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PN Review 154

Edited by Michael Schmidt

PN Review 154
Series: PN Review
Imprint: PN Review
Publisher: Carcanet Press
Available as:
  • Description
  • Excerpt
  • Editor
  • Contents
  • Awards
  • Reviews
  •    The Last of the Lights#Hugh MacDiarmid


    The Last of the Lights

    I belonged to a little town
    And liked to walk at nights
    Out into the dark country roads
    Beyond the last of the lights
    And what I liked as a boy
    Tho' I grow old is still my joy.

    And now as over the years I look back
    It seems each of my companions then
    - A girl, the moon, a few stars or the lack
    Of any of these were one and the same. - Now again
    Content beyond the last light I go, and have
    No companion - even myself - in the grave.

    PNR 154 November - Decenber 2003

    Poems by Sheenagh Pugh, Elaine Feinstein, Patrick McGuinness, Peter McDonald, Roger Garfitt, Patrick Mackie, Sebastian Barker, Stanley Moss, Michael Hamburger, Tom Payne and Marilyn Hacker.

    Features include
    Hugh MacDiarmid after twenty-five years
    Giles Goodland and James Keery on the Apocalyptic Manifesto
    Charles Mundye rediscovers Ezra Pound's operas
    Judy Kendall on the jamming of Edward Thomas
    David Gervais on why Edward Thomas isn't Thomas Hardy
    Esther Quin on why Bob Dylan isn't Bertolt Brecht

    PN Review is published six times a year and is available via subscription
    £29.50 for one year - 6 issues (£35.00 for Institutions)
    £56.50 for Two years - 12 issues (£68 for Institutions)
    All individual subscribers have access to PN Review Online.

    For further information please contact us on 0161 834 8730 or email: pnr@carcanet.u-net.com
    Table of Contents

    1 Editorial



    2 News & Notes



    3 Letters from Mark Beech



    Reports



    3 C.H. Sisson (1914-2003) - Michael Schmidt

    5 A Foggy Day - Neil Powell

    7 Carmen Bugan in Conversation - Rebecca Loncraine

    8 Auckland Letter - Peter Bland

    9 Letter from Wales - Sam Adams

    11 Diary from Poland - David Kennedy

    12 From a Journal - R.F. Langley

    12 Synchronicity and Tobacco Smoke - Marius

          Kociejowski



    Poems



    15 Four Poems - Sheenagh Pugh

    32 Three Poems - Elaine Feinstein

    33 Five Poems - Patrick McGuinness

    37 Four Poems - Peter McDonald

    41 Daffodils - Roger Garfitt

    41 Two Poems - Tom Crowther

    45 Five Poems - Patrick Mackie

    46 Two Poems - Sebastian Barker

    50 An American Hero - Stanley Moss

    51 Two Poems - Michael Hamburger

    52 Tom Payne's Propertius - Tom Payne

    57 Poems and Translations - Marilyn Hacker



    Articles



    17 Hugh MacDiarmid after 25 Years - John Manson,

          Dorian Grieve and Alan Riach

    22 John Goodland and the Apocalyptic Manifesto: notes

          from the son of a literary footnote

    23 The Apocalyptic Manifesto: Apocalypse or The Whole Man

       Giles Goodman

    26 `The Burning Baby and the Bathwater' IV - James

           Keery

    35 Ezra Pound's Operas - Charles Mundye

    38 'Cock Crow':Why Edward Thomas isn't Thomas Hardy

           - David Gervais

    42 Jammed - Judy Kendall

    47 Stumbling on Lost Cigars of Bertolt Brecht: Bob

          Dylan's Rebellion
    - Esther Quin

    54 Meditations on the Exote: Victor Segalen

          John Pilling

    60 Form and Function IV: Form and Audience

          N.S. Thompson





    Reviews



    65 on books about Ford Madox Ford - Nicolas Tredell

    66 on U.A. Fanthorpe - James McGrath

    67 on Martha Kapos, Judy Gahagan, Gregory Warren Wilson

          and Rhian Gallagher
    - Rachel Elliot

    68 on Barry MacSweeney - Roger Caldwell

    69 on The New Media Reader - Edward Picot







    Cover image: Stephen Cohn, 'Still Life with Fruit Bowl',

       undated.




    Cartoons: Martina Jirankova-Limbrick and Michael

       Augustin


    Michael Schmidt FRSL, poet, scholar, critic and translator, was born in Mexico in 1947; he studied at Harvard and at Wadham College, Oxford, before settling in England. Among his many publications are several collections of poems and a novel, The Colonist (1981), about a boy’s childhood in Mexico. He is general ... read more
    Awards won by Michael Schmidt Winner, 2016 Forward Prize for Best Single Poem - Sasha Dugdale's 'Joy', published in PN Review 227  (PN Review 227 )
    Praise for Michael Schmidt 'Its pleasures are longer term ones: as you return to it and re-read its substantial selections, you come to appreciate how and what each contributor is working on.'

    Jane Routh, The North 66

    '...this is the joy of New Poetries VIII: time and again you discover refreshing and compelling new styles and subjects'

    Jake Morris-Campbell, The Poetry School

    '...probably the most informative and entertaining poetry journal in the English-speaking world.'
    John Ashbery
     'The most engaged, challenging and serious-minded of all the UK's poetry magazines.'
    Simon Armitage
    'It has attempted to take poetry out of the backwaters of intellectual life and to find in it again the crucial index of cultural health.'
    Cairns Craig, Times Literary Supplement
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