Vaarwel, my effens bevlekte held

Across seven sections, these poems weigh the urge to fit words into a lasting order against the way everything comes undone. They move from owning and roaming the land, in verse on animals, places and people, towards farewells that probe how breakable body and mind are. Words are claimed as a continent, poetry as a republic. One section sets having against losing amid growth and the turning year; another trains the eye, like a camera, on male beauty and athletes stripping, and reworks a poem by Auden. Outsiders and flawed figures crowd the later poems: Marilyn Monroe, Christ on the cross, Uys Krige, Tchaikovsky, Oscar Wilde, Ingrid Jonker, Paganini and Anne Frank. Suicides, the death of much-loved cats and the poet’s own mortality lead into a closing evening song.

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About the book

Form

Poetry

Length

110 pages in the original

First published

2012 by Human & Rousseau

ISBN

9780798156301 (original)