A Crumpled Swan: Fifty essays about Abigail Parry's 'In the dream of the cold restaurant'

by David Collard

Overview

A year of intensive close reading and personal reflection led to this uniquely entertaining collection of essays about poetry in general and one remarkable poem in particular: 'In the dream of the cold restaurant' by Abigail Parry.

Whether you're a seasoned poetry reader or a curious newcomer, this engaging and constantly surprising book offers a generous, idiosyncratic take on what poetry is, what it does, and what it's for.

From the author of Multiple Joyce: 100 essays about James Joyce's cultural legacy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781963846157
Publisher:	Sagging Meniscus Press
Publication date:	06/03/2025
Pages:	282
Product dimensions:	5.83(w) x 8.27(h) x 0.64(d)

Editorial Reviews

2025-03-08
A journey into a dream.

In 50 brief, illuminating essays melding memoir, close reading, literary analysis, and cultural criticism, critic and essayist Collard takes Abigail Parry’s poem “In the dream of the cold restaurant,” from her collectionI Think We’re Alone Now, as inspiration for reflecting on poetry as genre and on this singular, enigmatic poem in particular. “I want to be able [to] bring to a poem the same knowledge and attention that an art historian brings to a painting,” Collard writes. The poem relates a scene involving a man who fashions a napkin into origami shapes; a surly 17-year-old waitress with a mysterious scar from, perhaps, a burn; and another diner, seated on a mezzanine, reading: All are depicted with both the “glib economy” and “gaunt extravagance of dreams.” Collard reads and rereads the poem, each time “impressed and astonished” by its “subtly-managed uncertainty and instability.” He investigates its language, rhythm, and allusions to Greek mythology. He brings to bear a range of contemporary critics. Not alone among poems he admires and discusses in these essays, this one obsesses him: “I carry the poem with me, and am in turn carried by it, or carried away.” Having grown up among Jehovah’s Witnesses, Collard, as a teenager, escaped a cult that severely circumscribed his world. “My behaviour from the age of eight, when my parents were evangelised, was constantly policed,” he writes; “everything I did and everything I said was either approved without warmth or criticised and corrected.” He saw literature as an antidote, “a way of engaging directly with other thinkers, other perspectives.” In Parry’s poetry, he feels “in direct contact with an intelligence I find sympathetic.” Collard’s insightful essays reveal him, as well, as a sympathetic presence, sensitive and wise.

Fresh, perceptive literary essays.

Kirkus Reviews