Black Cat Bone
A poetry collection that looks sharply at death, memory, and embodiment through dark, ritualistic imagery and tightly controlled language.
Work Information
Dense poems about memory, loss, and the body.
Across spare lines, desire, injury, and landscape shadows sink deep into the poems.
Book Information
- Publisher
- Jonathan Cape
- Published
- 2011-09-12
- Pages
- 80 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 13.1 x 0.7 x 19.8 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9780224093859
- ISBN-10
- 0224093851
- Price
- 3208 JPY
- Category
- 洋書/Literature & Fiction
John Burnside's remarkable book is full of strange, unnerving poems that hang in the memory like a myth or a song. These are poems of thwarted love and disappointment, of raw desire, of the stalking beast, 'eye-teeth/and muzzle/coated with blood'; poems that recognise 'we have too much to gain from the gods, and this is why/they fail to love us'; poems that tell of an obsessive lover coming to grief in a sequence that echoes the old murder ballads, or of a hunter losing himself in the woods while pursuing an unknown and possibly unknowable quarry. Drawing on sources as various as the paintings of Pieter Brueghel and the lyrics of Delta blues, Black Cat Bone examines varieties of love, faith, hope and illusion, to suggest an unusual possibility: that when the search for what we expected to find - in the forest or in our own hearts - ends in failure, we can now begin the hard and disciplined quest for what is actually there. ‘The unmistakeable work of a master’ Times Literary Supplement
John Burnside was among the most acclaimed writers of his generation. His novels, short stories, poetry and memoirs won numerous awards, including the Geoffrey Faber Memorial, Saltire Scottish Book of the Year and, in 2023, he received the David Cohen Prize for a lifetime’s achievement in literature. In 2011 Black Cat Bone won both the Forward and the T.S. Eliot Prizes for poetry. He died in 2024.
Reviews
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A poet at his peak
These poems are to be read, re- read, savoured as they linger long after you put the book down. With some I find myself going back again and again for the sheer joy of the emotions put so clearly and beautifully. Thank you Mr. Burnside for giving such pleasure through a handful of words
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great book
Good service and a great book in good condition.
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A Masterful Book
This is a book written by a brilliant author at the height of his powers. John Burnside deservedly won the T.S. Eliot Memorial Prize for this volume. Its range is large and disturbing. It encapsulates a world both ancient and disturbingly modern. I had high hopes of it when I read the initial reviews, but it far exceeded those: it is both profound in its subject matter and adept in its poetics. I have not bought a book of poetry so adroit since Seamus Heaney's "Seeing Things".
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Five Stars
My favourite living poet.
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Fab poetry
Fab Burnside poetry, well worth a read.
Related Literary Awards
- Forward Prizes for Poetry Edition 20 (2011) ・Excellence Award
- T. S. Eliot Prize Edition 19 (2011) ・Winner