Poetry Paradise Book Review 11

I picked the last of this years offering of spring strawberries this week.

It seems to fly by so fast doesn't it? The seasons quickly melting from one into the other.
Perhaps it is a remarkable act of serendipity or happenstance that I recently read a poem that so captures the feeling and magic of summer. Fruit, love, thunderstorms, its passion posing as prose indeed!
I was so swept away by the emotion of this poem that I decided to make it and its author the focus of this Mondays review here at Poetry Paradise.
First the poem,

STRAWBERRIES

There were never strawberries
like the ones we had
that sultry afternoon
sitting on the step
of the open french window
facing each other
your knees held in mine
the blue plates in our laps
the strawberries glistening
in the hot sunlight
we dipped them in sugar
looking at each other
not hurrying the feast
for one to come
the empty plates
laid on the stone together
with the two forks crossed
and I bent towards you
sweet in that air
in my arms
abandoned like a child
from your eager mouth
the taste of strawberries
in my memory
lean back again
let me love you
let the sun beat
on our forgetfulness
one hour of all
the heat intense
and summer lightning
on the Kilpatrick hills
let the storm wash the plates


These words come from the prolific and tireless imagination of Edwin Morgan.

He died last year at the ripe old age of 90.

His death prompted Carol Ann Duffy, the Poet Laureate to say "He was poetry’s true son."


Although he wrote hundreds of poems and plays, today we will be reviewing one of his last released volumes of poetry.




It is entitled New Selected Poems



Review:

New Selected Poems contains most of the work included in a popular 1985 volume, to which Morgan adds a wealth of his later material, including Strawberries.

This is not a slim little volume of poetry. It is instead a prodigious amount of literature, written in different styles (concrete and sonnet) and covering a range as diverse as science fiction to romance, the creation of the world to eating strawberries with a lover.


His writings skillfully show that he understands the world. The seen and the unseen parts of it. He taps into the wisdom and constancy that is our planet and the life upon it. His thoughts pour like water, a cascade of imagination the world will not often see.


This is the book you want if you are a collector. As with most artists, his death marks the end of his writing and yet this book can still be purchased by all lovers of good poetry at a reasonable price.


New Selected Poems Can be ordered from Carcanet Press:

http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=9781857544596

This concludes another review by me, Indie, here at Bluebell Books. I hope each and every one of you are enjoying lazy days of summer

and strawberries.

Till next time!

you can find me at http://onegirlonepen.blogspot.com/