A Shorter Life

Alan Jenkins

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English

Chatto & Windus
15 March 2005

Poetry; Poetry by individual poets; Literary studies: poetry & poets

Best collection yet from Deputy Editor of the TLS. This is poetry as autobiography - a wonderfully poignant evocation of a genteel suburban upbringing, a wild youth and a regretful middle-age.

In his most eloquent and formally satisfying collection to date, Alan Jenkins plays a series of powerful and haunting variations on love and loss. The themes that run through our lives are relatively few, for all that they sound subtly different to each of us, with their own rich freight of places and faces. In poems that pay homage to what is unique to his own past experience - a suburban fifties upbringing, a heady youth of rebellion and exploration - Jenkins reminds us vividly of what is experienced by us all. The search for love (or failing that, sex), the passing of time and the inevitability of pain and grief, the struggle for transcendence against our awareness of limitation- these are the things that can suddenly seem to compose a life - a life not so much reduced to essentials as seen in its passionate essence, a 'shorter' life. Though not in any formal sense a sequel, this poignant book recapitulates some of the motifs of The Drift (2000) and earlier volumes, to offer an extended meditation on memory and recurrence, and a statement - compelling, candid, sorrowful and subtle - of life's beauty and brevity.

By: Alan Jenkins
Imprint: Chatto & Windus
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 214mm, Width: 134mm, Spine: 4mm
Weight: 77g
ISBN: 9780701178086
ISBN 10: 0701178086
Pages: 64
Publication Date: 15 March 2005
Recommended Age: From 0 years
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Alan Jenkins is Deputy Editor of the Times Literary Supplement and a prize-winning poet. His 1994 collection, Harm, won the Forward Prize for Best Collection and, in 2000, The Drift was a Poetry Book Society Choice and was short-listed for the T. S. Eliot Prize. He lives in West London