Carcanet Press - To Hell With Paradise

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To Hell with Paradise is a wonderfully various and mature collection by a scrupulous and accomplished writer. It distills Gareth Reeves’ collections Real Stories (1984) and Listening In (1993), adding previously unpublished poems and sequences, including a selection from Nuncle Music, a sequence of monologues in the voice of the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich.

Distance was the occasion for poems in Real Stories: in California, where Reeves lived from 1970-1975, he wrote about England, in England about California. Distance is not only geographical: poems explore the landscape of memory too. From Listening In comes the sequence, by turns humorous, painful, wry and eloquent, about Reeves’s father, poet and critic James Reeves. The poems are enlivened by what Gavin Ewart called a ‘negative spikiness’.

'The new poems ... are a bravura performance – spare, powerful, contained and witty.... The poet’s ear has perfect pitch.... His emotional reach into the realms of pain, loss, ageing and associated existential vertigo is all the more impressive for its formal minimalism and restraint. ‘Is there life after poetry?’ he asks at one point: not without poems like this, the reader may feel.... It is a heady experience.'

John Weston, The London Magazine, Dec 2012/Jan 2013

NEW POEMS

Airs
The Shape of Pain
Azure
Absolute
Lost Clusters
Nacre
The Bullet
Abstracted
Quake
Figment
Relief
That’s It
Crowsfoot, there
Therapeutically Speaking
Static
Messenger
End Man
Gremlin
The Possible
Still
You and Not You
PIN
Self Efface
She
Knots

from LISTENING IN (1993)

A Funny Smell
Bob Tombs
Gaps
Mimsy
Gadgets
A Dying Art
Mollusc
Oxford
Laid Back
Freshman English, USA, 1970
Making It
Doggo in CA
High Life
The Cockroach Sang in the Plane Tree
Travels
Out of Season
Umbilical Cord
Going Blind
    1    Look, No Mirror
    2    Notching
    3    Sticks
    4    Touch Type
    5    Listening In
    6    Artwork
    7    The Entertainer
    8    Pentels and Smells
    9    Pots and Pans
    10    The Great Fire
    11    Daily Bread
    12    Deus ex Machina
    13    Tentacles
    14    Douane Syndrome

from REAL STORIES (1984)

Stills
Theme and Variations
The Mentor
England, my England
English Lesson
Out of Bounds
Can We Interest You in God?
End of Term Report
The Graduate Trainees Take Off
Regret
Central Valley, California
Rat Race
California Sounds
Pugilistic
California Drift
Melting Pot
Pepper Tree
A Slawkenbergian Tale
Silence
For Carole
Paediatric Ward
Stone Relief, Housesteads
Blind Pianist
Church Wall

TRANSLATIONS

Horace I, 11: Tu ne quaesieris
Horace I, 37: Nunc est bibendum
Catullus 2: Passer deliciae meae puellae

from NUNCLE MUSIC

Notes to ‘Nuncle Music’

Index of Titles
Index of First Lines

Gareth Reeves studied at the University of Oxford and at Stanford University, where he held a Wallace Stegner Writing Fellowship. Until recently he was Reader in English at Durham University, where he ran an MA creative writing course in poetry. Carcanet Press have published four collections of his poetry, Real Stories ... read more

