Written under the sign of Eros, builder and destroyer of cities, and prefaced by an epigraph from John Keats, these poems reflect home and antipodes, the critical spirit, and the need for continuity. Departing from Scotland with a battered copy of the civil philosophy that lends the book its punning title, the poet sets off for Europe. Once immersed in the old civilization he, like the Greek philosopher he seeks to emulate, finds himself in the looming shadow of the cities, still looking for human beings.

Iain Bamforth is the author of The Body in the Library, Open Workings, and Sons and Pioneers.

Third-Person Lion

1

(1)

A Charm for Europe

2

(1)

Tobias Smollett in the Var

3

(1)

Rough Sleeper

4

(1)

Disgruntlements

5

(1)

Voyage au Pays du Fer

6

(5)

Strasburg Event

11

(1)

Quatrain

11

(1)

Calvin's Architect

12

(1)

The Window

13

(1)

Baudelaire: Albatross

14

(1)

Questions for Chekhov

15

(1)

Diogenes Looking for Humans

16

(2)

A Vision

18

(1)

Gauguin: Self-Portrait near Golgotha

19

(1)

Glosses

20

(3)

Tongues and Claws

23

(1)

Eggs called Chaos

24

(3)

The Stone Toad

27

(2)

Coal Fish

29

(1)

Gideon's Bible in a Late Night Motel

30

(1)

Europa and the Whale

31

(2)

The Wound Man

33

(2)

The House-Boat

35

(1)

In the Republic of Virtue

35

(1)

Pig Melon Incarnation

36

(2)

Cares of a Family Man

38

(1)

Well and Hearth

38

(1)

A Boy in Dresden

39

(1)

From A to B and Back Again

40

(1)

The Decision

41

(1)

Clueless

42

(1)

Arrow, Bowstring, Hand and Eye

43

(1)

1909 Photograph of a Broken Hill Miner

44

(1)

Chanson

45

(1)

Proverbs and Maxims from the Hive

46

(2)

Baudelaire: The Cracked Bell

48

(1)

The Unreached

49

(2)

Travels with a Donkey to the Bridge of Europe

51

(1)

The Weight of a Day

52

(1)

Hope, Art and Labour

53

(3)

A Nest of Boxes for the Opening of the Scottish Parliament

56

(5)

Ten Years: A Psalm

61

(1)

A Promised Land

62

(1)

Angelology

63

(1)

Transparency: An Address

64

(1)

A Sport of Small Accidents

65

(1)

How Long is a Piece of String?

66

(1)

Trummerfrauen, 1945

66

(1)

Hiding in the River to Escape the Rain

67

(1)

The Very Sound of Where We Are

68

(1)

A Distance from the Sea

69

(1)

Thomas as Imagined by Caravaggio

70

(1)

Joseph Beuys

71

(1)

All the Old Dears

72

(1)

By Further Knowing

73

(1)

Movement

74

(1)

Painting with Razors

75

(1)

Two Poems on Classical Themes

76

(1)

Frail Craft

77

(1)

Strange Weather

78

(1)

Bottler Names

79

(1)

The Guest

80

(1)

The Large Triumphal Chariot of Medicine

80

(1)

Only This

81

(1)

Family Virtues

82

(1)

An Informant to Alexander Carmichael

82

(1)

Baudelaire: Collecting my Thoughts

83

(1)

Gutenberg Wings

84

(1)

Alsace is an Island

85

(1)

King and Queen of the Most Sunken City

86

(1)

Heavenly City of the Twentieth Century

87

(1)

Falling Off the Map

88

(1)

Life of the Civil Servants

89

(1)

Song: It Makes Me Wrong

90

(1)

This

91

(1)

A Sceptical Examination of the Body of French Medicine

92

(1)

Salt of the Earth

93

(1)

Two Steps in the Phenomenology of Walking

94

(1)

Droit de cite

95

(1)

Bucket

96

(1)

Strasburgers on the Beach

97

(3)

Notes

100

What is included with this book?

The New copy of this book will include any supplemental materials advertised. Please check the title of the book to determine if it should include any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.

The Used, Rental and eBook copies of this book are not guaranteed to include any supplemental materials. Typically, only the book itself is included. This is true even if the title states it includes any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.