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Collected Poems

Sally Purcell

Edited by Peter Jay

No Text
Imprint: Anvil Press Poetry
Publisher: Carcanet Press
Available as:
Paperback (256 pages)
(Pub. Sep 2002)
9780856463389
Out of Stock
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    Epithalamion

    To golden Sardis Anaktoria will bring
    her moonlight to outshine
                                its court of dancing stars;
    to golden Sardis Anaktoria will bring
    her loveliness, and leave us
                                blind in her eclipse.
    Here autumn veins the air, as quartz lies in dark rock,
    and swallows leave this chill
                                to seek their glowing land.
     

    Containing all her published work along with over 70 uncollected poems, this is the definitive edition of a poet with a growing body of admirers. Clive Wilmer spoke of ‘the ghostly music’ of Sally Purcell’s poetry and described her first book as ‘a miracle of chaste perfection’. These qualities remained constant in her work. Often drawing on folklore and mediaeval sources, her poems are tense yet fluid in rhythm and diction, and alive with a sense of the numinous.

    Sally Purcell
    Sally Purcell was born in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire in 1944. She studied Mediaeval and Modern French at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford and continued to live and work in Oxford (as typist, barmaid, researcher and, above all, writer) until her death in 1998. A specialist in mediaeval literature, she edited selections of George ... read more
    Peter Jay
    Peter Jay (b. 1945) read Classics and English at Oxford. Among his books are a collection of poems Shifting Frontiers, the Penguin Classic The Greek Anthology, and several translations including Gérard de Nerval’s Chimeras, János Pilinszky’s Crater and the novel Conversations with Sheryl Sutton (with Éva Major) and ... read more
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