One Thousand Nights and Counting

by Glyn Maxwell

The poems of Glyn Maxwell possess a slow, quiet fire. They refrain from grand gestures, from loud proclamations of emotion. Instead, Maxwell unveils these emotions gently, quietly, intricately—like little postcards in a waxed envelope. Each of his poems is Blake’s “world in a grain of sand.” Maxwell's works reveal very little about their subjects; there are, rather, merely the faintest, well-chosen hints of quotidian a man kills a wasp; a man falls in and out of love; a man escapes from an unnamed pursuer. But from these suggestive fragments, it is possible to extrapolate an entire world. The casual virtuosity that first brought Maxwell great renown is on show throughout the poems collected in One Thousand Nights and Counting. Lyrical or narrative, comic or contemplative, these are profound, resonant explorations of love and fatherhood, of triumph and longing. They will not soon be forgotten.

Genres: Poetry

Paperback

First published February 1, 2011

About the author

Glyn Maxwell is a poet and playwright. He has also written novels, opera libretti, screenplay and criticism.

His nine volumes of poetry include The Breakage, Hide Now, and Pluto, all of which were shortlisted for either the Forward or T. S. Eliot Prizes, and The Nerve, which won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. He was one of the original ‘New Generation Poets’ in 1993, along with Simon Armitage, Carol Ann Duffy and Don Paterson. His poetry has been published in the USA since 2000. His Selected Poems, One Thousand Nights and Counting, was published on both sides of the Atlantic in 2011. He has a long association with Derek Walcott, who taught him in Boston in the late 1980s, and whose Selected Poems he edited in 2014.

On Poetry, a guidebook for the general reader, was published by Oberon in their Masters Series in 2012. It was described by Hugo Williams in The Spectator as ‘a modern classic’ and by Adam Newey in The Guardian as ‘the best book about poetry I’ve ever read.’

Fifteen of Maxwell’s plays have been staged in London and New York, including Liberty at Shakespeare’s Globe, The Lifeblood at Riverside Studios, and The Only Girl in the World at the Arcola, as well as work at the Almeida, Theatre 503, Oxford Playhouse, the Hen and Chickens, and RADA. He has written extensively for the Grosvenor Park Open Air Theatre in Chester.

His opera libretti include The Firework Maker’s Daughter (composer David Bruce) which was shortlisted for ‘Best New Opera’ at the Oliviers in 2014, Seven Angels (Luke Bedford) inspired by Paradise Lost, and The Lion’s Face (Elena Langer), a study of dementia. All of these were staged at the Royal Opera House and toured the UK.

He is currently working on a screen adaptation of Henry James’s The Beast in the Jungle for the Dutch director Clara Van Gool.

Reviews

[Ben Doeh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Glyn Maxwell writes in simple language, but jumps across time, place and register in complex ways. The mixture of childlike randomness and adolescent-esque marvel at the world as it is revealed was really quite liberating on this reader's creativity.

On the other hand, a good chunk of these poems were just too shifting for me to enjoy them. Sometimes he seemed to sacrifice sense to form (true, his command of form is excellent). In addition, the occasional 'hip' language was really grating.

There were some stunning sequences (for instance, 'Phaeton and the Chariot of the Sun'), vivid evocations of urban life and many worlds of heightened imagination. If I could have made a selection from this selected poems, I would have given him four stars.

(From 'Flood Before and After')
The flood ends
"with tangles, the new rivers and the sunshine

formally requesting a rainbow. Granted."

First impressions: Glyn takes surreal to new places.

[Brendan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Any selected poems that runs to 237 pages (for a poet only in mid-career) isn't nearly selective enough. There are some very good poems in this book, but they aren't given much room to breathe. The poems, even though they seem to be arranged chronologically according to when they were first published, aren't broken into sections as most selected/collected poems are. This makes the book seem longer and more difficult to navigate, and the possible reasons for arranging the book this way seem rather precious to me.

But I will say this is a lovely book to look at and hold and flip through, thanks to that ingenious book designer who calls himself Quemadura.

[Rosie · Rating 4 out of 5]

We saw him read from this and an upcoming book called "On Poetry", at the Hammer last week. He is such an entertaining reader - a performer! An English accent and a disheveled appearance equal a brilliant poet! My favorites are "It Too Remains" and "Thinking: Earth". But this is full of good poems. A rhymer! I don't read a lot of current, good rhyming poems, so that makes me admire him more!