ISBN: 9781804470701
Paperback • 100pp • £10
129 mm x 198 mm
1 November 2023
BIC: DCF, FJMF
Territory: World English
Exile and Other Poems
Centenary Edition
£10.00
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First published in 1923, Exile and Other Poems is an important, poignant collection from one of the foremost Imagist war poets. Penned after witnessing the horrors of the frontline during the First World War, Aldington’s brutal, honest verse lays bare unimaginable experiences.
The first part of the collection, ‘Exile’, explores the poet’s survivor’s guilt, post-traumatic stress and sense of alienation. The collection continues with a ‘Songs for Puritans’ and ‘Songs for Sensualists’, pastiches of seventeenth and eighteenth-century love poetry, and a series of more personal poems exploring the natural world, from which Aldington drew reassurance.
Enriched with a fascinating introduction and explanatory notes by leading Aldington scholars Elizabeth Vandiver and Vivien Whelpton, this centenary edition seeks to place Exile firmly back on the map of war poetry, from which it has been missing for too long.
This new edition, beautifully produced by Renard for Aldington’s centenary, would be worth having just for the first-rate introduction and the detailed background notes which give a very clear summmary of his troubles.
John Greening PN Review