Praise for Gareth Reeves 'It isn't easy for a poet to keep faith with Shostakovich, for whom words solved nothing, whose resort was music and, beyond that, self-defeatingly and only in imagination, silence. Reeves does just that.'
Gillian Allnutt 'A compelling psychodrama about the tangle of self-justification, guilt and defiance that has turned Shostakovich ... into a paradigm of the conflict between artistic integrity and political compromise.... Shostakovichâs inner life was like âan incessantly running motor, an ever-open woundâ. It is this ârunning motorâ to which Reeves listens so carefully in these poems, matching Shostakovichâs expedient avoidance of too clear an equivalence between meaning and expression with language that plays similar equivocal tricks.... But Reeves sees, beyond the irony in Shostakovichâs soul, a man haunted by his past and its effect on his art: âYears ago I listened to the noise of time. / It took revenge. Now I want /noise out of timeâ. The rest is silence.'
Andrew McCulloch, TLS June 6 2014 '"The Cockroach Sang in the Plane-tree" surprisingly bypasses the personal dimension altogether. Even more startling is the liturgical momentum of its lines, a series of bleak declarations about nuclear annihilation whose potency remains undiminished in a post-cold war context."
Keith Silver, London Magazine 'Among the most remarkable [poems] are those which pay tribute to his father and the latter's struggle against his growing blindness... The honesty of these poems, and the way they cope with the complexity and ambiguity of emotion which perhaps must always inform the relationship between son and father are truly admirable.'
John Heath-Stubbs, Acumen '...in the sequence entitled "Going Blind", in which he recalls his father James Reeves... he constructs nothing less than a living memorial in verse... By making his difficult poetic inheritance part of the subject of his verse, Gareth Reeves, paradoxically, has written his most original work to date.'
Robert Nye, The Times '...his images, seen through the lens of memory, are sharp and distinct... Perhaps it is when dealing with individuals that Reeves's wry insight shows to best advantage; those, and the complications and inadequacies of love. A friend, having borrowed the book, remarked: "Usually, I can't take more than two or three poems at a time; but I kept on reading this to find out what happens next!" Which seems to sum up these compulsive, memorable, well-crafted poems.'
David Holliday, Outposts 'Gareth Reeves's Real Stories is his first book of verse, and a very good one... Nothing is smooth or bland or hinted at. Translations from Horace, American landscape, even the lyrical harking back to Tennyson...; he handles them all well.'
Gavin Ewart, British Book News '...he writes a quiet undemonstrative poetry but that is not so say he lacks scope or ambition. He says somewhere that "honesty is difficult / Devious, silent". The poems are usually short but carefully constructed around perceptions of loneliness, full of sharp but discreet observation that mounts like evidence.'
George Szirtes, Critical Quarterly '...distinguished by economy, quiet wit and resolute affection... Real Stories is enlivened by a central section of poems set in California, an inspired location - imagine Joan Didion, say, in Durham. The strangeness of both landscape and people is wryly observed... This marriage of down-to-earth observation with off-beat material works well.'
Charles Boyle, London Magazine

