The Boys at Twilight

by Maxwell, Glyn

• ISBN13: 9780618064144
• ISBN10: 0618064141
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-10-16
• Publisher: Mariner Books

Summary

The poems in this volume were selected by Glyn Maxwell from TALE OF THE MAYOR'S SON (published in 1990, when he was twenty-eight), OUT OF THE RAIN (shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize), and REST FOR THE WICKED. Maxwell "is a formalist," wrote Robert McIlwaine about his first book, "but . . . he is an outspoken anti-elitist social poet. His strenuous well-wrought poems . . . come from an English tradition of technical virtuosity with plain speech." The Boys at Twilight shows, sometimes comically, men at war, boys at play, boys grown up, men overreaching and reverting. Other concerns are the dangers of authority and mob psychology, the absurdities of stardom and consumerism, the heroism of the decent, and the wisdom of doubt. His subjects range from biblical stories to the "Tale of the Chocolate Egg," which is a long, "pitch-perfect description of a bored young man"s growing obsession with a new kind of candy" (Adam Kirsch, New Republic). Always in his work, "Maxwell knows that to see into is not necessarily to see through . . . His virtuosity has a ballast of sobriety" (Poetry Book Society).

Author Biography

Glyn Maxwell is the author of nine books of poetry, including, most recently, The Sugar Mile. He is also a dramatist whose plays have been staged in New York, Edinburgh, and London. His latest play, Liberty, had its world premiere in the summer of 2008 at Shakespeare's Globe. Among other honors, he has won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the Somerset Maugham Award, and the E. M. Forster Prize. He was the poetry editor of the New Republic from 2001 to 2007. He lives in London.

Table of Contents

Tale of the Mayor's Son (1990)
My Turn	11	(1)
Tale of the Mayor's Son	12	(5)
Drive to the Seashore	17	(1)
Flood Before and After	18	(2)
The Albatross Revolution	20	(2)
Mandate on an Eighth of May	22	(3)
The Pursuit	25	(1)
Mild Citizen	26	(1)
The High Achievers	27	(1)
Wasp	28	(1)
The End of the Weekend	29	(3)
A Whitsun	32	(2)
Just Like Us	34	(2)
Tale of a Chocolate Egg	36	(16)
Farm Close	52	(3)
Out of the Rain (1992)
Errand Boy	55	(1)
The Fires by the River	56	(1)
EC3	57	(1)
The Eater	58	(1)
The Uninvited	59	(1)
Recollection of a Meal	60	(3)
Helene and Heloise	63	(3)
We Billion Cheered	66	(1)
The Hang of It	67	(1)
Sport Story of a Winner	68	(2)
Dream but a Door	70	(1)
Desire of the Blossom	71	(1)
Rare Chat with the Red Squirrel	72	(2)
Plaint of the Elder Princes	74	(2)
Rumpelstiltskin	76	(1)
One and Another Go Home	77	(1)
La Brea	78	(1)
Nativity	79	(1)
War Hero	80	(1)
And Leaves Astonishing	81	(1)
Didymus the Seated	82	(2)
Springs of Simon Peter	84	(1)
Thief on the Cross	85	(1)
Out of the Rain	86	(23)
Rest for the Wicked (1995)
Peter Brook	109	(1)
The Ginger-Haired in Heaven	110	(1)
Birth Day	111	(1)
The Wish	112	(1)
Garden City Quatrains	113	(3)
As You Walk Out One Morning	116	(2)
Love Made Yeah	118	(1)
Either	119	(1)
The Boys and Girls of There	120	(2)
The Boys at Twilight	122	(2)
Song of Our Man	124	(1)
Growing Men	125	(1)
Younger Than That Now	126	(2)
The Stakes	128	(1)
The Furthest West	129	(1)
Watching Over	130	(1)
Lust	131	(1)
Conquest	131	(1)
The Sentence	132	(1)
The Night Is Young	133	(1)
If You Haven't Got a Shilling	134	(1)
Curse on a Child	135	(1)
Don't Waste Your Breath	136	(2)
Museum	138	(1)
Sulk	139	(1)
The Margit-Isle	140	(2)
The Great Detectives	142	(2)
The Devil at War	144	(2)
The Altered Slightly	146	(1)
Yellow Plates	147	(1)
The Sarajevo Zoo	148	(2)
A Force That Ate Itself	150	(2)
The People's Cinema	152	(2)
The Allies	154	(1)
The Horses' Mouths	155	(5)
Stargazing	160

Excerpts

The High Achievers Educated in the Humanities, they headed for the City, their beliefs implicit in the eyes and arteries of each, and their sincerity displayed in notes, in smiles, in sheaves of decimal etcetera. Made, they counted themselves free. Those were the hours of self-belief, and the slow accolade of pieces clattering into a well. And then the shrug of powers, and the millions glutted where they fell toadstooling into culture. Who knows when they made their killings during that hot spell: flies or policemen? An infinity of animals began to thrive especially, as when the dull sea, sick with its fish, was turning them to men. Copyright 1990, 1992, 1995, 2000 by Glyn Maxwell