The Music of Time: Poetry in the Twentieth Century
A revelatory and deeply personal history of twentieth-century poetry by prize-winning poet and memoirist John Burnside

Poetry helps us to make sense of our world, transforming what the Russian poet Osip Mandelstam called the "noise of time" into a kind of music. The Music of Time is a unique history of twentieth-century poetry by one of today's most acclaimed poets, blending incandescent personal meditations with rare insights about a broad range of poets who distilled the essence of the moment, gave voice to our griefs and joys, and shaped our collective memory.

Bringing together poets from times and places as diverse as Tsarist Russia, 1960s Harlem, and Ireland at the height of the Troubles, John Burnside reveals how poetry responded to the dramatic events of the century while shaping our impressions of them. He takes readers from the trenches of World War I to a prison cell in Nazi Germany, and from Rilke's grave in the Swiss Alps to Dylan Thomas's Welsh seaside. His luminous narrative is woven through with insights into the poet's creative process as well as lyrical and thought-provoking digressions on topics ranging from marriage to the Kennedy assassination.

A spellbinding work of literary history, The Music of Time reveals how poets engaged with the most important issues and events of the twentieth century, and bears personal witness to the beauty and power of an art form unlike any other.

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The Music of Time: Poetry in the Twentieth Century
A revelatory and deeply personal history of twentieth-century poetry by prize-winning poet and memoirist John Burnside

Poetry helps us to make sense of our world, transforming what the Russian poet Osip Mandelstam called the "noise of time" into a kind of music. The Music of Time is a unique history of twentieth-century poetry by one of today's most acclaimed poets, blending incandescent personal meditations with rare insights about a broad range of poets who distilled the essence of the moment, gave voice to our griefs and joys, and shaped our collective memory.

Bringing together poets from times and places as diverse as Tsarist Russia, 1960s Harlem, and Ireland at the height of the Troubles, John Burnside reveals how poetry responded to the dramatic events of the century while shaping our impressions of them. He takes readers from the trenches of World War I to a prison cell in Nazi Germany, and from Rilke's grave in the Swiss Alps to Dylan Thomas's Welsh seaside. His luminous narrative is woven through with insights into the poet's creative process as well as lyrical and thought-provoking digressions on topics ranging from marriage to the Kennedy assassination.

A spellbinding work of literary history, The Music of Time reveals how poets engaged with the most important issues and events of the twentieth century, and bears personal witness to the beauty and power of an art form unlike any other.

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The Music of Time: Poetry in the Twentieth Century

The Music of Time: Poetry in the Twentieth Century

by John Burnside
The Music of Time: Poetry in the Twentieth Century

The Music of Time: Poetry in the Twentieth Century

by John Burnside

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Overview

A revelatory and deeply personal history of twentieth-century poetry by prize-winning poet and memoirist John Burnside

Poetry helps us to make sense of our world, transforming what the Russian poet Osip Mandelstam called the "noise of time" into a kind of music. The Music of Time is a unique history of twentieth-century poetry by one of today's most acclaimed poets, blending incandescent personal meditations with rare insights about a broad range of poets who distilled the essence of the moment, gave voice to our griefs and joys, and shaped our collective memory.

Bringing together poets from times and places as diverse as Tsarist Russia, 1960s Harlem, and Ireland at the height of the Troubles, John Burnside reveals how poetry responded to the dramatic events of the century while shaping our impressions of them. He takes readers from the trenches of World War I to a prison cell in Nazi Germany, and from Rilke's grave in the Swiss Alps to Dylan Thomas's Welsh seaside. His luminous narrative is woven through with insights into the poet's creative process as well as lyrical and thought-provoking digressions on topics ranging from marriage to the Kennedy assassination.

A spellbinding work of literary history, The Music of Time reveals how poets engaged with the most important issues and events of the twentieth century, and bears personal witness to the beauty and power of an art form unlike any other.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780691218861
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Publication date: 04/06/2021
Pages: 528
Product dimensions: 5.25(w) x 8.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

John Burnside (1955–2024) was a poet, novelist, and memoirist whose many books included Still Life with Feeding Snake and On Henry Miller (Princeton). He won many awards for his poetry, including the T. S. Eliot, Forward, Whitbread, and Geoffrey Faber Memorial prizes. He was professor of English at the University of St Andrews and a regular contributor to the London Review of Books.

Table of Contents

A Note to the Reader xi

Introduction 1

Ghostly Music in the Air 15

Everyone Sang 34

L'infinito 53

Einen reinen Vorgang 69

The Grief That Does Not Speak 92

The Power of the Visible 107

A Very Young Policeman Exploding 127

An Old Chaos of the Sun 149

Weltenton 162

La razón poética 180

Why Look at Animals? 206

A Stony Invitation To Reflect 234

A Golden Age of Poetry and Power 250

Where Turtles Win 275

Sólo tú, alma mía 293

Like a Stripèd Pair of Pants 306

Tantalus in Love 325

A Gift to the Future 356

The Panic of the Adversary 369

The Bat-Poet 386

To Reclaim Lost Space 400

A Towering Strangeness 418

The Poets in Ghana 440

Notes 463

Select Bibliography 479

Acknowledgements 485

Index 487

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Magisterial. This is a fine, often profound book, the very valuable work of a poet and novelist who has thought long and hard about poetry and the many contexts surrounding its writing."—Michael Hulse, coeditor of The 20th Century in Poetry

Praise for John Burnside

"The poet who more than any other writing today sees the material world and the world of thought and ideas as two sides of the most fragile of membranes."—Fiona Sampson, poet and author of In Search of Mary Shelley



"Burnside . . . writes lyrical prose with virtuoso ease."—Marcel Theroux, The Guardian

"A master of language."—Hilary Mantel, London Review of Books

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