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To Hell With Paradise New and Selected Poems Gareth Reeves 10% off eBook (EPUB) Categories: 21st Century, British Imprint: Carcanet Poetry Publisher: Carcanet Press Available as: eBook (EPUB) Needs ADE! (Pub. Oct 2012) 9781847776679 £12.95 £11.65 Paperback (144 pages) (Pub. Aug 2012) 9781847771445 Out of Stock To use the EPUB version, you will need to have Adobe Digital Editions (ADE) installed on your device. You can find out more at https://www.adobe.com/uk/solutions/ebook/digital-editions.html. Please do not purchase this version if you do not have and are not prepared to install, Adobe Digital Editions. Description Author Contents Reviews To Hell with Paradise is a wonderfully various and mature collection by a scrupulous and accomplished writer. It distills Gareth Reeves’ collections Real Stories (1984) and Listening In (1993), adding previously unpublished poems and sequences, including a selection from Nuncle Music, a sequence of monologues in the voice of the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich. Distance was the occasion for poems in Real Stories: in California, where Reeves lived from 1970-1975, he wrote about England, in England about California. Distance is not only geographical: poems explore the landscape of memory too. From Listening In comes the sequence, by turns humorous, painful, wry and eloquent, about Reeves’s father, poet and critic James Reeves. The poems are enlivened by what Gavin Ewart called a ‘negative spikiness’. 'The new poems ... are a bravura performance – spare, powerful, contained and witty.... The poet’s ear has perfect pitch.... His emotional reach into the realms of pain, loss, ageing and associated existential vertigo is all the more impressive for its formal minimalism and restraint. ‘Is there life after poetry?’ he asks at one point: not without poems like this, the reader may feel.... It is a heady experience.' John Weston, The London Magazine, Dec 2012/Jan 2013 NEW POEMS Airs The Shape of Pain Azure Absolute Lost Clusters Nacre The Bullet Abstracted Quake Figment Relief That’s It Crowsfoot, there Therapeutically Speaking Static Messenger End Man Gremlin The Possible Still You and Not You PIN Self Efface She Knots from LISTENING IN (1993) A Funny Smell Bob Tombs Gaps Mimsy Gadgets A Dying Art Mollusc Oxford Laid Back Freshman English, USA, 1970 Making It Doggo in CA High Life The Cockroach Sang in the Plane Tree Travels Out of Season Umbilical Cord Going Blind 1 Look, No Mirror 2 Notching 3 Sticks 4 Touch Type 5 Listening In 6 Artwork 7 The Entertainer 8 Pentels and Smells 9 Pots and Pans 10 The Great Fire 11 Daily Bread 12 Deus ex Machina 13 Tentacles 14 Douane Syndrome from REAL STORIES (1984) Stills Theme and Variations The Mentor England, my England English Lesson Out of Bounds Can We Interest You in God? End of Term Report The Graduate Trainees Take Off Regret Central Valley, California Rat Race California Sounds Pugilistic California Drift Melting Pot Pepper Tree A Slawkenbergian Tale Silence For Carole Paediatric Ward Stone Relief, Housesteads Blind Pianist Church Wall TRANSLATIONS Horace I, 11: Tu ne quaesieris Horace I, 37: Nunc est bibendum Catullus 2: Passer deliciae meae puellae from NUNCLE MUSIC Notes to ‘Nuncle Music’ Index of Titles Index of First Lines Gareth Reeves studied at the University of Oxford and at Stanford University, where he held a Wallace Stegner Writing Fellowship. Until recently he was Reader in English at Durham University, where he ran an MA creative writing course in poetry. Carcanet Press have published four collections of his poetry, Real Stories ... read more Praise for Gareth Reeves 'It isn't easy for a poet to keep faith with Shostakovich, for whom words solved nothing, whose resort was music and, beyond that, self-defeatingly and only in imagination, silence. Reeves does just that.' Gillian Allnutt 'A compelling psychodrama about the tangle of self-justification, guilt and defiance that has turned Shostakovich ... into a paradigm of the conflict between artistic integrity and political compromise.... Shostakovichâs inner life was like âan incessantly running motor, an ever-open woundâ. It is this ârunning motorâ to which Reeves listens so carefully in these poems, matching Shostakovichâs expedient avoidance of too clear an equivalence between meaning and expression with language that plays similar equivocal tricks.... But Reeves sees, beyond the irony in Shostakovichâs soul, a man haunted by his past and its effect on his art: âYears ago I listened to the noise of time. / It took revenge. Now I want /noise out of timeâ. The rest is silence.' Andrew McCulloch, TLS June 6 2014 '"The Cockroach Sang in the Plane-tree" surprisingly bypasses the personal dimension altogether. Even more startling is the liturgical momentum of its lines, a series of bleak declarations about nuclear annihilation whose potency remains undiminished in a post-cold war context." Keith Silver, London Magazine 'Among the most remarkable [poems] are those which pay tribute to his father and the latter's struggle against his growing blindness... The honesty of these poems, and the way they cope with the complexity and ambiguity of emotion which perhaps must always inform the relationship between son and father are truly admirable.' John Heath-Stubbs, Acumen '...in the sequence entitled "Going Blind", in which he recalls his father James Reeves... he constructs nothing less than a living memorial in verse... By making his difficult poetic inheritance part of the subject of his verse, Gareth Reeves, paradoxically, has written his most original work to date.' Robert Nye, The Times '...his images, seen through the lens of memory, are sharp and distinct... Perhaps it is when dealing with individuals that Reeves's wry insight shows to best advantage; those, and the complications and inadequacies of love. A friend, having borrowed the book, remarked: "Usually, I can't take more than two or three poems at a time; but I kept on reading this to find out what happens next!" Which seems to sum up these compulsive, memorable, well-crafted poems.' David Holliday, Outposts 'Gareth Reeves's Real Stories is his first book of verse, and a very good one... Nothing is smooth or bland or hinted at. Translations from Horace, American landscape, even the lyrical harking back to Tennyson...; he handles them all well.' Gavin Ewart, British Book News '...he writes a quiet undemonstrative poetry but that is not so say he lacks scope or ambition. He says somewhere that "honesty is difficult / Devious, silent". The poems are usually short but carefully constructed around perceptions of loneliness, full of sharp but discreet observation that mounts like evidence.' George Szirtes, Critical Quarterly '...distinguished by economy, quiet wit and resolute affection... Real Stories is enlivened by a central section of poems set in California, an inspired location - imagine Joan Didion, say, in Durham. The strangeness of both landscape and people is wryly observed... This marriage of down-to-earth observation with off-beat material works well.' Charles Boyle, London Magazine You might also be interested in: Odd Blocks Kay Ryan Complete Poems Vol I Robert Graves, Edited by Beryl Graves and Dunstan Ward New and Collected Poems Clive Wilmer	Share this... Quick Links Carcanet Poetry Carcanet Classics Carcanet Fiction Carcanet Film Lives and Letters PN Review Video Carcanet Celebrates 50 Years! The Carcanet Blog One Little Room: Peter McDonald read more Collected Poems: Mimi Khalvati read more Invisible Dog: Fabio Morbito, translated by Richard Gwyn read more Dante's Purgatorio: Philip Terry read more Billy 'Nibs' Buckshot: John Gallas read more Emotional Support Horse: Claudine Toutoungi read more
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To Hell With Paradise

New and Selected Poems

Gareth Reeves