Elementary Secondary Higher Ed Common Reads

Higher Education


Catalogs
News
Desk/Exam
(0)
Wish List (0)
Wish List
Download high-resolution image Look inside

W. S. Graham

Part of NYRB Poets

Author W.S. Graham
Edited by Michael Hofmann
Look inside
Paperback
$14.95 US
New York Review Books | NYRB Poets
On sale Nov 13, 2018 | 144 Pages | 9781681372761
Add to cart Add to list Exam Copies
See Additional Formats
An original collection of the best and most provocative work by Scottish poet W.S. Graham, the celebrated author of "Nightfishing" and Malcolm Mooney's Land.

“Does it disturb the language?” the Scottish poet W. S. Graham liked to ask about a poem. Graham’s do—strangely, comically, beautifully. His career fell into two parts. The early work is rapt and wild and incantatory, and culminates in the tour de force of 1955, The Nightfishing. Fifteen years of silence were then followed by an extraordinary late flowering: Graham’s poems became stark, quizzical, and unsettling, a continual teasing examination of thought and feeling that is also an ongoing investigation into the nature and power of poetry, work that is at once metaphysical and intimate, wry and elegiac. In these late poems, Graham emerges as one of the true originals of poetry in English.
William Sydney Graham (1918–1986) was born into a working-class family in Greenock, Scotland, where his father worked as a shipbuilder. Graham studied structural engineering in Glasgow and philosophy and literature at Newbattle Abbey College outside of Edinburgh before publishing his first collection of poetry, Cage Without Grievance, in 1942. In 1947, he received the Rockefeller Foundation’s Atlantic Award for Literature and lectured at New York University for a year. Upon returning to the UK, he lived briefly in London, where he met T. S. Eliot, who accepted Graham’s fourth collection, The White Threshold, for publication by Faber and Faber in 1949. Shortly after, Graham moved to Cornwall where, with Agnes “Nessie” Dunsmuir, whom he married in 1954, he lived in a small village and often in great poverty for the rest of his life. A fifth book of poems, The Nightfishing, appeared in 1955; a sixth, Malcolm Mooney’s Land, in 1970. Aimed at Nobody was published posthumously by Faber and Faber in 1993. In 2018, the centenary of Graham’s birth was marked by the unveiling of a memorial stone outside the Writers’ Museum in Edinburgh.


Michael Hofmann is a German-born, British-educated poet and translator. He is the author of two books of essays and five books of poems, most recently One Lark, One Horse. Among his translations are plays by Bertolt Brecht and Patrick Süskind; the selected poems of Durs Grünbein and Gottfried Benn; and novels and stories by, among others, Franz Kafka; Peter Stamm; his father, Gert Hofmann; and fourteen books by Joseph Roth. He has translated several books for NYRB Classics, including Alfred Döblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz, Jakob Wassermann’s My Marriage, and Gert Ledig’s Stalin Front and edited The Voyage That Never Ends, an anthology of writing by Malcolm Lowry. He teaches in the English Department at the University of Florida.
W.S. Graham View titles by W.S. Graham

About

An original collection of the best and most provocative work by Scottish poet W.S. Graham, the celebrated author of "Nightfishing" and Malcolm Mooney's Land.

“Does it disturb the language?” the Scottish poet W. S. Graham liked to ask about a poem. Graham’s do—strangely, comically, beautifully. His career fell into two parts. The early work is rapt and wild and incantatory, and culminates in the tour de force of 1955, The Nightfishing. Fifteen years of silence were then followed by an extraordinary late flowering: Graham’s poems became stark, quizzical, and unsettling, a continual teasing examination of thought and feeling that is also an ongoing investigation into the nature and power of poetry, work that is at once metaphysical and intimate, wry and elegiac. In these late poems, Graham emerges as one of the true originals of poetry in English.

Author

William Sydney Graham (1918–1986) was born into a working-class family in Greenock, Scotland, where his father worked as a shipbuilder. Graham studied structural engineering in Glasgow and philosophy and literature at Newbattle Abbey College outside of Edinburgh before publishing his first collection of poetry, Cage Without Grievance, in 1942. In 1947, he received the Rockefeller Foundation’s Atlantic Award for Literature and lectured at New York University for a year. Upon returning to the UK, he lived briefly in London, where he met T. S. Eliot, who accepted Graham’s fourth collection, The White Threshold, for publication by Faber and Faber in 1949. Shortly after, Graham moved to Cornwall where, with Agnes “Nessie” Dunsmuir, whom he married in 1954, he lived in a small village and often in great poverty for the rest of his life. A fifth book of poems, The Nightfishing, appeared in 1955; a sixth, Malcolm Mooney’s Land, in 1970. Aimed at Nobody was published posthumously by Faber and Faber in 1993. In 2018, the centenary of Graham’s birth was marked by the unveiling of a memorial stone outside the Writers’ Museum in Edinburgh.


Michael Hofmann is a German-born, British-educated poet and translator. He is the author of two books of essays and five books of poems, most recently One Lark, One Horse. Among his translations are plays by Bertolt Brecht and Patrick Süskind; the selected poems of Durs Grünbein and Gottfried Benn; and novels and stories by, among others, Franz Kafka; Peter Stamm; his father, Gert Hofmann; and fourteen books by Joseph Roth. He has translated several books for NYRB Classics, including Alfred Döblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz, Jakob Wassermann’s My Marriage, and Gert Ledig’s Stalin Front and edited The Voyage That Never Ends, an anthology of writing by Malcolm Lowry. He teaches in the English Department at the University of Florida.
W.S. Graham View titles by W.S. Graham

Additional formats

Other books in this series

Related Articles

Psychology Health

National Depression Education and Awareness Month

For National Depression Education and Awareness Month in October, we are sharing a collection of titles that educates and informs on depression, including personal stories from those who have experienced depression and topics that range from causes and symptoms of depression to how to develop coping mechanisms to battle depression.

Read more

National Depression Education and Awareness Month

Psychology Health
Books for LGBTQIA+ History Month
History Gender and Sexuality Studies

Books for LGBTQIA+ History Month

For LGBTQIA+ History Month in October, we’re celebrating the shared history of individuals within the community and the importance of the activists who have fought for their rights and the rights of others. We acknowledge the varying and diverse experiences within the LGBTQIA+ community that have shaped history and have led the way for those

Read more

Books for LGBTQIA+ History Month

History Gender and Sexuality Studies
Books for Latinx and Hispanic Heritage Month
Literature History Sociology

Books for Latinx & Hispanic Heritage Month

Penguin Random House Education is proud to celebrate Latinx & Hispanic Heritage Month, which runs annually from September 15th through October 15th.  We are highlighting the works of our authors and illustrators from the Latinx and Hispanic community, whose stories and characters have a profound impact on our society. Here is a collection of titles

Read more

Books for Latinx & Hispanic Heritage Month

Literature History Sociology
Subscribe

About Higher Education

Penguin Random House Education

Penguin Random House

About Higher Education

Penguin Random House Education

Penguin Random House

Back to Top
0
    • 0
    Higher Education
    Wish List (0)