All That Mighty Heart

by Spaar, Lisa Russ

• ISBN13: 9780813927176
• ISBN10: 081392717X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-03-15
• Publisher: Univ of Virginia Pr

Summary

Lisa Russ Spaar has assembled a collection of poems about London to appeal to most anyone: the student abroad for a semester, the armchair traveler, or the most critical reader of poetry. The book conveys a sense that London, as both city and text, is a place of exile and transplantation, a protean site of history, projection, culture, and personal drama.The collection includes poems written over a five-hundred-year period and represents nearly twenty different languages and cultures, resulting in a distinctive gathering that gives voice to the classic, the contemporary, and everything in-between. In these pages readers will find the familiar voices of Wordsworth, Blake, Dryden, and Lawrence as well as those less well known but not less resonant--Patience Agbabi, Talvikki Ansel, Rachel Castelete, and Steve Gehrke, to name but a few.Spaar successfully integrates these old and new voices by grouping the poems thematically, using the elements of water, earth, fire, and air. The structure has helped to create not only a collection of superior quality but also one that is (not unlike the city itself) greater than the sum of its parts. This slim volume of provocative and beautiful poems makes London accessible anywhere, be it from a carry-on bag or a bedside table. It is ideal for anyone in love with or hoping to fall in love with London, in all its complexity.

Table of Contents

Water
Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1803	p. 19
Midriver	p. 20
On Westminster Bridge	p. 21
The Lover to the Thames of London, to Favour His Lady Passing Thereon	p. 23
Impression du Matin	p. 24
Collecting the Ridges	p. 25
Valediction	p. 26
The Thames	p. 27
The Conjurer on Hammersmith Bridge	p. 29
Between Blackfriars and Waterloo	p. 31
Shadwell Stairo	p. 32
Town in 191700	p. 33
A Letter from Phillis Wheatley: London, 1773	p. 35
In a Perfect World	p. 37
The London Eye	p. 39
Greenwich Reach	p. 40
From Omeros	p. 42
The Language of Love (III) (from The Emperor's Babe)	p. 44
Charon	p. 45
Sea-Magic	p. 46
My Father's Flat	p. 47
Picture at an Exhibition	p. 48
From "A Journal of English Days"	p. 49
Earth
From "The Burial of the Dead," The Waste Land	p. 53
An Irish Childhood in England: 1951	p. 54
When I Came to London	p. 56
London Taxi Driver	p. 57
Translating the English, 1989	p. 59
The Double City	p. 61
"The very leaves of the acacia-tree are London"	p. 63
A Description of London	p. 64
Living in London (from "Redcliffe Square")	p. 65
The Garret	p. 66
London Inside and Outside	p. 68
Strange Interlude	p. 70
From "Roman de la Rose"	p. 71
At My Sister's Flat in London	p. 73
Let's Cross	p. 74
Notting Hill Carnival, 1975	p. 75
West London	p. 77
Trafalgar Square at Night	p. 78
Trafalgar Square	p. 79
Paving Stones	p. 80
Threadneedle Street	p. 82
Soho: Saturday Night	p. 83
Limping Sonnet	p. 85
Metropolitan	p. 86
The British Museum	p. 88
St Martin-in-the-Fields	p. 90
Parliament Hill Fields	p. 91
North Kensington	p. 93
The Peacock in Walpole Park, Ealing	p. 94
Smelling the End of Green July	p. 95
From "District and Circle"	p. 97
Fire
London	p. 101
From Annus Mirabilis	p. 102
From "New Craas Massakah"	p. 103
"Oh LONDON I once more to thee do speak"	p. 107
From "To Bryher [i]"	p. 108
Still Falls the Rain	p. 109
An Air on London and Paris	p. 111
From "Poem in Three Parts"	p. 113
The Burning of Parliament, 1834	p. 114
A London Fete	p. 117
London Stone	p. 119
From "In Nunhead Cemetery"	p. 121
A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London	p. 124
Deceptions	p. 125
A Metropolitan Christmas: London	p. 126
The Sky Comes Down to Earth	p. 127
Mourning and Melancholia	p. 128
A Linden Tree in a Whitechapel Street	p. 129
Air
From "The Firebird"	p. 133
London	p. 135
Rain Journal: London: June 65	p. 136
An Umbrella from Piccadilly	p. 137
From My Window	p. 140
Greece	p. 141
His returne to London	p. 142
To the Statues in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey	p. 143
Soho Awakening	p. 144
From "The Cross Is Gone"	p. 145
London	p. 147
Battersea Dojo	p. 148
Old-Fashioned Air	p. 150
From "Afterwards: Caliban"	p. 152
London	p. 153
"Thus I wrote in London, musing on my betters"	p. 154
Browning Resolves to Be a Poet	p. 155
From Aurora Leigh	p. 157
By the Statue of King Charles at Charing Cross	p. 158
Continuous Sky	p. 161
To the Great Metropolis	p. 163
Beyond London	p. 164
London	p. 165
Brief Biographies of the Poets	p. 167
Copyright Acknowledgments	p. 189
Index	p. 199
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.