Now and for a Time

Description

Throughout his long and prolific career, John Fuller has been admired for the way in which he melds levity with serious reflection. In this beautiful new collection of twenty-one poems he proves himself, once again, a true master of this art. They take us from birth to death: from a baby's first delightful babblings, to the dignified, measured words of a man surveying his life and marriage, and looking forward into the unknown. There are moments of great joie de vivre, of pleasure in the earthy things of life; and yet, beyond, there is always a sense of a vaster, more elusive universe. The snorting of the horses in a field in 'Dreams', the egret on the rock in 'Sentinel': these are nature's mysteries. To make sense of these, we have language and music. Celebratory, playful, reconciled to the questions that will not be answered, these poems exude a miraculous kind of peace and understanding: 'A point of closure that allows the next/Inevitable sentence to begin.'

John Fuller is an acclaimed poet and novelist. He has published thirteen collections of poetry, of which the last, Stones and Fires, won the 1996 Forward Poetry Prize. He is a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford.

Fuller's poetry can be seen to build a bridge of boats between light verse and solemn energy with the best technique of anyone writing in Britain now -- Peter Porter For a large number of writers... the decisive influence -- James Fenton Fuller has continued to write as no one doubts he can: with dry urbanity and unflappable abundance * Guardian * Fuller is a wondefully skilled craftsman and the grace and elegance of his style is at the service of not only a sharp wit and intelligence, but a great depth of feeling * Sunday Telegraph * In the clicking of his faultless rhyme [he] captures mortality * Daily Telegraph *