The Language of Yes

by Crossley-Holland, Kevin

• ISBN13: 9781870612371
• ISBN10: 187061237X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1996-06-01
• Publisher: Enitharmon Press

Summary

One of the best-known and most highly regarded English poets of his generation. This new collection includes many references to his American experiences. In his title poem Crossley-Holland notes that the mainspring of affirmation is curiosity and wri

Author Biography

Kevin Crossley-Holland is a poet, translator from Anglo-Saxon and Carnegie Medal author for children. His new and selected poems, The Mountains of Norfolk, were published in the autumn of 2011, and he is the author of the bestselling Arthur trilogy, Gatty’s Tale and The Penguin Book of Norse Myths. His most recent book for children is Bracelet of Bones, in which a Viking girl travels from Norway to Constantinople, and he is the author of The Hidden Roads, a memoir of childhood praised by Rowan Williams. Kevin has worked with many composers, including Sir Arthur Bliss, William Mathias, Nicola LeFanu and Bob Chilcott, as well as with the artists Norman Ackroyd, John Lawrence and James Dodds and the photographer John Hedgecoe. With Lawrence Sail, he has edited two anthologies for Enitharmon Press: The New Exeter Book of Riddles and Light Unlocked: Christmas Card Poems. Kevin is spokesman for Look North More Often, the Trafalgar Square Christmas tree project sponsored by the Poetry Society and the Royal Norwegian Embassy. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Patron of the Society for Storytelling and of Publishing House Me, and an Honorary Fellow of St. Edmund Hall, Oxford. In 2011 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by Anglia Ruskin University. He has four children (Kieran, Dominic, Oenone and Eleanor) and he and his Minnesotan wife Linda live in north Norfolk.

Table of Contents

The Language of Yes	9	(1)
Blue and Rising	10	(1)
Eleanor's Advent	11	(5)
Still Life: Eleanor with Field-Flowers	16	(2)
Leaf-Girl	18	(1)
A Prayer for Jade	19	(1)
Portrait of a Daughter	20	(2)
Walking on Water	22	(2)
Pearls and Diamonds	24	(2)
White Noise	26	(1)
Airmail	27	(1)
Making Light	28	(1)
Middle-Aged Lovers	29	(1)
First Promises	30	(2)
Light Weather	32	(2)
Words-in-Bed	34	(1)
Because	35	(1)
Counting her Steps	36	(1)
In Old Age	37	(1)
Of Clay and Syllables, and Air	38	(2)
Time Is, Time Was, Time's Past	40	(2)
From the Hall of the Autumn Prince	42	(2)
The Fox and the Poet	44	(1)
Translation Workshop	45	(1)
Alfred in the Alps	46	(2)
The Viking Field	48	(2)
The Old Monk: Valle Crucis	50	(1)
Scenes from Cathedral Life	51	(2)
In Latter Days	53	(1)
The Aldeburgh Band	54	(2)
Footsore, in Search of a Chinese Cellist	56	(2)
The Second Attendant	58	(2)
Medicinal	60	(1)
The Moon at Malaxa	61	(1)
Heavy Weather in Hintertux	62	(1)
Two Nocturnes from The Wildman	63	(1)
Watercolour	64	(1)
Notes on a Field-Map	65	(1)
Coin	66	(1)
East, West	67	(1)
One End of Singing	68	(1)
Anasazi Women	69	(3)
Notes	72