Collected Poems

by Frances Horovitz

Frances Horovitz

Genres: Poetry

128 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1983

Reviews

[Konstantin R. · Rating 5 out of 5]

[rating = A]
Almost every poem in this Collected Works was absolutely amazing. Her sense of sound and sight, her delicate crafting of phrases and her tone towards herself and her surroundings makes for the most successful kind of poetry. These poems are about love and loss, about family, myth, legend and mundane life, about death and history. Although a few poems were a bit odd, probably because they were, perhaps, constrained to a very specific subject (God and Hadrian's Wall) and lacked her light and airy touch of sensibility where theme is concerned. Otherwise, these poems speak (very much like H.D.'s or William Carlos Williams') to nature and how we find ourselves, connected or disjoined, in it. A wonderful collection that should be read by any lover of poetry; I only wish that all poets had this feel of love and devotion to words, unlike many of the postmodern rubbish that infests this "sterile" scene. Frances takes the world by its roots and branches and shakes out all the dirt, making the ugly beautiful and the plain glimmer.

[Anne Bredrup · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gjendikta av Lars Amund Vaage (2017)

[Karlos · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the place to begin and end with the work of France Horovitz, tho not quite every poem, it certainly and lovingly covers the overwhelming majority of poems of Frances work. Touching and reflective, precise and a hymn for wet beautiful England of Gloucestershire, the north near Hadrian's Wall and Herefordshire from a poet who was a regular reader for the BBC radio programme Poetry Please! and beyond throughout the late 70s and right up to her untimely death in 1983.

[Nick Swarbrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

The spare language and subject matter are instantly engaging: her elegy for the loss of Roman culture “Poem found at Chesters Museum” is clever and moving; her poems on Avebury and Rain -Birdoswald show deep sensitivity to place and history. In some ways her project dances in poetry round Alan Garner’s novels. She is at her most moving confronting death, whether examining a sheep’s skull or brutally exploring her own grief at her own impending death. She writes of sex with the same precision (“Do you not know I need to touch you/as I touch a fruit or child?”) as she uses on nature (“crows flail home.”)
Utterly magical.

[Andy Horton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Many years ago, Frances Horovitz gave a talk and reading to a young writers’ group I was part of. I liked her, and her poetry. I was sad to learn of her early death just a few years later.
I bought this collection today and revisited her work after four decades of my own life experience. Myth, folklore, place, time and timelessness, nature, longing. A spare style, wearing ting of life, death, love snd loss, and in the end of her own impending death. I really enjoyed reading these poems, which still resonate with this now not-so-young writer.

[scarlettraces]

Oh I would have loved this when I was twenty