anyone interested in world events or history, or in revolution or journalism. Although it's true that the pieces are located in specific times and moments, it's terrifying how relevant some of them are to just this moment in time, and sort of wonderful to read about them in a way that is not just carefully observant and honest, as if one were reading Fenton's journal rather than essays, but also told with both intelligence and a tempered optimism that, one way or another, things keep going on, and people survive.

Absolutely recommended.
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whitewavedarling | 3 andere besprekingen | Sep 23, 2017 |
Wind by James Fenton

This is the wind, the wind in a field of corn.
Great crowds are fleeing from a major disaster
Down the green valleys, the long swaying wadis,
Down through the beautiful catastrophe of wind.

Families, tribes, nations, and their livestock
Have heard something, seen something. An expectation
Or a gigantic misunderstanding has swept over the hilltop
Bending the ear of the hedgerow with stories of fire and sword.

I saw a thousand years pass in two seconds.
Land was lost, languages rose and divided.
This lord went east and found safety.
His brother sought Africa and a dish of aloes.

Centuries, minutes later, one might ask
How the hilt of a sword wandered so far from the smithy.
And somewhere they will sing: 'Like chaff we were borne
In the wind. ' This is the wind in a field of corn.

I still like to find my way through a poem and I used to have this one in a James Fenton collection called The Memory of War. Influences first. Auden I suppose, with its kind of big theme and you know he is talking about politics/war/current affairs now but in the context of nothing really changing across the years/regimes. Also Auden because of the civilised values which kind of underly it. Larkin for the marriage of the particular to the general. Larkin poems typically seem to lead the reader up the garden path to the gate which usually has an epitaph hanging over it. Then the declarative statement style of the sentences - hard to quarrel with the language. And the way you feel you can visualise the snapshots - are the “green valleys” in Vietnam and where are the “wadis”? Middle East. No change there. Also so many of the noun phrases could have been the poem’s title e.g. “Down the green valleys” or “Like chaff we were borne”. And yet you could not film it because he avoids the detail, the particular place or time by using collective nouns to label humanity “Families, tribes, nations” and the different collectives also insist on the multicultural, all-encompassing nature of his message. This is for everyone and for all time, he seems to be saying. The repetition of the “wind” foregrounds this as not only a real wind in a field of corn, but the winds of change, the winds of war (was that a Herman Wouk novel?). And the reach geographically of Vietnam, the Middle East and Africa (all places which were and are the scene of war) reminds me that Fenton was also a war reporter. But he puts himself in the poem as a witness “I saw”. The twentieth century saw the “witness” grow as a genre where writers overwhelmed by what they saw felt the best response was to testify, to leave a message for generations to come. But he is not your ordinary Kate Adie because what he sees is visionary, rising above the here and now: he sees millennia pass in seconds. If he is a documentary maker then in the edit he is running the film on fast forward or fast rewind. The final verse finds a hilt buried somewhere far from where it was made. Like the hulks of tanks in the deserts of Iraq? And I notice how the singing which concludes the poem does not happen in a particularised place but in a vague “somewhere” because this poem is meant to stand for all time, for all wars and the voice of the victims of war is reduced to a line from a song that perhaps deliberately echoed Dylan’s “blowin’ in the wind”. So the poem ends where it began. I have not even touched on the stressed syllables of the poem which are maybe meant to evoke Anglo-Saxon poetry” This is the wind, the wind..” “Stories of fire and sword”. Great poem.
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adrianburke | Sep 20, 2017 |
Okay, but not as enjoyable as it ought to have been. I picked it up thinking it would be an account or journal of, well, a garden planted from 100 packet of seed. This seemed interesting. In fact, it's about a hundred seeds the author recommends, sorted by categories (e.g., "Useful and Decorative Herbs"). This is less interesting to me, and rendered less interesting still by the author's somewhat condescending tone. Several times I wished I could say to him, "Just tell me why you like a plant, not why someone else's gardening book or garden style is inferior."… (meer)
 
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OshoOsho | 1 andere bespreking | Mar 30, 2013 |
The twelve essays contained in this volume were delivered at Oxford between 1995 and 1999 during James Fenton’s tenure there as Oxford Professor of Poetry. They are, each of them, masterly engagements with the lives and loves of poets, and most especially with their poetry. Fenton writes with assurance and sympathy. He tends towards the encroachment of biographical details into his criticism—in almost every case, details of the poet’s life under scrutiny, which would not have been generally or publicly available during the poet’s life, inform and adjust the interpretation of the poetry. That is a debatable strategy, but Fenton acknowledges its risks, most notably in the final essay. It does, however, make for highly readable accounts and a personable critical style.

In some ways, Fenton is better dealing with male poets. He writes with conviction and respect on Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop, and Sylvia Plath. But he truly shines when discussing Wilfrid Owen, Seamus Heaney, D.H. Lawrence, and W.H. Auden, on whom there are three essays. Perhaps I should have placed Philip Larkin at the front of that list, but unusually here, Fenton’s scholarship and incisive observation diminishes rather than burnishes Larkin’s reputation. It was ever thus—poets move up or down in standing as critics disabuse us of our blinders with respect to them.

Fine criticism, I think, typically draws us back to the texts it explores with renewed enthusiasm. That is surely the case here. This is criticism that gently nudges us in certain directions and then, for the most part, seeks to absent the field. It returns us to the poems and lets their strengths act upon us. A fine collection of essays, highly recommended.
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RandyMetcalfe | 1 andere bespreking | Mar 23, 2013 |

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