Author : Andrew Motion
Publisher : Faber & Faber
ISBN 13 : 057128812X
Total Pages : 102 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (712 download)
Book Synopsis The Customs House by : Andrew Motion
Download or read book The Customs House written by Andrew Motion and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2012-10-16 with total page 102 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Andrew Motion's new book opens with a sequence of war poems (first published as the pamphlet Laurels and Donkeys, on Armistice Day 2010), drawing on soldiers' experiences of war from 1914 until today - beginning with a story about Siegfried Sassoon and moving via World War Two and Korea to the recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many of the poems are in the voices of combatants, others are based on memories of the poet's father, who landed at D-day and fought in France and Germany. The poems combine understatement with a clear-eyed and unswerving candour.The Customs House has other rooms: a group of topographies, mapping moments in a marriage against the contingencies of place and family history; and several 'found poems', in which the poet collaborates with his source, mixing what is there already with what is about to be there: whether a remarkable sonnet sequence on the last days of the Baroque genius Francesco Borromini, or in other poems a richly imagined extrapolation from the silent premises of a painting.